Epicor’s Prophet 21® Inspires Grove Medical, Inc. to Go Beyond thier Expectations

Grove Medical Inc. began distributing medical supplies, equipment and services to meet the needs of the long-term care marketplace in 1988. The company has since grown to about 65 employees.

According to Chief Financial Officer Melissa Selig, a few years ago, Grove Medical had reached a point of success where new software was needed in order to continue as a company. “We knew for quite a while that we needed to implement new ERP software—we had had the same software for more than eight years.

Everything we had was a workaround, and we could not even tell what our true gross margins at the customer level were without a tremendous amount of manual work,” she states.

The Greenville, S.C., medical supply company went through a comprehensive search for an ERP partner that could provide everything they needed to expand and succeed. “Epicor won out for a few reasons; most importantly, the ability of the Prophet 21® system to handle the rebates that are so vital in our industry.

All of the other software programs we looked at would have needed to customize this piece for us, whereas Epicor already had it tested and ready to go. We receive rebates back from our vendors (reducing our cost of goods sold) to the tune of approximately 10 percent of our gross revenue, so having the software correctly set up to handle this is essential to our profitability,” says Selig.

Implementing Prophet 21 for Inventory Accuracy and Visibility
“The implementation went smoothly,” notes Selig. “Epicor was easy to work with through the whole process, and all of our timelines were met. We had the same people working with us throughout the process, and they understood our industry and our needs.”

Once Grove Medical began implementation of the Epicor software, inventory adjustments were reduced by 60 percent within six months. In addition, the last six months of 2010 (when the software was implemented) showed an 8.5 percent increase in company revenue, without any additional employees. The company also began capturing about 6 percent more on freight charges to their customers.

“In the past, we had a huge problem with back-order fulfillment. Open orders had no accountability or tracking system, and could sometimes be more than six months old. If you lost the sheet with the information, that was it,” notes Selig.

“Now, orders stay open for no more than one or two days. We have increased visibility to our orders and other information within the system, and this has improved our inventory levels and accuracy, credit and collection processes, financial statement preparation time, etc. It’s phenomenal just knowing where everything is within the order fulfillment process at any given time.”

Last but certainly not least, the company has seen increased customer satisfaction and order error reduction since switching to the new software.

Supporting Direct and Online Sales
Grove Medical has also taken advantage of Epicor’s Business Analyzer software program and B2B Web site management to advance their business to the next level.

“The business analyzer software allows us to forward daily e-mails to our sales reps with all kinds of information we never had previously,” says Selig. “It’s like an executive dashboard, and it ‘slices and dices’ our business information in all sorts of helpful ways.

It offers a level of visibility that did not exist for us before. We highlight low-margin customers and products, which allows us to drill down on the issues and address them immediately.”

The company uses the B2B program to maximize sales and opportunities. “We knew we needed some very important features that we did not have on our previous site, including the ability to order in different units of measure, provide formulary restrictions to our customers, parent/child visibility, etc.

Our Internet sales have increased 5 percent since we switched to using Epicor’s B2B site management,” Selig observes.

Customer Service to Rely On
In addition to the benefits of the software, Grove Medical appreciates the accessibility and expertise of Epicor’s consultants. “Epicor engages with the customer, and works with you one-on-one at all levels of the company. They are always willing to talk things through, and that collaboration has made a huge impact on our success,” says Selig.