Version1 and Uniphar Case Study

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CASE STUDY Version 1 : helping Uniphar guarantee on-time delivery of essential drugs and supplies to hospitals and pharmacies. In conversation with Brian Hogan, Supply Chain Optimisation Manager for Uniphar Uniphar ISO 20000 TM CERTIFICATION EUROPE

Transcript of Version1 and Uniphar Case Study

CASE STUDY

Version 1 : helping Uniphar guarantee on-time delivery of essential drugs and supplies to hospitals and pharmacies.

In conversation with Brian Hogan, Supply Chain Optimisation Manager for Uniphar

Uniphar

ISO 20000

TM

CERTIFICATIONEUROPE

For some businesses, protecting the uptime of key systems is critical to survival: downtime is a catastrophic event that could have a significant negative impact on the company’s reputation. Uniphar, one of just two full-line wholesalers who deliver medicines and other essential stock to Irish pharmacies, must be operational 24-7. Guaranteed same-day delivery is the cornerstone of its promise to customers, and its partnership with Version 1 is instrumental in helping Uniphar keep that promise.

Guaranteeing same-day delivery is no mean feat when your customer base includes pharmacies all over Ireland. But Uniphar makes and meets that commit-ment every day. A key partner in its business is Version 1, a company it first engaged after an outage in its warehouse IT system that left Uniphar management seeking a permanent solution to maximise uptime.

“At the time, Uniphar engaged with Version 1 because of an issue on our Oracle database which was affecting performance in our Warehouse Management System.” recalls Brian Hogan, Supply Chain Optimisation Manager for Uniphar. “Version 1 helped us get a resolution for that issue, and they’ve been working with us ever since.”

Downtime is not an option

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Version 1 provides proactive 24-7 support for two essen-tial databases at Uniphar: the database that underpins its Warehouse Management System and the database powering its reporting system for manufacturers, cus-tomers and suppliers. Uniphar has had zero outages caused by the database since Version 1 came on board, thanks to the expertise of their team not just in database managed services, but also at the application and oper-ating system level of the technology stack.

This rock-solid system reliability has allowed Uniphar to speed ahead with ambitious plans for growth, effi-ciency improvements and customer service enhance-ments. Uniphar recently purchased one of its only competitors in Ireland, and it has steadily rolled out a suite of IT initiatives aimed at making its supply chain, warehouse operations, logistics and customer service the best in the business.

Uniphar’s 180,000 square-foot Dublin wholesale centre boasts one of the most advanced picking operations in the country. Warehouse staff rapidly compile thou-sands of “totes” a day – custom shopping baskets that zoom around kilometres of conveyor belt throughout the facility. State-of-the-art “pick by voice” technology

is currently being introduced, allowing Uniphar staff to wear voice-recognition-enabled headsets that link them directly to the warehouse management system. The Warehouse Managment System gives the staff member vocal directions to the precise location of an ordered product and allows the staff member to confirm back by voice that the item has been added to the tote.

The fastest moving items, such as headache tablets, are in the warehouse’s impressive, 100% automated A-frame section. In the A-frames, mechanised stock shelves not only tip the right number of packages into the customer tote as it passes by, but they also replen-ish themselves to ensure a steady supply of stock. Every part of this well-oiled machine links back to the mission-critical Warehouse Management System, supported 24 hours a day by the proactive Version 1 database managed services team.

“Meeting the stringent demands of a 24x7 highly competitive environment means that any disruption to service directly impacts our bottom line. Version 1 has been an excellent custodian of our critical database systems ensuring 100% uptime, with their commitment of service delivery and expertise extending beyond this layer to both infrastructure and applications. We consider Version 1 to be a strategic partner in enabling us to deliver on our business goals.”

Brian Hogan, Uniphar

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We asked Brian Hogan what it’s like to be the person behind the IT systems that optimise this impressive supply chain.

Q: Brian, Uniphar recently acquired one of its only

competitors in the full-line wholesale market in Ireland. Does that mean your business is getting less competitive, or more?

A: Staying competitive is very much a priority for us. Our pharmacies have no specific affiliation with any full-line wholesaler. If we are not able to get a product out to them when they need it, they can easily just go to the other full-line wholesaler and get the product without any repercussions. Speed and reliability are essential.

