Chargebacks represent the single largest deduction from gross sales for most pharmaceutical and healthcare products companies. As pricing pressures in the industry continue to escalate, the volume of transactions resulting in chargebacks, and related dollar value, will likely increase. Additionally, manufacturers are entering into Inventory Management Agreements (IMAs) with wholesalers, with the objective of the wholesaler providing inventory level data (daily, weekly or monthly) to the manufacturer to further analyse the supply chain pipeline.
Most manufacturers have developed data analysis capabilities to audit information received from wholesalers. However, certain key issues often cannot be uncovered in the data normally supplied by the wholesalers (e.g., alternate sourcing of product, certain chargeback processing errors, accuracy of data submitted under an IMA by the wholesaler). PricewaterhouseCoopers has developed sophisticated data analysis and testing approaches to help manufacturers close some of the gaps.
