Welch Allyn Success Story 

 Sage Accpac Boosts Welch Allyn Service to Industry Best  

Since 1915, Welch Allyn Inc. (www.welchallyn.com) has developed, sold and serviced innovative medical diagnostic and therapeutic devices, cardiac defibrillators, patient monitoring systems, and miniature precision lamps. Headquartered in New York State, USA, Welch Allyn employs more than 2,300 people around the world.   Welch Allyn’ Australian business was established in 1993 to distribute and service the company’s products throughout the Pacific. In recent years it has experienced dramatic  growth.  

Business Critical
Welch Allyn’s Service Department reputation in Australia depends on its ability to advise customers when their products are due for service, deliver on any warranty commitments, and service products quickly and effectively.  Financially, its success depends on its ability to monitor the cost of jobs, and tightly control stock and cashflow.  

Business Challenges
With rapid growth, Welch Allyn Australia’s internal systems had grown haphazardly, as many do. The service operations relied on a mix of Excel spreadsheets, File Maker and manual systems that had no access to the stable Sage Accpac ERP system used by Finance and Sales.  

Because the disconnected systems required re-keying of data by different departments, the activities were susceptible to human error.  Issues had arisen where jobs/parts had been lost and invoices had at times been missed or been entered incorrectly requiring invoice credits and reissues. Service personnel struggled to keep up-to-date with over 200 highly complex products, and new jobs were often held up as they ‘brained up’ on the product.  

As a result, the average repair days were higher than desired.  If a customer called to chase a service job, it wasn’t easy to identify it in the disparate systems and provide an accurate update. This was starting to impact upon the company’s reputation, with the company receiving increasing customer complaints.   “We were simply taking too long on service jobs,” said Mike Bryce, Welch Allyn’s Service and Regulatory Manager for Australia.

“Not only did this undermine customer satisfaction, but it meant we were missing revenue potential.”   With the service operation challenges defined, Welch Allyn called in specialist Sage financial and business systems provider, Acacia Business Systems, to help find a solution.

A Sage Business Choice
As Welch Allyn’s accounts team already successfully used Accpac ERP from Sage, Acacia helped the company establish this as the central business management system with access for all departments, and then integrated it with Service Manager from Sage’s development partner, Technisoft.   After a three month preparation, Acacia helped Welch Allyn activate a complete system transfer in the service department, which was billed a success overall. When any company changes their process there are challenges to overcome in the implementation. The Service Manager component was consistent in these challenges but most were overcome within 3 months.   “We would have been happy to book four jobs in the system on the first day, but we achieved 113. Accpac ERP is so easy to use and adapt. Everything we ask it to do, it does so well,” said Bryce.   “Acacia was instrumental in our success. They are professional to work with. We keep pushing them to the max with our deadlines, but they always come through for us.”  

Sage Benefits
The integrated Sage solution delivered immediate improvements to Welch Allyn’s service department.   Its Workflow capability means that at each stage of a service job’s life, procedure templates are delivered to a staff-member, who is immediately made accountable for the completion of that task and the job’s progression to the next stage.   The templates not only give the service personnel the refresher knowledge they need, but advise the part numbers involved and enable the automated ordering of those parts.  

The system is also mapping parts requirements to build up knowledge of stock demand, which is assisting with stock ordering. “As the system builds a picture of our usage, this is becoming more accurate and has dramatically reduced stock in-house while improving parts availability,” said Bryce.   Quality also improved, with the return rate on repairs down, and customer calls decreased. “When a customer calls us, we have immediate visibility of their job and can advise its status accurately,” said Bryce.  

Importantly, the Sage solution has helped Welch Allyn capture lost revenue, by capturing time and parts per job, and automatically dispatching accurate invoices. Stock error and related costs are also reduced.   Accpac ERP’s extensive reporting capabilities are providing strategic strength to the company.   Bryce said, “We provide real-time reports to a wide range of management levels, benefiting every level of decision-making.

For example, we report product failures directly to the US manufacturing facility, which they find an invaluable contribution to trend mapping, enabling them to knock any emerging problems on the head.”   “What Sage Accpac has done for our service division is phenomenal. As far as I’m concerned, Sage Accpac is the bees knees,” said Bryce.  

Welch Allyn is now looking to extend these benefits with the Service Manager Web Portal, so that staff offsite can access up-to-the-minute customer data.     

To contact Acacia Business Systems please visit http://www.abspl.com.au.