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Allegiance Healthcare is a $4 billion manufacturer and distributor of
health care products. As part of its global SAP R/3 implementation,
Allegiance was looking for additional systems capabilities to effectively
support its intricate pricing and contract management requirements. With a
multitude of industry buying groups and suppliers negotiating contracts on
behalf of their members and customers, Allegiance knew this would be a
complex undertaking. They teamed with Waterstone Consulting to deliver a
solution that works.
Business Strategy
With specific expertise in SAP and custom pricing applications within the
health care industry, Waterstone was the right choice for the design and
implementation of an automated pricing and contract management system that
would deliver the direct business impact this Allegiance desired:
Technology Strategy
While Trilogy's pricing engine (SC Pricer) was selected as the backbone for
the new system, it required an expansive maintenance system to handle the
hundreds of thousands of pricing and contract maintenance transactions the
company processes each day. It also required custom-developed interfaces
in order to work effectively with SAP R/3.
Among the critical components designed by Waterstone Consulting was an
interface that provides an automated link to the Trilogy system from the
R/3 order entry process, ensuring accurate pricing for products at the
point of sale. To further extend the benefits of the new pricing system to
cross-functional areas across the company, Waterstone built a common method
for calling the Trilogy pricing engine. This enables various divisions
using a variety of applications, such as sales force automation tools and
manufacturing software, to easily access product pricing information from
Trilogy.
An additional interface was designed to seamlessly link to Allegiance's
'master' files, enabling real-time synchronization of customer and product
information to the new Trilogy application.
Another critical addition made to the system is a custom application that
allows the company to easily maintain its system and update ever-changing
information on thousands of supplier contracts and individual customers -
information that changes on a daily basis. This system can also track
complex relationships between suppliers, buying groups and their members.
Given Allegiance's large processing volume and high frequency of business
changes in pricing and contractual information, the Waterstone team
recommended a three-tier client server architecture. This state-of-the-art
technology is highly scalable and can be readily adapted with limited
resources to support Allegiance's ever-changing business needs.
Project Approach
Waterstone worked closely with both Allegiance and Trilogy teams to develop
a pricing application that could not only handle the company's complex
requirements but could also seamlessly interface with its enterprise-wide
R/3 software.
Once the system was developed, Waterstone Consulting worked closely with
Allegiance to ensure a smooth conversion. Given the wide array of internal
and external users needing access to the new application, the company
undertook a phased rollout, converting each geographic sales region
independently over a twelve-month period. This approach helped to ease
acceptance of the new system within the company and allow for focused user
training efforts.
Project Success
Allegiance's new pricing and contract management system is
already delivering bottom-line business impact. With improved
pricing and tracking capabilities, the company expects to benefit from
increased pricing accuracy, leading to enhanced profitability across all
its product lines.
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