Médecine & Hygiène
Case Study: Medecine & Hygiene
Industry: Publishing
Location: Geneva, Switzerland
About The Company
Medecine & Hygiène, established in 1943, is a Geneva-based association of medical doctors, dentists and pharmacists that publishes a variety of books and magazines for more than 10,000 subscribers. The diversified company also runs specialized publishing companies for the arts, literature and scientific fields.
CHALLENGE
Médecine & Hygiène’s accounting, subscriptions and renewals, advertising sales, book production, inventory management and author royalty processes were growing increasingly difficult to manage. The company improved its business practices over time, but its highly customized legacy systems lagged behind its current needs. For example, subscriptions for publications were entered online, but required time-consuming and cumbersome manual data entry across different systems to complete invoicing and cash collections.
The company wanted an integrated, cost effective ERP and CRM solution that could meet their short and longterm functional and technical requirements. In the short term, Médecine & Hygiène wanted to integrate its ecommerce ordering capability with administrative function support. Understanding that their requirements would continue to evolve, the company valued solutions that were flexible and upgradeable. Long-term success with their ERP solution was strongly related to how easily and cost effectively they could adapt it to their future business requirements. “One of our main requirements was the ability to customize an ERP solution to directly fit our needs,” said Mireille Duchoud, head of financing and human resources with Médecine & Hygiène. “Although our old system was sorely outdated, we had a number of specific functions we wanted to maintain. Any new system that didn’t allow for that wasn’t a good fit for us.” Médecine & Hygiène preferred an open source solution to build on the positive results and cost advantages they achieved with previously deployed open source products.
With the help of dotBase, an open source services company and Compiere Authorized Partner, Médecine & Hygiène began evaluating a number of ERP systems that could meet their flexibility and customization needs, while unifying business processes and information across their multiple business lines. Many of the products they evaluated could handle some aspects of their business, such as subscriptions, but could not solve the entire scope of their needs without significant customization.
SOLUTION
Médecine & Hygiène selected Compiere’s open source ERP and CRM solution because it met a broad range of requirements out-of the- box and offered powerful customization capabilities. Compiere stood apart from the other solutions by providing Médecine & Hygiène with a flexible open source foundation. Working with dotBase, Médecine & Hygiène implemented a Compiere solution tailored to their requirements. In addition to their business-specific customizations, dotBase delivered a solution that was fully localized for Swiss French, and supported country-specific electronic invoicing, cash management, tax laws and accounting rules. Compiere’s Model driven Application Platform had a strong impact on Médecine & Hygiène’s ability to implement company specific customizations. The platform allowed dotBase’s functional experts to collaborate with company management and users to take an iterative approach to customizing the solution, a significant advantage over traditional ERP system deployments. Because of Compiere’s unique architecture, Médecine & Hygiène’s specific customizations would not require an expensive “re-install” and migration of the software for each successive product upgrade.
For example, dotBase developed a custom advertising invoicing process, allowing Médecine & Hygiène to account for different billing situations based on each customer. The customized functionality and business rules were developed and stored in the Compiere data dictionary, eliminating the traditional problems associated with retrofitting customizations as part of each future upgrade. “Compiere was the only ERP solution we found that supports the growth and evolution of all facets of our business,” Duchoud said.
“It allows us to create the specific business processes and rules we need to grow our subscription base, and to manage all of the tasks at hand. dotBase provided valuable product support and insight during the entire planning and implementation process.”
