“We receive between 2000-2500 orders a day which are split into different picking slips and dispatch notes. Without SYSPRO, we’d need a team to capture all those orders. Now that the entire system is online, however, it takes a few seconds,” Done says.
“For us, there’s no such thing as discrepancies between statements and invoices. At the end of each month, statements are run automatically and emailed to customers. We don’t check those simple things because we have so much faith in SYSPRO.”
– Rishen Done, IT Manager, Qestmed.
Adding value through continuous service
SYSPRO processes orders continuously, which means that even though it keeps standard office hours, Qestmed is online 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is critical in its industry, where hospitals are operational 24/7 and delays in treatments and medication are not acceptable.
“In our world, a single order can have multiple rules and routines,” Done says. “SYSPRO tracks orders, checks the warehouses for available stock and processes each order based on the specific rules for that order. We have different warehouses within one environment, and SYSPRO gives us the flexibility to manage each warehouse according to its particular functionality and rules.”
Another advantage is that SYSPRO has the capacity to keep pace with Qestmed’s significant growth. The scalability of the solution means that the company is not limited to 20,000 or 100,000 products as the entire operation has been digitized and is monitored around the clock.
“We don’t have limitations in our ERP system – SYSPRO can scale to meet our orders regardless of changes in customer demand and market trends. Also, we don’t have to shut everything down to add a new warehouse or supplier. Our distributors can see the value add of being online 24/7 and it’s also an attractive proposition for our customer base,” Done says.
In addition, Qestmed has benefited from the ease of customization in SYSPRO, particularly in areas such as logistics fees and consignment supplies.
“There is no off-the-shelf system for the pharmaceutical environment and ours is a complex operation with different requirements for the various warehouses,” Done says. “We are able to customize SYSPRO to our specific environment, whereas most other systems are hardcoded, rigid and lack the facility to add fields and data.”
The road ahead
Qestmed plans to deploy SYSPRO’s web user interface to enable staff to move towards using phones and tablets for activities such as doing stocktakes and answering customer queries while they’re out on the road.
“Having a web user interface is the future, and so is the ZAP Data Hub, a data warehouse automation tool which integrates into SYSPRO,” Done says. “One of our strategic objectives is to be more precise on ordering and stock availability, so reporting and dashboards are critical.”
