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From best-selling business books to company boardrooms, executives
espouse the need for continuous improvement and corporate
"reinvention" to better serve customers. So executives are
continually recasting their companies in pursuit of higher
performance and greater profits. But some companies don't just
reshape the mold. They break it.
Toronto-based Waverley Glen Systems Ltd. (WGS) began life as a
distributor of specialty health care products and medical devices
such as patient mobility aids. But after 10 years of meeting
customer needs and building a successful track record, company
president Wim Van Voorst decided to focus Waverley Glen on a
single radical product.
"Our deep involvement in medical products markets revealed an
opportunity in the area of patient mobility," said Van Voorst. "It
was not a chance to simply grow our existing business, but rather
to restructure the company and to do business on an entirely new
level."
That was nearly three years ago, and so far Waverley Glen is
right on track, so to speak. Combining design, engineering and
manufacturing, along with marketing and sales and customer service
functions, Van Voorst focused on a single product called Ceiling
Lift.
Ceiling Lift operates along a ceiling-mounted track, thus
moving the mobility-impaired effortlessly from bed to bathtub or
toilet, or to an entirely different room.
"Virtually all the previous designs still place a physical
burden on the caregiver," explains Van Voorst. "Spouses of
homebound users are often injured simply trying to operate
existing mobility products. Imagine placing or retrieving a
200-pound family member into or from a bathtub." Even trained
caregivers in healthcare facilities suffer from repeated strain to
arms, shoulders, or backs, adds Van Voorst.
However, the decision that transformed Waverley Glen now
presents new challenges. The market is just catching on, says Van
Voorst, with sales exploding in his own Canadian territories.
Sales in the United States have not hit full stride, but in
Europe, where the Ceiling Lift technology was developed, growth is
strong.
Waverley Glen now faces the same dilemma as so many other
companies adopting radical change or entering high-growth markets:
how to manage the business internally in the face of extraordinary
external factors, such as old-line, entrenched suppliers, new
sales and distribution agreements, and import/export regulations,
to name just a few.
Les Molnar, Waverley Glen's head of information systems and
product support, said the company's executives were in strong
agreement on one key point: having access to data to make
mission-critical management decisions was a top priority.
"Moving from the distribution business to manufacturing
required a whole new information mindset," said Molnar. "Cost
accounting and materials resource planning, or MRP, for example,
became major areas of focus."
But new functions such as tracking raw materials cost and
work-in-process didn't go far enough. "While these systems
provided greater cost control, they were limited in their support
of strategic decision making," explains Molnar.
That's when he and others on Waverley Glen's management team
began to reassess the company's needs.
It was decided that the first priority was a system that would
provide Y2K compliance. "Next," said Molnar, "we needed a
decision-support tool that would allow managers to see deeper into
business data." At the same time, Waverley Glen Systems needed to
boost internal productivity with more efficient work processes,
information sharing, importing and exporting of data and
sophisticated reporting capabilities.
Molnar and his associates undertook a year-long search for the
solution. Molnar was already discussing various accounting
packages with Q-Inter Applications Inc., a local business solution
centre, when they proposed Navision Financials as a possible
solution. "We were very impressed with the initial Navision
demonstration as well as the feedback we received from one of our
large resellers who was already using the system," said Molnar.
According to Dawson Lane, president of Q-Inter, Waverley Glen
faced wide-ranging challenges. "Under its current system, it had
separate islands of information held by each department," said
Lane. "Cross-departmental integration of data had to be done
manually, which hindered productivity."
"In addition," said Lane, "Waverley Glen's product requires
serial number control, which means tracking different serial
numbers not only for each product, but right down to the component
level where FDA and other rules require traceability back to the
original supplier."
"During our client consultations, it became increasingly
apparent that Navision provided the best fit "out of the box" and
the flexibility to add additional value in the future", said Lane.
"Though it sells only a single product, it also sells an
envelope of available services," said Lane. "Waverley Glen's
business model is very similar to Q-Inter's," notes Lane; each
organization provides a complete solution that includes local
service, training, installation, design and customization. "That,
in turn, calls for adding capability such as instant data
retrieval for reviewing a customer's service history, to name one
example."
"Navision was the one solution that would allow future business
functionality to be seamlessly integrated into the existing system
in a timely and cost efficient manner" says Molnar.
Waverley Glen Systems' search included a review of a number of
other accounting and business management software packages.
According to Molnar, "Navision Financials compared light-years
ahead in terms of functions and capabilities."
The Navision features that impressed us most were its
drill-down and drill-across capabilities. We also liked its
filtering features and the ability to look at data from different
angles. And we found system navigation much easier with Navision
Financials."
With Navision Software as its clear choice, Waverley Glen
assembled an internal project team combining representatives from
all major departments, including manufacturing, sales and
marketing, accounting and finance as well as Molnar's MIS
department. Q-Inter assembled its own project team to work
directly with Waverley Glen's department managers.
"The Navision system was implemented within 30 days," said
Q-Inter's Lane. "And they are now beginning to see even more of
the true capabilities of the Navision solution."
"In short, Navision Financials and the team at Q-Inter have
given us the ability to manage our business in a more hands-on
manner," said Van Voorst. "And I know that we're already making
better business decisions as a result."
Waverley Glen managers are seeing numerous direct benefits
since the Navision launch. Among them are greater distribution and
processing of key data, improved staff productivity resulting from
the system's drill-down and data import/export features, and
greater ease in handling multiple currencies. According to Molnar,
even the ease of Navision's interface, with its Microsoft Windows
look and feel, speeds the transition to the new system.
Breaking the mold sometimes pays off. With a winning product, a
powerful enterprise business management system and global markets
to conquer, Waverley Glen is well positioned for the future.
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