Completed ERP projects

Epicor Software Deutschland GmbH

Epicor Helps Turkish Subsidiary Cope with Global Reporting Demands

Customers

Diaverum

Completion

11.02.2004

Country

Germany

Branch

• Health Care

Description

Task description

Diaverum is one of the world’s leading providers of renal care and the largest independent service provider in Europe. Operations currently span 14 countries and serve a patient base of 16,000 individuals in more than 200 clinics. Diaverum entered the Turkish market in 2004 and now employs 380 people that work in 18 clinics spread across the whole country. Diaverum’s global presence means that they understand the healthcare systems, the patients and the particular circumstances that exist in each of these countries. They capture best practices, exchange experiences, and share learning derived from the entire global organization.

Local Accounting Challenges

One of the biggest challenges in Turkey is that the way of handling accounts and calculating tax is completely different to most other countries. Local accounting systems are designed to compute tax correctly but as a result can’t give managers access to business data in the same way as international accounting or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This creates a real challenge for global companies with presence in Turkey.

“As a global company our management team needs access to internationally recognized operational and financial data so that they can run the same reports for Turkey as for other countries,” says Bulent Firat, finance manager for Diaverum in Turkey. Firat explains: “When I started work for Diaverum the company was using a simple DOS-based system that was compliant with local accounting standards but it could not provide us with the business data that the global management team was asking for.”

Global System for Global Business

Diaverum’s head offices made the decision to change system and their choice fell on Epicor iScala ERP because of its international capabilities, its low total cost of ownership, and its proven implementation successes. “When we were first told that we were going to get a new, internationally recognized, system we were quite stressed,” remembers Firat. “We thought that we were going to get a complicated large system that would take us ages to learn but thankfully that wasn’t true. I know from past experience that a new system must be easy for accountants and financial staff to use, otherwise it won’t be successful. We were lucky because we started small by using one module, only the general accounting ledger with accounts payable, accounts receivables and fixed assets. This made it easy for us to get used to the new application and ways of working.” To make maintenance and upgrading easy, Diaverum’s servers are located in the headquarters so that the central IT department has easy access to the system.

Motivation Matters

Because of their old and inaccessible system the Turkish team was highly motivated to make a real change to the business. The team was newly recruited and ready for success. Firat explains: “The success of an ERP project often depends on how much a company wants it to work and how keen the users are about the change. Even if you implement the most comprehensive system available on the market, if the users aren’t motivated, it won’t be successful. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend, or how many consultants you hire, without motivation the project is doomed to fail. Here in Turkey, because we were so motivated, we adapted to the new system within just a couple of months.”

Epicor iScala is currently used by seven people in the accounting and finance department. Information is gathered from the field manually and entered into the system by the accounting department. “This is simply due to us not having enough qualified resources in the field,” says Firat. “The manual process of staff entering information onto time sheets and faxing or posting back to us works very well.”

Diaverum’s accounts payables and receivables are a straight forward process because its main customer is the Government. However, prior to using Epicor staff had to regularly check payment plans and orders manually. “It was a frustrating and time consuming process,” says Firat. “With Epicor, these tasks are now so much easier and faster to perform.”

Improved Business Decision Making

After implementing Epicor, Diaverum could also finally access the business data they required in order to make better decisions. “It’s not only helped me organise my accounts payables and receivables better, but we’ve also been able to keep more detailed and accurate records,” says Firat. “This means that we can run the exact reports that are needed for both local and global decision making. Epicor has helped us reach our accounting goals and the system now works perfectly.”

He concludes, “I would definitely recommend Epicor to other companies in similar industries. It is especially great for global companies because it’s so simple to extract detailed data for global business decision making.”