Braving a snowstorm with passion and persistence

‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’ is a saying we hear a lot, but what do you do when you’re caught by surprise by a natural calamity you never saw coming?  

A global warming-induced snowstorm barrelled across the southern states of the US in February, shutting them down entirely for several days. It was a catastrophe — millions of people were left without electricity or potable water, many died, and supply and transportation services were hit. The states’ major highways were shut for nearly a week, forcing embargos.  

Facing shortages, one of our major wholesalers reached out to our North America team, requesting help to expedite delivery to their warehouses as soon as highways became accessible. Their national warehouse in Mississippi was caught in the middle of the storm, so they were unable to forward key products to their forwarding warehouses across various locations in the US. The need was urgent —once these smaller centres receive supply, products are then distributed across hospitals, clinics and pharmacies. “We quickly jumped in and offered our help to get the hospitals, clinics and pharmacies stocked up,” says Tracy Lopez, Lead, Customer Service Operations. “But it was a massive task; we had to ship to 25 different locations quickly.”  

Dr Reddy’s team began to liaise with the wholesalers to get the orders going. “Our normal order volume increased from 15 to around 350 orders,” says Edward Collier, a Customer Service Representative who worked on this request. “It was a logistical challenge.”

However, logistical challenges weren’t the only ones that cropped up. Given that all the affected states faced electrical outages, virtual networks were riddled with issues for days. Problems in the EDI or Electronic Data Interchange application also delayed the team from getting orders. “Several members of our customer service team were on past 11pm processing orders to ensure they could go out as soon as possible,” says Benjamin Kleppel, Lead Associate, Warehouse Transportation.  

In the end, they got the job done. “We were able to get all of them shipped to ensure that good health doesn’t wait,” says Edward.

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