CB Medical Inc.
CB Medical Inc.
CB Medical Inc. is an Alberta-based distributor specializing in the supply of healthcare products and services to the special-needs community. Three years ago, the company wanted to retire its disparate legacy applications and integrate its customer service and invoicing processes. By implementing the SAP Business One application, CB Medical synchronized and automated a number of manual processes, improved data accuracy, and increased workforce efficiency.
As a provider of healthcare-related products and services to the special needs community, delivering superior customer service is important to Alberta, Canada-based CB Medical. The company’s four-person customer billing department processed anywhere from 30 to 50 orders per day. Because CB Medical was relying on disparate legacy software applications, servicing customers and preparing invoices was highly inefficient. Some of the items CB Medical sells are eligible for partial or full reimbursement from the provincial government. So the agents had to track patient purchases, determine eligibility, and calculate the correct subsidy in Excel and then cut and paste information into QuickBooks to prepare invoices – one for the customer and one for the government.
“It was a time-consuming process,” says Craig Bean, owner of CB Medical. “Plus there was a high margin of error because our agents had to rekey customer information into different applications.” The company wanted to adopt an enterprise resource planning solution that would integrate and automate these processes, with better network security and centralized master data. The company also wanted to be sure the solution supported batch processing to further streamline its invoicing processes.
CB Medical selected Coastal Range Systems for the implementation where we used our Accelerated Implementation Methodology to help keep costs and time to a minimum. Craig Bean was instrumental in the implementation, influencing the customization and performing testing. During this time, the company’s customer service agents received extensive hands-on training. “We set up trial and production databases,” Bean explains. “We mirrored our old processes for 30 days to make sure we were getting the same results.”
Optimizing Processes and Performance
By implementing SAP Business One, CB Medical has been able to retire its legacy applications, reducing and simplifying maintenance efforts. It has also adopted a scalable and secure solution that will support its current and future business needs. Perhaps most importantly, it has transformed its customer service processes. The software has synchronized and automated previously manual invoicing processes, increasing efficiency and improving customer service.
“We now have automated threshold alerts so we can notify customers in advance when they are approaching their reimbursement quota,” Bean adds. Centralized master data eliminates the need to rekey customer data and improves data accuracy, plus it allows for faster transaction time and greater system uptime. “Before, it would take up to five minutes to run customer reports. Now we can run reports in real-time,” Bean says.
Achieving Real Business Benefit
Improved customer service processes have translated to real business benefits for CB Medical. “We’ve grown by 25% and haven’t had to add to our staff, so our agents can now process more orders per day,” Bean explains. “Because everything is automated, we can prepare weekly invoices in about 2 minutes. It used to take our agents up to 8 hours and we were always a week behind.”
