Eakin Healthcare

All of its manufacturing takes place in the UK with sites in Comber (NI), Coleraine (NI) and Cardiff (Wales). Its products and services are available in over 60 countries internationally and has now over 750 employees spanning 9 countries with sites and subsidiaries in the UK, France, Japan, Germany, and the Benelux region.

The company was established in 1973 by Tom Eakin, a pharmacist in Dundonald, located just outside Belfast. Eakin Healthcare has achieved global expansion over its 50 years, both organically and through acquisitions.

In 2015, Inixion was chosen to implement Sage X3 at the Pelican Healthcare site in Cardiff. Since then, Inixion has extended the implementation of Sage X3 to other Eakin Healthcare sites in Northern Ireland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Integration of all group companies into a single system

Due to the continued growth of Eakin Healthcare, it became necessary to streamline its business. With Sage X3 already in use within Eakin Surgical, Pelican Healthcare, and Respond Healthcare based in Cardiff, it was decided that the system needed to be rolled out to all other companies within the group to ensure real-time visibility and support growth.

Sage X3 was to replace Sage 200, which was utilised by TG Eakin and rolled out to Eakin France SAS, Eakin GmbH, Eakin R&D and Eakin BV in the Netherlands. In addition, it was decided that all group businesses should be using the latest version of Sage X3 to take advantage of its enhanced functionality, resulting in a significant upgrade from version 7 to version 11 and subsequently version 12.

To ensure consistent system performance across global sites and provide the necessary support for running the system efficiently and effectively worldwide, a transition from an on-premises installation to a more appropriate cloud-hosted environment was necessary.

Key benefits realised

• The Sage X3 ERP solution supports the growth of the business.

• Centralisation of the Finance Department functions improves visibility, aligns processes
and facilitates combined reporting.

• Automation of processes has increased efficiency and reduced risk.

Increased efficiency and visibility with Sage X3

After the implementation of Sage X3 across the Cardiff-based businesses, Eakin Healthcare embarked on a phase of embedding processes, transitioning to a new hosted environment, and upgrading to the latest version of Sage X3 to take advantage of its enhanced features.

The subsequent phase involved migrating TG Eakin from Sage 200 to Sage X3, followed by the rollout of Sage X3 to Eakin France SAS and, finally, Eakin GmbH in Germany.

To support a phased approach, Inixion supported migration to the latest version of Sage X3.

“Before rolling out Sage X3 to the rest of the company, we were running across multiple financial applications”, recalls Stephen Jones, Chief Information Officer for Eakin Healthcare. “This resulted in separate processes supporting the same function across disparate systems. Data was stored separately, and consolidated reporting was problematic. IT resources were also stretched providing support for multiple sets of hardware and applications.”

“We now have visibility and efficiency through aligned and controlled processes that are managed within Sage X3”, adds Stephen Jones.

Centralisation of business processes increases efficiency

Eakin Healthcare now has a single system managing distribution and administration.

The replacement of disparate systems and uncontrolled processes (processes managed in Excel or other non-integrated systems) by a single source of truth has increased visibility and efficiency. As a result, it has greatly reduced risk, as the Finance Department can pick up discrepancies quickly and deal with them accordingly.

“Sage X3 gives us control of our processes”, says Stephen Jones, “We have moved a significant number of unmanaged processes that were not in Sage 200, but utilising other software, into Sage X3.”

Streamlining of internal resources

The implementation of Sage X3 has been supported by restructuring the IT department, bringing supporting skills in-house, and allowing efficient delivery of support and change.

Sage X3 – The heart of Eakin Healthcare’s processes

“There are areas of Sage X3 functionality that remain untapped, which we are starting to develop,” says Stephen Jones.

Sage X3 is at the heart of Eakin Healthcare’s continuous improvement processes to improve business management; warehouse processes are being aligned and the manufacturing process is being reviewed to enhance how material usage is viewed.