Durbin PLC
With over 45-years' experience and 20,000 products,
Durbin Plc is one of the country's leading suppliers of medical
products. Starting out as traditional chemists, the company now
exports branded and generic pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and
consumable supplies to 180 countries worldwide. Its many customers
include wholesalers, hospitals, chemists and
charities.
A flexible solution
Durbin chose the Access Supply Chain solution to help them
achieve their aim of increasing annual turnover to £20m. The
decision was made after an extensive review of the market.
"We looked at Sage but it just wasn't flexible enough," says
Commercial Manager Philip O'Reilly. In particular, the true multi-currency
processing offered by Access was excellent, compared with Sage,
which needed different customer accounts for each currency.
We chose Access Supply Chain
because of the excellent flexibility of the software itself, and
the quality of accompanying implementation and support. We received
excellent help from Access and they even wrote special utilities to
help us input data that was held in a multitude of formats," says
Philip.
Strong sales order processing
software is essential for Durbin, which advertises that its
team of health and logistics personnel can arrange all
pharmaceutical requirements with just one phone call, fax or
email.
The challenges are immense. In addition to the strict export
requirements of the UK, Durbin must also conform to the import
requirements of over 150 different countries and comply with
Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and
World Health Organisation (WHO) regulations on the storage and
delivery of hazardous or fragile medicines.
"Our solution allows us to keep an accurate view of our
stocks and monitor their expiry dates which are so crucial to our
business." Philip O'Reilly
Commercial Manager
Meeting the challenge
Philip is confident in the knowledge that his Access solution
meets these challenges. "It allows us to keep an accurate view of
our stocks and monitor their expiry dates which are so crucial to
our business.
He continues: "In addition to detailed stock requirements,
Access Supply Chain provides all the functionality needed to plan
and control the progress of complex orders, and to handle purchase
and sales order processing. It also provides specific modules for
resource planning, time recording, job costing and web-based order
processing." The seamless connection between the specialised
distribution (or 'front end') parts of the solution and the core
('back office') financials is particularly important. Any business
transaction that impacts on the financials is automatically updated
into all the relevant ledgers; conversely, ledger information
(such as customer credit status) is instantly available to the
system's commercial modules, including the dedicated sales order
processing screens.
Entering information just once and allowing it to flow around
the business eliminates all the time, effort and errors associated
with re- keying. At the same time, by collating financial data from
across the company, Durbin also gains maximum benefit from the
power, security and reporting capacity of a SQL Server
database.
The second part of our director's guide is designed to help you improve the usefulness of your chosen ERP solution. Taking a comprehensive look at the functionality that's on offer, it breaks down key operational areas into clear, easy-to-read sections so that you can make an informed assessment of the specific features that will benefit you.
Find out more »
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