Caretua selects Exact Online for full traceability, CRM and accounting

Quick Facts

Supply and service healthcare equipment and products

Headquartered : Co Dublin

Employees : 17

Sales : €2  million

 

Business Challenge

Caretua needed to move to an ERP system that was cloud based, thus allowing for employees to access the system from anywhere. The ERP system needed to track the products it dispatched to its customers, for warranty status or in the event of a supplier recall. The system needed to allow for linking of documents (e.g. supplier invoices, statements, delivery dockets etc) to transactions on the ERP so as to retain a “paperless office” and to enable easy analysis/review. There was a need to produce management accounts directly from the ERP system.

 

Results

• All medical equipment sold is fully traceable with Serial Numbers matched to despatch notes;
• Documentation is now linked to transactions in the ERP system for easier review and retrieval;
• The search functionality is very powerful enabling information to be retrieved quickly and easily;
• Vat reports from the system provide the details for Vat Returns;
• Sales analysis reporting provides the information on Field Customer Support Personnel performance, individual item sales, item group sales and sales by county/customer type;
• Stock reporting gives a real time count of stock on hand by warehouse and down to shelf/bin location
• Field Customer Support Personnel and Field Service Technicians can check stock availability using the App, thus reducing the number of calls back to the office;
• Customers can drill down to web based field service reports directly from a link on the Sales invoice;
• Management reports on a weekly and monthly basis are facilitated by the system;

 

Client Profile

Caretua supply and service healthcare equipment and products to both the Irish & UK Healthcare Sector and the general public such as profiling hospital beds, pressure relief mattresses, patient lifting equipment; disabled baths, showering equipment, falls monitoring systems, bedpan washers and much more. Caretua are in operation since 2006 and offer unbeatable customer service while providing top quality healthcare equipment.

Caretua’s initial RFT was for a cloud accounting and stock control solution at an affordable price. After reviewing the marketplace and after consultation with Synergy Network Ltd , it became clear that ExactOnline could deliver on its many requirements and act as a driver for the expansion of the business.

Solution

Exact Online for Wholesale Distribution is a comprehensive business and accountancy solution for companies of all sizes. Available in-cloud, it automates routine administration tasks and improves insight into line-of-business processes to help managers make better strategic decisions. It is designed to help companies move from a pen-and-paper mentality to a fully-automated, digital-first business strategy.

According to Finance Manager at Caretua, Damian Cullen

Our company is expanding all the time and ExactOnline is an integral part of the process. In 2021, businesses needed to be able to ensure their employees are fully productive and connected wherever they are, and whatever device they’re using. The benefits of a cloud solution came to the fore. especially during the Covid pandemic. As we add a new field customer support personnel, field service technicians and or administration personnel, we add them as a user on ExactOnline. All of our staff use the system, whether it is a field service technician using the App to check the availability of stock or an administrator processing quotes and orders. The fact that everyone is using one integrated system means that all our business processes work smoothly and with minimal manual intervention.

Damian continued,

The experience of moving to Exact was straight forward. We used a reseller called Synergy Network Ltd who imported our data for us from our previous solution, provided excellent training on how to use the new platform and had us up and running within a few weeks. For anyone considering moving to Exact, our advice would be – do it!  Apart from all the improvements to our business processes, Exact gave us all the functionality we needed but at a fraction of the price from other software companies.

With Exact in place, Caretua gains multiple benefits, including:

• Flexible access to key documentation
• Up-to-date insight into stock whereabouts and levels
• Customisable screens to allow individual departments to focus in on pertinent data
• Stock database available to engineers on the road
• Management reports by Cost Centre
• All staff working off the same platform

Value

With ExactOnline, Caretua has been able to reduce the administration load for engineers in the field substantially. It has improved the efficiency of its back-office teams and increased its ability to react flexibly to stock requests from both customers and suppliers.

It understands where all of its stock is before and after a sale, as well as better management of the sales process for field customer support personnel. Caretua’s customer relationship management, order tracking, debt collection and margin analysis are faster, more efficient and more flexible with Exact.

• Total traceability of all orders
• Easily accessible in the cloud from any device
• Customer filters for quick invoice retrieval
• All order data and stock information aggregated in one place

Looking to the Future

One year after implementing ExactOnline, Caretua have plans for enhancing its use by:

1. Implementing a direct link from the Caretua website so that orders placed by customers flow directly into the ExactOnline system thereby cutting down on manual entry and improving customer service;
2. Implementation of a bar coding system for order processing and stock control

We continue to use Synergy Network for implementing major enhancements in the system.