| Major
NHS Supplier
Headquartered in France, the Vygon group designs, manufactures and
markets more than 100 million products in 110 countries, all in accordance
with ISO 9001 and EN 46001 standards. Vygon has a reputation for quality
and reliability in the field of single-use medical and surgical products.
Continuous technological and market research, implementation of latest
technology at all levels, dedication to customers satisfaction and
high quality standards constitute key factors in Vygon's growth.
The e-challenge
Vygon UK, the UK subsidiary of the Vygon Group, wanted to provide
their customers - who include NHS Logistics, private and public UK
hospital trusts and other health service organisations - with the
ability to place their orders electronically. In subsequent phases,
the aim was to streamline the ordering process from order placement
through to invoicing.
Sue Power, Finance & IT Manager, said, “Getting medical
equipment needed by patients and doctors to them as quickly as possible
is vital to help reduce waiting times. The NHS has been in the forefront
of the government initiative to make better use of the Internet, and
we wanted to do our bit to support them.”
Sue Power, continued, “We have substantial back-office and
stock management systems already but wanted to give our clients an
online capability. After the recent reorganisation of the NHS, many
more bodies, such as Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) Cottage hospitals,
Area Health Trusts all need to place orders for medical supplies.
We wanted to make it easier for them to place their orders, and easier
for us to service them more efficiently. And in today’s financial
climate especially in the NHS, keeping costs down is more vital than
ever.”
Phase 1
Phase 1 of the project had to meet the following key performance
criteria:
· Working practice had to be improved by providing a central
database to ensure easy access to the most current electronic catalogue.
· Customers should be able simply to view product lines
on-line, or to download an electronic catalogue for input on to
their own systems.
· Best practice had to be enforced for improved order quality
to reduce the cost of managing orders in error.
· Customers should be provided with a number of approved
ways to select how they placed orders with Vygon:
- By ordering on-line via the new Vygon UK website
- by secure XML file transfer over the internet
- by faxing, emailing or posting an order on a predefined order
form downloaded from the web site
· Sales Administration required the ability to process and
validate incoming orders quickly by viewing and amending incoming
orders via a web Browser before presentation for input to the warehousing
system (GEAC System 21).
· Vygon Management required the ability to analyse the Orders
database for reporting purposes.
Vygon UK chose Corexe as their partner as a result of their experience,
proven track record and the acknowledged added value provided by JayCore™,
a Java based RAD tool, developed in-house.
“When we looked at the options, most of them were expensive,
took a long time to go into production and tied up a lot of resource
from our side.”
Sue continues, “Corexe’s solution provides a fast, cost-effective
implementation that will enable all our clients to order what they
want, in a way which suits them best, without having to change their
working practices. The flexibility of the solution was a major selling
factor for us as our clients don’t all want to order in the
same way. Some want to order from an online catalogue, others via
Web pages or email and some by file transfer. It is vital for us to
enable our clients to carry on doing things in a way that fits in
with their ways of working. Since its delivery, Phase 1 has been in
constant use…………….and has shown itself
to be reliable and easy to use”.
David Quarterman, Chairman of Corexe, commented, “Vygon UK
are similar to many companies in that they outsource their IT development.
The reason for this is simple. Developing robust applications, especially
J2EE applications, requires expensive skills and is very time consuming.
JayCore™, however, not only allows Corexe to provide a quality
solution on a proven and scalable J2EE platform but also gives Vygon
the option of moving their application development in-house at a later
date if they wish without the need to employ expensive personnel.”
Phase 2
As a result of the successful development and implementation of Phase
1 of the project, which was delivered within budget and on time, Corexe
were invited to develop Phase 2 of the project.
Sue Power concludes, “The Corexe team has more than fulfilled
its promise of reducing both time and cost of major Internet development
by a very significant factor. It has also given us the confidence
to proceed rapidly to the next phase of development to link into our
back office systems, a task that I am confident Corexe will make short
work of”
The successful delivery of Phase 2 would enable Vygon to streamline
the passing of orders received via the routes provided in Phase 1
(web, XML, email) to the back-end warehousing system (GEAC System
21) with minimal effort.
As part of phase 2, again delivered to time and on budget, functionality
was provided to:
· Validate received orders in real time directly against
S21. This provided instant warnings of low stock levels, invalid
product information etc.
· Process those validated orders directly to System 21 with
the click of a single button.
· Create and deliver electronic invoices to those customers
requesting them.
For the integration between the two disparate systems (a J2EE front
end and an AS/400 based warehousing system), Corexe chose Jacada.
By utilizing JayCore’s Custom Task feature, the standard functionality
of JayCore was extended to integrate seamlessly with Jacada, so providing
a bridge between the two systems.
The Vygon experience demonstrates clearly what can be achieved with
a winning combination of technical expertise, project management experience
and a creative developer-customer partnership based on mutual trust.
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