The dedicated team that runs your courier layer.
Drug acquisition has buyers. Labor has managers. Delivery — often your third-largest spend — has no one watching it daily. Ship Steward becomes that owner: a dedicated function managing your courier and logistics operations end to end — financial control, vendor governance, and internal coordination across every site.
Courier Management is Ship Steward’s dedicated managed-service function — an embedded team, powered by a forensic platform, that runs your courier layer end to end across every pharmacy site, on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence, as the single point of accountability for your delivery spend.
The one major spend nobody manages
You hand delivery to a courier and trust their invoice and their reporting. That’s where the money leaks.
Third-Largest Spend
After drug COGS and labor, delivery is the next-biggest line — and the only one with no dedicated daily owner.
The Fox Audits the Henhouse
You verify courier performance using the courier’s own reporting. There’s no independent check on your side.
No Single View
Multiple sites, multiple couriers, multiple invoice formats — and no normalized way to compare any of them.
No One Accountable
Purchasing owns drugs, ops owns labor. Delivery falls between desks — until it becomes a fire.
An embedded team, powered by a forensic platform
Not software you install. Not a consultant who leaves with the knowledge. A dedicated function on your side of the table — with the platform behind it.
The Embedded Team
A dedicated Ship Steward owns your courier relationships site by site, audits every invoice and chases every credit, drives RFPs and rate negotiations, and is your single point of accountability for every delivery escalation.
The Platform Powering It
Forensic invoice audit, a three-phase LTC route optimizer, I2R incident tracking, TimeKeeper ops reporting, RFP support, and executive dashboards — all fed by the same normalized data.
How the function works
A proven scope template, adapted to your footprint and the courier relationships you already have in place.
Financial Control & Invoice Management
Rigorous weekly audits of every courier invoice against contractual rates, volume tiers, and service logs — then we verify and approve for Accounts Payable, and drive cost reduction through consolidation and route redesign.
Vendor & Performance Governance
Bi-weekly KPI reviews with courier vendors, contract-compliance monitoring (SLAs, HIPAA, temperature control), and incident management — logged, investigated, and resolved, coordinated with your compliance and legal teams as needed.
Internal Coordination & Excellence
Monthly alignment with pharmacy ops and customer service, quarterly route and network evaluations, and consistent delivery and dispatch standards enforced across every location.
A structured cadence of touch points
A single point of accountability per region, on a rhythm your team can count on.
Same pharmacy, same courier — a different operating layer
Gallatin is what this looks like when it lands.
Gallatin is a realized client result. We propose to run this same method site by site across your network; per-site targets are confirmed by a full audit, not promised up front.
From handshake to recovered dollars
By the 90-day checkpoint there are invoiced savings on the table — not a roadmap.
Days 1–30 · Load & Baseline
Ingest delivery-track data, build per-site rate cards, normalize prior invoices, and stand up dashboards. Outliers flagged in the first week.
Days 31–60 · Audit & Identify
Reconcile line by line, surface optimization, credit, and rate-gap opportunities, and deliver a site-by-site report ranked by ROI.
Days 61–90 · Recover & Lock In
Run optimization, push the first wave of credits, close renegotiated rates, and kick off TimeKeeper and Incident Management.
Questions buyers ask
What does Courier Management actually do?
A dedicated Ship Steward manages your courier and logistics operations end to end — weekly invoice audits and AP approval, bi-weekly courier performance meetings, monthly pharmacy alignment and executive rollups, and quarterly route and network evaluations — as your single point of accountability.
Is this consulting, software, or a managed service?
A managed service. We run the courier layer with our own team and platform — the agency outcome without renting out your data or adding headcount. The knowledge stays with the engagement, not walking out with an invoice.
Do we have to switch couriers?
No. We audit and optimize your current spend first — Gallatin was the same courier on an optimized plan with renegotiated rates. RFP Support is there to re-bid from a position of strength when you choose.
How is the engagement priced?
One scope, one price: a percentage of the freight under management, with no minimums or setup fees. One monthly invoice, one dashboard, one accountable team — and it scales as sites come on or off.
See your number in 90 days.
We start with a read on your current spend — outliers flagged, a weekly cadence live — and you judge the partnership on dollars recovered, not promises.
Get Your 90-Day Plan