The Company: Best Theratronics
For more than 50 years, Best Theratronics has been manufacturing, marketing, selling and servicing external beam teletherapy machines — used in cancer treatments — and self-contained irradiators that are used in disease prevention and research. Acquired by TeamBest in early 2008, Best Theratronics is located in Ottawa, Ontario, and its employees are experts in manufacturing, engineering, design, radiation physics, dosimetry, worldwide logistics, sales, marketing and service. In addition to the facility in Ottawa, TeamBest has manufacturing facilities in the United States and France.
The Challenge: ERP Sustainability With A Lack of IT Infrastructure
When Theratronics was acquired in 2008, the division was left with no IT infrastructure — no server, application or IT staff. Says Ron Gilmour, Director of IT at Best Theratronics, “I was tasked with building an IT infrastructure for Best Theratronics in six months. It had to support current production as well as plans to double production in a few years time.”
Starting from the ground up, the team at Best Theratronics evaluated enterprise resource planning (ERP) options and the associated cost of servers and support staff. They were in search of a simplified implementation, quick deployment and turnkey management to support daily enterprise-wide operations in sales, production, logistics, services, purchasing, accounting and finance.
The Solution: QAD On Demand Enables Rapid Implementation with Continuous Production to Support Growth
With more than 20 years of experience using QAD applications, Gilmour’s proficiency with QAD software gave him the confidence to lobby for the implementation of what he felt was the ideal solution for Best Theratronics: QAD Enterprise Applications. “Other solutions would not support us as well as I knew QAD would in the areas of configured products and job shop manufacturing,” says Gilmour.
To meet the urgent need for an enterprise solution that would keep production up and allow for rapid growth in the coming years, Best Theratronics chose to implement QAD Enterprise Applications On Demand — QAD’s Software as a Service offering. QAD On Demand is a subscription-based application delivery model designed to reduce total cost of ownership and simplify applications management.
Best Theratronics deployed QAD On Demand, and the system was implemented quickly with no disruption to the business. Best Theratronics leveraged QAD’s process maps that contain pre-defined application and environment configurations for the life sciences industry.
“We now have an IT staff of one supporting 70-plus QAD software users. Our IT engineer’s job is not doing server and application maintenance — QAD On Demand does that well. I want my IT engineer to help users improve system utilization so they can use QAD Enterprise Applications and all of its in-depth functionality with improved precision and accuracy. Now, thanks to QAD On Demand, we’ve accomplished that,” says Gilmour.
Additionally, managing the delivery and performance of more than 200 suppliers to reduce lead time and inventory is another high priority for Best Theratronics. The robust QAD Supply Chain Portal helps the company add greater control and efficiency to its supply chain.
The Benefits: Less Overhead, Improved Operations and Compliance
Best Theratronics completed implementation of QAD On Demand in six months. QAD On Demand supports every operation within Best Theratronics. Says Gilmour, “For a manufacturing business like ours, the QAD solution is a giant step up from our existing system in terms of usability, functionality
and simplicity.”
QAD On Demand carries no overhead expense for Best Theratronics in terms of server and support resources. With a service level agreement of 99.5 percent application system availability and 24x7x365 user and technical support, QAD On Demand frees Best Theratronics’ IT engineer to focus on the imperative improvement of system utilization. This freedom further enables executives and decision makers to focus on the core business of manufacturing high-quality and reliable equipment for cancer treatment, which Best Theratronics boasts as its proud competitive advantages. The company is certified in both FDA current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and ISO 9000. Best Theratronics leverages QAD’s compliance solutions as it strives for excellence and continuous improvement in compliance and quality.
The reporting capabilities of QAD Enterprise Applications give Best Theratronics the intelligent data required to make well-informed business decisions. And 500-plus built-in key performance indicators in the operational metrics module provide an instant snapshot of the state of the business in a dashboard model.
“In order to reach our goal of providing affordable health care to more people, we are always looking for ways to increase efficiency and productivity without increasing resources and overhead costs,” says Gilmour.
To find out more about QAD On Demand, please visit www.qad.com/on-demand-software.