Implanet builds an innovative business from scratch with SAP and IBM RFID

Established in 2007 and based in Bordeaux, France, Implanet is a fast-growing company that provides modern solutions to enable healthcare professionals to improve their productivity. For each country in which it operates, Implanet offers a carefully selected set of gold-standard surgical prostheses designed to meet the needs of the local healthcare system.

With a philosophy based around squeezing costs out of the supply chain, Implanet aims to ensure that its clients never need to make a trade-off between quality and cost. The company makes extensive use of automation in its warehouse and sales operations, keeping the cost of sale to a minimum while providing clients with direct, high-speed service.

Emmanuel Grenier, Head of Information Systems at Implanet, comments: “As a start-up, we needed to get to market as rapidly as possible. We set ourselves a limit of 12 months to become fully operational: selecting the products, designing the supply chain, building partnerships, gaining all the relevant certifications – and, not least, creating all the infrastructure to support the business.”

Innovative business model
Implanet aimed to have a unique market proposition: rather than focusing on technical innovation around products, it would use recognized ‘gold-standard’ implants and instead focus on supplying them as cost-efficiently as possible. In particular, Implanet wanted to create innovative IT services for its clients that would automate most order- and inventory-management processes, saving time and money on both sides. The planned services for clients would also include a full track-and-trace capability based on RFID tagging, helping them to meet EU regulations for the traceability of medical implants.

“Our business model required fewer intermediate layers and smaller sales teams, which meant that we could offer top-quality products at very competitive pricing and with value-add services for our clients,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “It was vital to select an ERP solution that we could implement within a very short timescale – to allow us as much time as possible to develop and refine our client-facing portal services.”

In addition to the speed of rollout, Implanet identified several additional criteria for its ERP solution. The planned global expansion made it vital to assure multi-language and multi-currency support, and Implanet wanted to work with a durable software vendor that focused entirely on a single ERP product – to assure the longevity of the solution.

“We wanted an ERP solution that could accompany us in our growth, and that was well-supported throughout the world,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “We also looked at what our clients and competitors were using – by matching them, we could facilitate future business and information exchange in our market sector. For all of these reasons, SAP Business All-in-One was absolutely the logical choice.”

Teaming for rapid roll-out
With a small internal team, Implanet needed an implementation partner that could provide intensive local support during the design and deployment of the ERP environment, with long-term global support as the business grew – and selected IBM Global Services.

“Implanet needed a true partner for the implementation and support of the SAP ERP application, because in many ways the value-add proposition of our business depends on it,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “IBM Global Services was clearly a company that could offer both the local and the global support, and could also help us with every aspect of the new architecture: the ERP system, the client portal and the RFID track-and-trace solution. IBM had significant competence in all three areas, and the ability to get very senior consultants on site at a moment’s notice.”

To support Implanet’s goal of extremely rapid deployment, IBM Global Services provided a pre-configured ERP solution, the IBM Express Consumer Product Solution for SAP Business All-in-One.

“This pre-configured solution implemented by IBM Global Services allowed us to achieve our objectives in terms of the speed of deployment,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “We completed the entire ERP program inside five months, including all the planning and design stages – this was thanks to the pre-configuration, which very closely matched our business requirements. The implementation phase for the SAP software itself took just 13 weeks.”

Prior to implementation, Implanet and IBM rigorously defined the functional specifications for the ERP environment, then designed and documented the planned workflows. The pre-configuration carried out by IBM, combined with the extensive planning and preparation, ensured an efficient implementation phase that came in under budget. In total, the solution was around 90 per cent preconfigured, and only minor modifications were required to meet the customer’s specific needs.

Emmanuel Grenier comments: “A vital success factor was having a team – composed of both Implanet and IBM employees – that clearly understood the different functional elements of our business and was able to accurately model them as workflows in the SAP application.”

Gaining a clear view of the business
IBM Global Services provided a number of detailed introductory sessions to demonstrate the SAP ERP application to Implanet employees, helping them get up to speed quickly. The company now runs virtually every business process through the SAP software.

