by gfcpartners | May 30, 2023 | Business, Manufacturing & Distribution, Medical Startup, Software Customization
The demand for medical supplies is ever-increasing; this was made especially evident during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, it is a field of opportunity, and tens of thousands of companies are catering to the needs of an industry generating over $450 billion in revenue annually.
Many have been in business for some time; with longevity comes legacy systems. Perhaps such software solutions served their needs well at the time, but with growth, tighter regulation, and increasing competition, those solutions fall far short of meeting today’s challenges.
This article will highlight two significant areas of difficulty for instrument and medical device manufacturers: Production Efficiency and Regulatory Compliance. Then, we’ll take a look at how Acumatica Manufacturing Edition has solutions for the pain points these companies experience.
Industry Challenges
Production Efficiency. With legacy systems, it is not hard to find inefficiencies, data silos, and bottlenecks in production. For example, many in this segment have not one, but multiple information systems that each provide functionality specific to one aspect of the overall operations of the company. Inevitably, the data overlaps between systems in areas such as customer profiles, job tracking, financial data, and more. This results, not only in duplicate data, but often unsynchronized information that is inaccurate and leads to mistakes. Because of this lack of integration, teams often devise error-prone manual processes, frequently in spreadsheets, for critical data interchange.
Other inefficiencies are found in the warehouse and on the shop floor. Often, there is hampered communication between administrative and production departments that impedes productivity or causes waste. Decision-makers lack insights into production activities that would help them make adjustments for greater profitability. What is more, as many medical products are composed of multiple parts in a kit, each with its own lot tracing data and expiration dates, inventory management becomes a very complex process that most legacy systems are not able to handle, leaving staff to devise more manual “solutions” to help them accomplish their work.
Regulatory Compliance. Since the quality of their products affects not only their reputation, but the lives of those who will use them, medical manufacturers are facing a wave of new government and industry regulations. GDPR, SOC Type 1 & 2, PCI DSS, and many other standards require strict recordkeeping to ensure compliance. Since such regulations are often changing, it can be a real challenge to update legacy solutions so medical manufacturers can conform to regulatory adjustments.
How Acumatica Helps Instrument and Medical Device Manufacturers Meet Those Challenges
Acumatica is a modern, cloud-based ERP solution that has been built from the ground up on a future-proof platform, providing powerful solutions for today’s challenges and the flexibility to adjust for future changes and growth. What are some of the features that benefit medical device manufacturers?
A Centralized Data Source. Storing all financial, administrative, and production-related data in one system allows you unparalleled visibility into your operations, along with dashboards showing you, at a glance, the health of your business. System alerts keep everyone on track, and reporting is done on clean, accurate, and up-to-date data on which you can rely to drive your business decisions.
A Single Solution. Acumatica has modules to cover the needs of every aspect of your business. Manufacturing, inventory, distribution, field service, CRM, and more, are available in a suite that works together seamlessly.
Easy Integrations and Customizations. Acumatica was made to be extensible. If you have a specialized need that the base product doesn’t cover, it has an extensive API to integrate other products, such as e-commerce or tax-compliance solutions. What is more, it is built with industry-standard technologies (C# and .NET) so developers are not hard to find, nor exorbitantly priced.
Scalability. Built on cloud technology, Acumatica is a solution that grows with you, adjusting to higher volumes as you grow without increasing employee headcount. Also, with unlimited users, you are able to provide access to anyone that needs it without breaking the bank.
Accessibility. Your Acumatica instance is available 24/7, 365 days a year, from any device, anywhere there is an Internet connection. This ensures business continuity and enables executives and representatives to be on the go and yet still on top of daily operations.
Security. Administrative controls in Acumatica give you fine-grained control over user access to the system and critical business data. You can rest assured that with multiple layers of security and data integrity, your information will be safe, secure, and compliant with industry and government regulations.
Industry-Specific. Acumatica understands the needs of the Manufacturing segment and provides the needed functionality so that even instrument and medical device manufacturers will be hard-pressed to find something lacking.
Warehouse Management. The job isn’t done when the product rolls off the line; warehousing and kit assembly are other critical and complex processes that require an industrial-strength ERP to keep them running smoothly. Pick-Pack-Ship operations are automated, dashboards display critical KPIs, and inventory data is easily accessed and analyzed to ensure production processes stay in motion.
How Can You Benefit from Acumatica in Your Organization?
The above list is only a select few features that instrument and medical device manufacturers enjoy. There are so many more, including product lifecycle management, quality assurance controls, change control, material planning, scheduling, product configuration and estimating, kitting with disassembly, lot and serial tracking, and much more.
Would you like to more closely examine Acumatica’s feature set, and compare it with your needs? Contact us today and get expert guidance from professionals that know your industry and have implemented Acumatica for many businesses like yours.
