Challenges

• Replace a system that proved incapable of adequately tracking and managing the entire sales process—from order to delivery of the company’s specialized medical products—with an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to position the company for its planned growth
• Improve supply chain efficiency by meeting the data exchange requirements of customers that have an ERP system in place, allowing these customers to substantially optimize the medical supply purchasing process
• Ensure that the system does not release suppliers’ payments until it receives confirmation that the customer has, in fact, received the shipment—a previous glitch in direct shipment processing
• Enable the company to trace payments to suppliers and ensure cash collection from customers in a timely manner

Solutions

• Used Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 applications as a full-fledged distribution processing solution with enhanced supply chain efficiency and better control over pricing, resulting in lower logistics costs, higher profitability, and improved cash flow
• Worked with Oracle partner Alliance ERP Consulting, who designed and deployed the solution for various sites around South Africa, using a single instance, enabling Dinaledi Medical to access a centralized snapshot of the business at any time
• Optimized business process monitoring from order placement to delivery confirmation—imperative for medical device distribution—to overcome management and logistical challenges, such as ensuring order follow-ups on outstanding-customer and direct-shipment orders with vendors and to also ensure that returns that are processed for direct shipments are related to vendor returns to prevent overpayments on vendor accounts
• Achieved tighter control over suppliers, due to full, purchase-tracking capability, specifically for products sold on a direct-shipment basis, thus increasing control over the debtors’ book, reducing the number of queries on suppliers’ accounts, and improving cash flow
• Met the data exchange requirements of customers and distributors that have ERP systems in place—such as a company purchase-order intermediary who confirms orders are placed and shipped—to substantially improve logistics throughout the supply chain
• Enabled branch-level management of inventories, enabling each site to access accurate order status and inventory availability information to better serve customers in their regions
• Optimized inventory usage by enabling stock transfers between branches as opposed to buying more supplies and transporting the products to various sites
• Enhanced customer satisfaction with improved order accuracy, reduced fulfillment bottlenecks, and more on-time deliveries, leveraging preference profiling in sales order entry to allow for accurate shippable dates
• Optimized supply chain responsiveness, resulting in more accurate demand forecasting and order lead-time commitments, fewer configuration errors, less demand variability, and fewer items being out of stock
• Improved cash flow with fewer billing errors, backorders, and partial shipments, and faster revenue receipt and realization, bringing the debtors’ timeframe down from an approximate 90 days average to between 30 to 45 days
• Processed month-end closures within days of the end of the month, instead of weeks, enabling managers to respond more promptly to business challenges—such as budget variances on overheads and discrepancies in gross profits on various products sold—to ensure pricing is properly managed
• Minimized disruption to operations by completing the rollout of the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 applications—from contract signing to going live—in just 122 days

Why Oracle

Dinaledi Medical chose Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 primarily based on the strength of its ability to address the company's specific medical device distribution business needs, as well as its executive team’s prior experience and satisfaction with the system.

“JD Edwards EnterpriseOne fits our business requirements and business model perfectly,” said Chris Grobler, IT and operations, Dinaledi Medical. “We were looking for a scalable, cost-effective solution that we could implement quickly and easily, and Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne fit the bill.”

Partner

The implementation was managed by Alliance ERP Consulting, an Oracle Accelerate solution provider with extensive experience implementing JD Edwards EnterpriseOne modules for manufacturing, planning and execution, plant and equipment, distribution, and financial management.

“Alliance ERP Consulting displayed an in-depth understanding of our business requirements and provided consultants that have superior JD Edwards EnterpriseOne knowledge,” Grobler said. 

Resources

• More Success Stories About Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne