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Before You Start

Before you start

A well-designed and functional supply chain is a critical element of any national health system. In order to move products efficiently, health system managers need visibility into all levels and functions of the supply chain through access to timely and accurate data. A strong logistics management information system (LMIS) serves as the backbone of the supply chain by allowing visibility into its various levels, programs, and functions and thereby providing critical data to health managers for decision-making.

As supply chains evolve and mature in public health systems, demand is increasing for accurate real or near real-time data to identify obstacles and increase efficiency. Countries are increasingly turning to electronic LMIS solutions to professionalize and automate their data collection processes, thereby enabling logisticians to quickly and easily collect data, improve delivery, and get critical health commodities to those who need them most. With greater frequency, health system managers are choosing open source electronic LMIS options because they lack licensing fees and simultaneously offer a high degree of flexibility and customization options targeted specifically toward their specific supply chain needs.

Because implementing any new electronic LMIS takes significant time and effort at all phases of the project, it’s important that all stakeholders understand and accept the commitment. The adoption of any LMIS is a long-term commitment which can significantly bolster the professionalism and efficiency of the supply chain processes.

What does a successful OpenLMIS implementation look like?

There are three important points to understand about implementing an electronic LMIS:

  • Implementation is a process, not a single event. Don’t expect to quickly install software like OpenLMIS and then start using it immediately. Implementation requires long-term planning and stakeholder support. Even after the installation, customization, and rollout phases have ended, regular system monitoring and updates are necessary.
  • Planning is critical for success, but so is flexibility. Even the best-planned projects encounter surprises. External dependencies may change, as may the needs of stakeholders. To meet these needs, it’s important for every stakeholder to both demonstrate and expect flexibility throughout the project.  
  • Each Implementation is different. By incorporating the experience and advice of previous implementers, the OpenLMIS Implementer Toolkit offers general guidelines for the implementation process. Every country, supply chain, and project is different, however. You may therefore find that certain steps don’t apply or that you prefer to follow them in an alternate order. Remember, be flexible to be successful!

Suggestions for using this toolkit

  • Read through the entire Toolkit to familiarize yourself with the process before you start.
  • Several important steps must be completed before you begin installing and customizing OpenLMIS.
  • This toolkit is an excellent source of examples, reusable templates, and guidance. Feel free to use and adapt any resources that are provided.
  • The assessment and planning phases may take a lot of time. They include stakeholder coordination, policy development, and requirements gathering and are cumulatively the most labor intensive parts of the project. They are also essential for a successful and sustainable implementation of the tool.

Learn about OpenLMIS

OpenLMIS is distributed as free and open source software (FOSS) – software that has been released under a license which allows anyone to view, copy, modify, and redistribute its source code. The OpenLMIS code and all related documentation is publicly available in online repositories (see the Tools section of openlmis.org for a full list of resources) and the software may be installed and customized without ever paying a licensing fee.

As an open source initiative, all OpenLMIS code, documentation, and community discussions are openly shared and accessible. The OpenLMIS communities’ vision is of shared investment and shared benefit. We believe that everybody ultimately gains when software is free to use and improve.

The resources listed below will benefit a variety of different stakeholders. As with every other facet of OpenLMIS, you are welcome to adapt any of them to your needs. For example, your team may wish to add slides to the PowerPoint presentation highlighting examples of implementations similar to those that your stakeholders care about.

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Assemble an Implementation Team

Every implementation of an electronic LMIS system will be different; therefore, the implementation team required to support a deployment will vary depending on the size, scope, and location of the project.

In any implementation, however, there are several major activity categories that will likely require support from a specific person or people.

Activity categories:

  •      Project oversight & management
  •      Governance & stakeholder engagement
  •      Monitoring & evaluation
  •      Requirements definition
  •      ICT infrastructure set up
  •      Development oversight
  •      Testing & QA
  •      Software setup/configuration, customization, support/maintenance
  •      Training and user support

In order to cover and manage these activities, an implementation team would likely include several positions:

Depending on the organization as well as the scope and resources of the implementation, the team could be larger. For example:

  • The OpenLMIS Advisor may oversee one or more OpenLMIS officers who contribute to requirements development, training, user support, and M&E
  • Alternatively, some roles may be broken out into separate positions such as a training manager and an M&E officer

Though the exact makeup of the team will vary, any implementation team should ensure they have included has sufficient human resources and necessary skills to fill each of the key roles for the implementation.

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Determine the scope of the implementation

Determining the scope of an implementation can have several meanings, but for this purposes of this Toolkit, “implementation scope” refers to where and how OpenLMIS will be deployed. Understanding the scope at an early stage in the project will help align thinking and effectively present a project to stakeholders and financing partners in order to best determine budgets, requirements, and a timeline.

OpenLMIS is a large application that is highly configurable  and customizable. As such, accurately deciding on the scope for an implementation is a critical step in setting your project up for success.

To determine the overall scope of an OpenLMIS implementation, the team will need to define these variables:

  • Location(s) Will OpenLMIS be deployed at a single level in the supply chain, for example, at the national (central) level to provide visibility into the supply chain for a Ministry program supervisor? Or will it be expanded to include several regions or districts? OpenLMIS may be deployed at a very small scale or it can be used to manage logistics processes for an entire country’s health system.
  • Focus What program(s) will OpenLMIS be used to manage, for example, Malaria, TB, Essential Medicines, HIV, Family Planning, Vaccines/EPI, etc.? OpenLMIS can be used to manage logistics and ordering for a single program, or for every program and product being managed and used within a health system.
  • Approvals, Roles, Administration Who will be accessing and using OpenLMIS? How many levels of approval and authorization will your system require? Are the requirements different based on program or facilities? OpenLMIS can be configured to support different logistics system operating procedures, allowing for a flexible authorization hierarchy and role-based access control. Additionally, you’ll need to decide who will be a system administrator with the power to configure the system.
  • Features Because of its modular, microservices-based architecture, implementations may choose to use some, or all, of OpenLMIS’s many features and functionalities. For example, one current implementation of OpenLMIS is only using the Requisitions functionality for the first phase of their project and has chosen not to use the Stock Management features in system at this time. The flexibility of the OpenLMIS architecture, however, means that a country may choose to implement features in the system at different times allowing for a flexible deployment that meets current and future needs.

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