Fundación BADAN transforms Venezuelan healthcare with IBM and SAP

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Fundación Banco de Drogas Antineoplásicas (BADAN), is a privately owned non-profit organization whose objective is to improve healthcare in Venezuela by distributing cancer-inhibiting antineoplastins at the lowest possible prices.

Until 1999, the foundation operated from a single site in Caracas, but this made it difficult to distribute medication effectively to patients living in other parts of the country – especially those in remote or rural areas. To meet the needs of these patients, Fundación BADAN embarked on a program of nationwide expansion, and now operates 13 different branches across Venezuela.

“We have grown rapidly, and we are still growing,” explains Dr Evelyn Navarro, Marketing Manager at Fundación BADAN. “We are planning to open three more branches before the end of 2008, and we are working on upgrading the existing sites from simple sales offices to genuine patient service centers – which will be a huge step forward for cancer care in rural areas.”

However, this rapid growth has led to a number of challenges, not least for the IT department. Existing IT systems were designed for a small organization operating from a single location. Faced with the need to collect and process inventory data, human resources information, patient records and accounts from all the new branches, staff were overwhelmed by the administrative workload.

“Everything depended on the head office in Caracas, which was constantly jammed with paperwork,” say Carlos Silva, CIO at Fundación BADAN. “Our accountants had to organize and collate the financial data by hand from Excel spreadsheets – a process that could take up to 16 hours, due to the amount of time spent analyzing discrepancies between reports. These delays limited access to up-to-date information and made it difficult for management to make decisions rapidly.”

He continues: “It was too risky having such a shaky infrastructure. We needed to increase the automation of data processing, which meant that we had to integrate our systems. We decided to go back to the drawing board and design an entirely new infrastructure – and we chose IBM and SAP as the ideal partners to help us achieve this vision.”

Designing a solution

IBM Global Business Services worked closely with BADAN’s in-house team to design a solution based around the SAP for Retail solution portfolio. Starting with a detailed requirements-gathering exercise, the Global Business Services team used the Ascendant methodology to develop a blueprint for the implementation, outlining the methods, best practices and resources required to create a unified sales process for Fundación BADAN.

Scaleable Server Infrastructure

ISF Alpiz, an IBM Business Partner, helped BADAN implement a new hardware platform for the SAP software environment, consisting of three IBM System x3850 servers that handle the company’s production, quality assurance and development environments. Each server contains four dual-core Intel Xeon 7100 processors, and runs the company’s SAP applications, central instance and Microsoft SQL Server database under Microsoft Windows 2003.

The x3850 servers with IBM X-Architecture enable BADAN to benefit from the lower costs associated with industry-standard hardware and software, while delivering IBM mainframe-inspired technologies that enhance performance, availability, scalability, systems management, and power and cooling – providing a clear advantage over competitive platforms.

“We have around 100 Lotus Notes users and 100 users of SAP ERP, so although we are a relatively small organization, the demands on the hardware can be high, especially at month-end closing,” says Carlos Silva. “With their powerful dual-core Intel Xeon processors, the IBM System x3850 servers deliver the performance and scalability we need to meet the demands of our business, providing a reliable and cost-effective infrastructure for the growing SAP software environment.”

Integrated ERP and messaging

With the hardware implementation complete, IBM Global Business Services deployed the SAP for Retail solution portfolio, based on the SAP ERP application with financial accounting, controlling, sales and distribution, materials management and human capital management functionalities and SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence. The Global Business Services team trained the in-house staff on how to use and manage the new environment, and will also provide ongoing support and monitoring for the new solution.

IBM Global Business Services also integrated the SAP ERP applications with Lotus Notes & Domino 7. This integration provides a wealth of options to increase productivity and reduce manual workload, by allowing automated interaction between workflow processes embedded in Lotus Domino and the SAP applications. As one example, the SAP software can now automatically send payment notifications to vendors by merging payment data with recipient address details using the Lotus Domino template, with no need for human intervention.

“The integration between Lotus and SAP ERP is a great example of how IBM and SAP technologies can interoperate to deliver value,” says Carlos Silva. “The more we can automate, the lower our operational costs, and the more we can concentrate on our core business – delivering medicines to patients at the best possible price.”

Secure storage infrastructure

Storage is handled by IBM System Storage DS3200 and DS3400 disk systems, which are designed to provide a low-cost storage area network (SAN) infrastructure that enables small and mid-sized companies to benefit from the same levels of performance and reliability as larger enterprises. Utilizing a mixture of high-speed SAS and low-cost SATA disks, the DS3000 series helps BADAN achieve the right balance of cost-efficiency and performance for its storage environment.

“The DS3000 hardware is highly scalable, and the hot-swappable disk architecture enables us to respond quickly to changing storage needs,” says Carlos Silva. “Having a tiered storage strategy is an excellent way for BADAN to keep costs low without compromising on performance.”

BADAN uses IBM FlashCopy to take point-in-time copies of the entire environment and store them on the SAN, ensuring that even if there is an outage or hardware failure, the production systems can be rapidly and easily restored.

“We have found the IBM servers and storage hardware to be very reliable, but even so, no modern business can afford to leave anything to chance,” comments Carlos Silva. “FlashCopy gives us peace of mind, as we know that even if something does go wrong, we will be able to recover our data.”

Rapid implementation

The whole project took seven months from start to finish and went live in April 2006. Carlos Silva explains how BADAN was able to achieve such a rapid deployment:

“There was a total synergy between the IBM Global Business Services consultants and our in-house team, which helped us to deliver a fantastic solution in record time,” he says. “The IBM consultants really listened to our needs and responded well beyond our expectations. Thanks to their comprehensive knowledge-sharing and skills-transfer exercises, our team is now confident enough to manage the system without much external support.”

Reaping the benefits

With the new solution, all business data is held in a single repository, so there is no need for staff to collate data from spreadsheets manually. Month-end closing is now a largely automated process, saving workload for busy staff and providing accurate business data on sales, finances and inventory much more rapidly. As a result, BADAN is better able to forecast how much of each medication it will need – helping to optimize stock levels and deliver a more cost-efficient service to its customers.

“On the patient level, being able to process business data more quickly means that we can deliver our services faster and more efficiently, which is very important for a medical provider,” says Carlos Silva. “All the patient and doctor information used to be processed manually in a register – but with the SAP software everything is automated, from patient records to medicine stocks to locating doctors and patients. We have more granular control over the information and the processes, increasing overall productivity by around 25 per cent. Thanks to IBM and SAP, we are saving time, money and ultimately, lives.”

Evelyn Navarro concludes: “We now have an integrated system that connects all the regional branches to Caracas, helping us deliver information to our staff and services to our patients all over Venezuela. We can see close-up which patient is getting which treatment, and which doctors are available to help.

“With such a large pool of patients, time is money – and for a non-profit organization, efficiency is paramount. The combination of SAP software with IBM infrastructure and services has improved our processes and although we have not yet calculated the exact cost savings, we know that the implementation of SAP is helping us to make the most of our resources – which is very important, especially for a non-profit organization”