In a world of surgeries, knee replacements, MRIs and x-rays, medical technology specialist Zimmer has undertaken an SAP mobility project to make its salesforce more efficient, picking up a 2012 SAP Customer Award of Excellence for Best Run Innovation with partner Ciber in the process. Eleanor Reader reports.
Background
Zimmer is a world leader in orthopaedic and musculoskeletal health, providing joint replacement technologies to meet the needs of orthopaedic surgeons, who restore mobility and relieve the pain of arthritis and traumatic injuries. Headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana, Zimmer designs, develops, manufactures and markets orthopaedic reconstructive, spinal and trauma devices, dental implants, and related surgical products. With operations in more than 25 countries around the world and products sold in more than 100 countries, the company is currently in the midst of a mass SAP global rollout.
When the rollout began, Australia and New Zealand proved to be among the most progressive of the countries involved. As front-runners, the ANZ operation quickly came to the conclusion that in order to support their sales staff properly, they couldn’t rely on having a standard SAP front-end on a laptop connected to a wireless card to interact directly with the backend systems.
Instead the company developed a customised front-end screen for sales reps visiting doctors’ surgeries and hospitals, but unfortunately this solution did not live up to expectations.
Michael Niestroy, director of Australia and New Zealand, Ciber, says, “Zimmer found out that almost none of their reps were actually using it, so it was hugely inefficient.”
In a bid to overcome this issue and make the salesforce more efficient, Zimmer set its sights on an iPad solution, engaging Ciber as the implementation partner on the project.
The solution
The project, which kicked off in late November 2011 and went live in early February 2012, was focused on creating an iPad app that would allow Zimmer’s salesforce to track the stock they would need to take into hospitals to showcase to orthopaedic surgeons, ultimately making the whole process more efficient.
According to Niestroy, the challenge for Zimmer’s sales team was that around 90 per cent of the inventory they need day-to-day is always in the possession of surgeons who may need to use them for a patient’s surgery. This loss of control over inventory placed Zimmer in danger of losing significant amounts of money.
“For a knee or hip joint replacement, the challenge is that when the patient has the surgery done, the surgeon doesn’t know the size of the joint he is going to take, before he begins the operation,” Niestroy says. “For example, if a patient is scheduled to get a new knee joint, the doctor typically has five or six different sizes of a particular knee joint available, but only picks one to actually put into the patient.”
Providing the solution involved building one of the most complex apps ever seen in the marketplace, allowing Zimmer’s salesforce to check what components are in stock, and if out of stock, how soon items could be obtained. It tracks not only the skeletal components, but everything required for the operation, right down to the nails and screws.
The app contains details of all appointments, including contacts for doctors, surgeons, patients, addresses, what type of operation is being performed and when, and what products or materials are actually linked to each appointment.
“There are also links and online documentation available that shows, for example, the x-rays, the MRI scans, the documentation on how to implement a certain product and what supplements are needed,” Niestroy says.
The app was built for iOS devices utilising the SAP Sybase Unwired Platform as the Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) that provides online as well as offline integration with the backend SAP ERP system.
The implementation
While the implementation mostly ran smoothly, when Ciber installed the Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP), they quickly realised that their biggest challenge was the need to upgrade.
Having deployed the second release version of the software, additional functionality that was required for the Zimmer solution was being developed by Sybase more or less in parallel with the implementation. Updates and bug fixes were delivered in software patches as well as the 2.1 version of the solution.
Ciber worked with SAP and Sybase to obtain the latest patches for the solution, while Zimmer’s team undertook much of the development work on providing service calls and interfaces into SAP.
Being an early adopter of the SUP, particularly in the region, contributed to the need for patches to the solution.
“It was still very much in development, so some of the patches were probably more like mini-upgrades of the solution,” Niestroy says.
But the challenges didn’t stop there. The large volumes of data needed to initialise the devices weren’t easily transmitted wirelessly. The solution was to initialise all devices in-house, and then only supply updates to data wirelessly.
This meant that each device of the 40+ strong sales team within Zimmer had to be left with the IT team to have the app installed and the initial data load performed.
Business benefits
The iPad app solution for Zimmer has been a success for the business, with very positive feedback and a significant turnaround reported for the salesforce. The look and feel of the app has improved significantly, with probably the biggest tick of approval the fact that the salesforce is now using the app in their routine work.
“Because the device is online capable, the sales rep doesn’t have to worry about whether they are in a network cover area anymore,” Niestroy says.
There are also plans for Zimmer to roll out the solution across Asia.
This article was originally published in Inside SAP Summer 2012.