“The major benefit of using IBM Express Consumer Product Solution for SAP Business All-in-One is that it gives us a global view of our inventory,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “Much of our stock is held on our clients’ sites, but we can manage it as if it were held in our own warehouse. In SAP ERP, everything is linked and integrated, so we can access consolidated information across finance, sales and inventory, giving us a real-time view of our business. And for all the benefits we have already achieved, we are still only just beginning to unlock the full potential of the SAP software.”

Fully integrated solution
After implementing the SAP software, IBM helped Implanet to develop both its client portal solution and the RFID tracking solution. Implanet uses IBM WebSphere Premises Server to handle the capture of RFID data from handheld terminals and integrate it with SAP Business All-in-One. The IBM WebSphere software drives automation in the Implanet warehouse: during order fulfillment, Rotomat carousels use RFID to present the correct products to warehouse staff based on order information held in SAP.

“IBM managed the implementation phase from start to finish across the ERP solution, the portal solution and the RFID solution, which is based on IBM WebSphere Premises Server,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “The IBM consultants were very impressive: they had perfect knowledge of the technical architecture of the SAP software and a high level of specialist knowledge within each functional module. Additionally, it was a significant advantage to have in IBM Global Services a single partner capable of handling all aspects of our technology stack.”

To create the RFID solution – which is also a key element of the track-and-trace application – Implanet worked with specialists from the IBM Sensor and Actuator Solutions unit and its center in IBM La Gaude.

“IBM has centers of excellence both in France and globally, so they can always quickly find a solution to whatever problem you might be facing,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “As a result, we never encountered any roadblocks during implementation.”

IBM Global Services and Implanet used SAP NetWeaver Portal as the basis for Implanet S.M.A.R.T. System (ISS), the innovative client-facing portal. ISS delivers tailored information from the back-end SAP ERP database directly to registered clients through a secure portal.

“The ISS solution powered by SAP Business All-in-One and SAP NetWeaver Portal allows us to deal automatically with repeat business, so we don’t need to employ armies of sales people to man the phones and re-key data provided by clients,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “This has delivered a significant gain in productivity both for us and for our clients, and enables us to maintain the rapid growth of our business without a corresponding rise in operational costs and staff numbers.”

Clients use ISS to manage their stocks of surgical implants and place orders online – and can set up automatic replenishment based on daily usage of implants. In addition, the Implanet portal provides a wealth of information aimed at surgeons, helping them to manage their surgical activity.

“Surgeons who use our portal can see how many prostheses they’ve inserted, for what types of pathology, for what kinds of patients, and so on,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “They can also track and trace all implants in full compliance with 2009 regulations from the European Union. The beauty of the solution is that everything is automatic and involves almost zero manual administration, because all the data we deliver to clients is sourced directly from the back-end SAP ERP database.”

Quality up, costs down
Thanks to the high quality of inventory information provided by the IBM and SAP solution, Implanet has been able to reduce the amount of stock held by its clients, and to refine inventory management to match client needs more precisely. On the client side, ISS offers a further significant benefits, as Emmanuel Grenier explains:

“Operating theatre managers typically spend nine hours a week managing stocks and suppliers, doing low-value tasks such as making phone calls to ensure that re-stocking will take place. Today, if one of our clients puts all his orders through ISS, we estimate that his administration time will be just one hour per week. Additionally, all the data relating to inventory and traceability is held in the same place, available for immediate access and analysis.”

Working with IBM Global Services to deploy SAP software and related portal and RFID technologies, Implanet successfully achieved its time-to-market goals and is now growing rapidly. The IBM solution has given the company a genuine competitive edge, enabling the delivery of high-quality medical products and services at low cost.

“Our experience of working with IBM Global Services and SAP was that there were no limits to what was possible,” says Emmanuel Grenier. “No-one ever said to us, ‘you can’t do that, because the software works like this.’ By contrast, the SAP software and the IBM services were completely open and flexible. Backed by the excellent implementation and support from IBM, the SAP solution has really become the backbone of the Implanet business.”