Turning an Internal Inventory Tool into a Commercial, Multi-Sided Healthcare Procurement Platform

Situation

Academy Medical, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB), relied on a custom internal application to manage inventory and federal sales. When their sole in-house developer left, the company needed immediate support to keep mission-critical systems running.

As Feature[23] stabilized the platform, a bigger opportunity emerged:
The software solved a widespread, systemic problem across federal healthcare procurement—and could be commercialized as a standalone product.

Challenges included:

• Highly complex federal purchasing rules (“Rule of Two,” contract pricing tiers)
• FDA reporting and traceability requirements for medical devices
• Fragmented vendor systems with inconsistent technical capabilities
• A VA procurement process that lacked pricing visibility

Solution

Feature[23] partnered with Academy Medical to evolve the internal system into Flightline, a full-scale, multi-tenant procurement platform.

Key elements included:

Two-sided marketplace architecture
Supported resellers, vendors, and downstream suppliers within a single extensible platform.

EDI-first integrations
Designed around Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to integrate seamlessly with legacy systems used by large medical vendors.

Procurement & inventory management system
Centralized purchase orders, invoicing, inventory tracking, and vendor coordination.

Smart purchasing workflows
Surfaced all eligible contract pricing options to help buyers default to the lowest compliant price—addressing a billion-dollar inefficiency in VA purchasing.

Infinite vendor extensibility
Enabled manufacturers, distributors, and resellers to participate regardless of their technical maturity.

At scale, the platform supported dozens of live production instances across the vendor ecosystem.

Results

• Transformed a single-company internal tool into a commercial platform
• Enabled compliant procurement across complex federal contracts
• Reduced purchasing inefficiencies by improving pricing visibility
• Created a scalable foundation capable of supporting an unlimited number of vendors and resellers

Flightline became core infrastructure for healthcare suppliers operating in one of the most regulated procurement environments in the U.S.

Why Custom Software

No off-the-shelf system could model the combination of federal purchasing rules, FDA reporting requirements, legacy EDI integrations, and multi-party supply chains. Custom software enabled Flightline to become a platform—rather than forcing the business to conform to rigid vendor tools.