Completed ERP projects

Epicor Software Deutschland GmbH

Uniting Church Homes Gains Increased Operational Visibility and Control with Epicor

Customers

Uniting Church Homes

Completion

01.02.2000

Country

Germany

Branch

• Health Care

Description

Task description

Uniting Church Homes (UCH) is a charitable organisation that delivers high quality services in residential facilities and in people’s homes across the state of Western Australia. Currently, UCH provides services to over 4,000 people, employs more than 1,400 staff and receives support from 500 volunteers. The organisation offers aged care, community care and support services in the following areas:

• Community Care: including Community Aged Care Packages (CACPs), Extended Aged Care in Homes (EACH), Therapy Services and Home and Community Care (HACC) services
• Residential Care : Dementia specific, high care, low care and respite care
• Independent Living and Serviced units
• Respite Care: Dedicated respite services

In total, UCH operates 56 business sites, including 20 aged care facilities and 13 independent living villages.

The Challenge

As a major player in the aged care market in Western Australia, UCH wanted to have the correct technology platforms in place to manage growth and effectively cater for the changing needs of the business. As part of that objective, having previously used a paper-based system to process all of its financial requirements including the storage of data pertaining to individual suppliers, requisitions and purchase orders, the company wanted to drive greater efficiencies, improve its existing practices and gain greater visibility for management by moving to a fully automated electronic system.

The Solution

UCH wanted to replace its legacy finance system as it was simply not equipped to handle the changing needs of the business or its continued growth. After a tightly run selection process, the organisation identified Epicor Software’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform as the one most able to fit its goal of deploying a strong, highly functional and low total cost of ownership financial and client/resident management platform. UCH also implemented Epicor Advanced Requisitions Management (ARM) – a core element within Epicor’s broader product suite – with a view to improving its purchasing processes. ARM is an online requisition management and workflow solution that delivers full-cycle procurement functionality securely to the desktop through an individual user’s web browser.

UCH works with Precise Business Solutions, an Epicor Alliance Partner, to manage and continually enhance their enterprise information system. Commenting on his engagement with Precise Business Solutions, David Fisher said, “Precise Business Solutions demonstrated its ability to implement the system with their formal and rigorous methodology during the demos and various meetings.”

UCH also uses Epicor Software’s Senior Living Solution (SLS) as it was particularly important that there was ease of integration between the company’s financial and resident management solutions.

The Result

Since implementing Epicor’s ERP platform, and more specifically as a result leveraging the full capabilities of the ARM solution, UCH has achieved a number of significant business benefits.
Initially a secondary goal of the project, David Fisher describes ARM as something of a ‘surprise packet’ in terms of the extent of those benefits. The organisation has completely changed both practice and culture with its procurement processes, gaining full control of and increased visibility to all of the more than 2,500 suppliers associated with the business. In fact, it has significantly rationalised the number of vendors and greatly improved the relationships it has with its key providers of capital equipment, operational supplies and services. Not only can UCH better assess the status of various suppliers, it can also forecast more effectively. With so much more accurate data available in real-time, at its disposal, UCH knows ahead of time what each facility needs and the various quantities that are required, and so can negotiate discounted rates with suppliers.

In addition, if there is a need to change or replace an existing supplier at short notice, UCH can execute such a change within one day because the flexibility and robust nature of Epicor’s ERP suite ensures that all data entered is integrated into the system accurately and in real-time. All this is achieved while improving visibility to commitments, exercising authorisation levels effectively and, ultimately, making life easier for end users.

In terms of capital expenditure, operational supplies and R&M, UCH believes it saved well in excess of $1 million throughout the 09/10 financial year to date because of the greater control the ARM solution has afforded them in terms of purchasing.

“ARM enables us to keep tight control over capital and operational expenditure. More importantly it has improved process efficiencies, optimised inventory levels, and reduced costs right across our organisation.”

In addition to the greater controls UCH has achieved throughout its purchasing processes, it no longer has to carry out accruals at month-end. Managers can also now access detailed information on history and trends for specific line items, cost categories, and individual people on a daily basis. The ARM solution is highly intuitive and helps detect and prevent errors that were being routinely made prior to its implementation.

David Fisher provides a simple example. “One of our facilities hadn’t purchased any toilet roll to date this year, however its costs for office supplies were particularly high. On further investigation it transpired that it was entering the wrong code for paper, and thanks to the ARM solution he was able to identify this error almost immediately.

Since UCH has gone live with Epicor’s ARM solution, it has raised more than 25,000 purchase orders. Had they not implemented the solution, the organisation feels that it would not have the resources or the capacity to control this volume.

UCH believes that its decision to move purchasing and requisition processes onto an electronic system has generated innumerable benefits through its ease of integration with other applications and access to real-time data on an ongoing basis.

About Precise Business Solutions

Precise is a leading provider of business software solutions and associated services to the Australian and international marketplace. A wholly owned WA company, Precise has been dedicated to helping businesses grow, improve efficiency and increase profitability. In business since 1989, Precise has implemented more than 160 clients and employs over 35 staff. Over the last 21 years Precise has assisted organisations to maximise the competitive advantage Epicor solutions bring. Precise continues to be a market leader in implementation, support and services across the mid market. Partnering with our customers to help them be the best they can be will always be our primary focus. We look forward to delivering market leading software and services into the future.