SAP all-in-one product and Answerthink help organization keep its F&A on track.

by Peggy Cope

Joerns Healthcare, Inc. a mid-sized company in the medical device industry, has selected Answerthink, a division of The Hackett Group that focuses on providing and supporting SAP solutions, to implement EzMed, a qualified SAP business all-in-one partner solution, to handle several of its F&A functions.

Joerns, located in Steven Points, WI, provides advanced healthcare products and services for the long-term care industry. As a manufacturer of medical beds, furnishings, repositioning equipment, and wound management products, Joerns wanted to increase its strong position in the industry and maintain a reliable supply chain, keep strict inventory controls, manage regulations and enhance the overall customer experience. Joerns selected SAP and Answerthink to help in this effort.

“We are a mid-size company with the global reach and aspirations of a true industry leader,” said Partha Biswas, vice president and chief information officer, Joerns Healthcare. “The complexity of business processes and stiff competition describe our business landscape. Solutions from SAP not only meet virtually all of our functionality requirements, but they also position us well to meet our current and future challenges in a cost-effective manner. SAP’s vision and consistency of strategic execution made them an obvious choice for us.”

After a comprehensive ERP software evaluation process, Joerns chose SAP solutions based on the need to meet demanding growth and business management objectives. After the SAP selection, Answerthink was contracted to lead and manage the effort based on a track record of successful implementations for mid-market customers. Answerthink enabled Joern’s vision to install a platform for full and powerful functionality to meet current and future business needs.

On June 2, the implementation of SAP solutions at Joerns went live on time and on budget. The implementation included the SAP ERP Release 6.0 application and EzMed, a qualified SAP business all-in-one partner solution designed for medical device companies. Diligence, collaboration, and commitment of the Joerns and Answerthink team contributed to the success of the project.

Answerthink managing director John McGrath said, “We were delighted to have the opportunity to partner with Joerns in this mission-critical business step. Without the use of our EzMed solution, we could have never achieved what we collectively did in a short period of time. The combination of our solution and the dedicated team members from both organizations were the keys to success. Joerns is now well positioned to assume the growth it anticipates in the years to come.”

EzMed is based on best practices from SAP and customized for growing companies in the medical device industries. It is part of Answerthink’s EzLifeSciences family of preconfigured solutions that are designed specifically to help life sciences companies achieve goals unique to their industry. Answerthink is an SAP channel partner that develops and offers qualified SAP business all-in-one partner solutions—industry-specific software, implementation, and training packaged solutions. By leveraging the best practices database of The Hackett Group, Answerthink helps clients improve performance and maximize returns on SAP software investments.

With EzMed, Answerthink and SAP deliver a rapidly deployable solution that allows growing companies in the medical device and equipment industries to improve business processes, rein in costs, maintain regulatory compliance and quickly ramp up operations upon the introduction of new products. Hundreds of business processes, reports, forms and user roles are pre-built and delivered standard, along with end-user training and a master plan and template reports for validation. The entire software and services solution is delivered within a fixed scope and using a fixed implementation time.

EzMed provides extensive inquiry and reporting capabilities and business process configurations to facilitate compliance with current Good Manufacturing Practices and regulatory requirements from the FDA. Standard business processes within the software support compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory requirements. Validation of the installed system is facilitated with templates of the most commonly used validation documents.

EzMed can be extended with EzCommerce Suite, an e-business solution that consists of pre-built, individually deployable Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) based business applications. EzCommerce integrates directly with SAP and legacy systems to encapsulate business objects and processes needed for customer interaction, catalog aggregation, customer self-service, supplier interaction, vendor self-service, collaborative commerce and business partner and user administration. FAO