Q: How does that impact Uniphar’s IT systems, and how you manage them?

A: Between 11:30 AM and 2:00 PM every day Monday to Friday, we have vans delivering products to pharmacies and hospitals around Ireland. A pharmacy can put in an order at 12 o’clock and expect delivery that afternoon, so it’s very critical that our system has 100% uptime - especially during those ordering hours – because if there is any outage at all, we will lose that full run and no customers would get any products during that time.

And then overnight, we work 24-7. We need maximum uptime of our systems to ensure that the warehouse management system can process all orders from phar-macies overnight and have them on vans ready to deliver first thing in the morning. Any outage would cause terrible disruption to our customers and seriously undermine our good reputation.

Q: What kind of reliability levels have you seen in your databases since you began working with Version 1?

A: Database reliability has been 100%. We haven’t had any outages due to the database since Version 1 came on board. The database also links into other systems - including the operating system and the application – and although Version 1 isn’t directly managing those systems for us, they’ve helped us hugely in those areas. For example, they’ve helped us optimise our warehouse management application with our application vendor, giving us ideas on how to improve the performance of the application. In that respect, the service we get from Version 1 is second to none.

Q: How important is it to you that you’re working with a managed database services partner who understands the technologies that are both above and below the database – application and operating system?

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A: It’s very important. As I said, they’ve helped us optimise the application, but they’ve also done some remarkable troubleshooting for us. We were moving to a different OS platform in 2012 and during the upgrade, our warehouse management system began stopping and starting for reasons no one understood – our OS provider and our application provider were both on site, but they weren’t able to identify what the issue was.

We raised a priority 1 call with Version 1 as well – even though we were fairly confident it wasn’t an issue on the database – and they sent in one of their top database engineers. He was able to identify where the issue was: a controller on one of our lines was causing noise disruption that caused the application to fail. The Version 1 engineer made a recommenda-tion on changing the settings on the OS level and that resolved the issue. The fix that Version 1 put in place allowed us to open for business the following day. If it hadn’t been for them, our reputation would’ve been in serious jeopardy with our customers and it would’ve been very hard to recover from that.

That brings us comfort and is why we outsource to someone like Version 1. In times of extreme situa-tions where experts from other companies can’t help us, it’s a comfort to have someone with the experi-ence and the staff that Version 1 have on all levels: database, application and OS.

Q: An organisation the size of Uniphar is obvi-ously going to have a number of IT suppliers. What are the qualities you’re looking for in an IT partner?

A: Our objective is to improve our performance and ensure that we’re getting the greatest benefits from the latest technology so that our systems are as good as they can possibly be, so that we can keep our service levels as high as possible for our custom-ers. We choose suppliers who are leaders in their area because their expertise allows us to meet those objectives.

Version 1 as our database partner has to be very skilled and has to be proactive in identifying where we can make improvements. They’ve proven they

can do that. I like the fact that they are personally committed to the work they’re doing for Uniphar. Our account manager has always made me feel welcome to give him a call any time of day and run anything past him. You don’t always see that level of attention with some IT companies. When you have your support with a department of a very large company and you call them with an issue, they might tell you it’s not an issue with them and you have to go call a different team. With Version 1, I have one number to call and no matter what the problem is, they always follow up.

Uniphar & Version 1 at a glanceDatabase managed service delivering 100% uptime for mission-critical Oracle 11 databases.

24-7 database support 365 days a year from round-the-clock Version 1 Network Operations Centre.

Principal Oracle database supports Warehouse Management System: this powers Uniphar’s high-volume central distribution facility, serving pharmacies and hospitals around Ireland with guaranteed same-day delivery of more than 80,000 product lines.

Second Oracle database supports Uniphar reporting system, generating reports for external customers, manufacturers and principal accounts, including reports on stock movements.

Managed service includes proactive support for all aspects of the database (availability, performance, security, backup and recovery, and business continuity).

Health checks performed daily, weekly and quarterly identify non-critical issues for proactive remediation to ensure system availability.

Proactive issue resolution including suggestions for performance improvement.

Proven ability for complex troubleshooting including issues arising in systems outside the database (OS and application level).

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To f ind out how Version 1

can transform your

business, contact us:

email : info@version1 .com

www.version1 .com