IMRIS

The Challenge:

IDENTIFY A TOOL THAT SIMPLIFIES CLINICAL PROCEDURES WITH STREAMLINED SYSTEMS ACCESS

IMRIS had been using an older version of QAD Mobile Field Service or MFS but the legacy technology was no longer supported and IMRIS was unable to expand upon it as their needs grew.

“Another challenge was for our clinical team. They are going into the hospitals and we really want to make things easier for them. A big piece of that is being able to access QAD on the web, not having to go through the VPN. They’re in the basement of a hospital, they don’t have a strong wifi connection. To think that they have to open up QAD, get on the VPN and have that connection in order to use it just wasn’t practical for them,” explained Sr. Business Analyst and Project Manager at IMRIS, April Bardsley.

“We also have a customer service manager that’s very interested in pulling metrics and measuring KPIs related to service calls, such as time to first response and time to site. The process for pulling this data was labor intensive in the current system,” said April.

During this time, Chris Myers joined the IMRIS team as Director of IT. “When I came in the team started to share with me the processes. I was also hearing from our team in the field that they wanted a web interface. So I started to meet with the QAD Team, and they introduced us to the early phase of the Adaptive UX solution. ”

“When I saw QAD’s Adaptive UX, I knew that it would be a disservice to our organization not to have this technology available to the users. I knew this was important for our users to have the ability to build extensions of the application,” explained Chris.
 

The Solution:

AN UPGRADE TO QAD ADAPTIVE ERP AND THE ADAPTIVE UX BUILT ON THE QAD ENTERPRISE PLATFORM

Guy Normandeau, IMRIS Business Analyst, and April Bardsley had seen demonstrations of QAD Adaptive ERP with its powerful, intuitive UX, but they hadn’t thought an upgrade was an option for IMRIS at that time. As soon as the team saw the latest QAD Adaptive ERP screens, they realized the value of having user-centric navigation. The team was also impressed with the system extensions enabled by the QAD Enterprise Platform. 

The QAD Enterprise Platform provides manufacturers the means to adapt QAD Adaptive ERP to meet their changing business and user requirements. Based on a modern microservices architecture, QAD Enterprise Platform makes it easy to extend, add or modify functionality, data and processes. This ability to extend and create new applications enabled IMRIS users to personalize their screens by role, activity and user making it easier and faster to pull the data they need based on their role within the organization.

QAD’s Adaptive User Experience (UX), which is built on the QAD Enterprise Platform, delivers an adaptable, role-based and modern UX with personalization capabilities and embedded analytics. It provides users an enhanced experience resulting in improved productivity, decision-making and employee success. Insights gained through embedded analytics reduce uncertainty and provide a competitive dashboard for identifying and addressing disruption.

“I could see right away that there were real benefits from the new technology. We owed it to our users to deliver these benefits as quickly as possible,” said Chris.

Chris had years of familiarity with other ERP systems and even briefly considered moving IMRIS to a different system, but when he saw QAD Adaptive ERP, he was sold on the plan to upgrade. He realized there would be major productivity gains and that employees would be much happier. In addition, the company could streamline its business processes and manage and report metrics and KPIs faster and simpler. But before they could enjoy these benefits, IMRIS had to upgrade its infrastructure and finish their upgrade to QAD Adaptive ERP.

“I went to our Senior Leadership Team to sell the business case for an upgrade, and one of the things that pushed us over the edge was, I said, ‘ the productivity gain, that I believe we’re going to see, within all of our departments when we get everyone on this, is going to be tenfold. And you’re going to have happier employees. They’re going to be able to get their job done quicker and be able to streamline processes,” said Chris.

The IMRIS Senior Leadership Team agreed, and with approval in hand, the project started in October and finished in just under a year.
 

The Benefits:

UTILIZING THE QAD ENTERPRISE PLATFORM, QAD’S ADAPTIVE UX RESULTS IN REDUCED TIME TO RECORD A SALES CALL AND FEWER CLICKS TO COMPLETE

IMRIS is incredibly pleased with the move to QAD Adaptive ERP and the Adaptive UX. They also found that creating or changing business processes when needed was much faster and easier using the QAD Enterprise Platform.

The QAD Enterprise Platform allows IMRIS to extend and create new applications that are dependable and scalable without creating version lock-in. Historically IMRIS had put off a necessary upgrade that would address changing business needs, because customizations developed over time have made it difficult to make that transition. IMRIS realized the benefit of the Enterprise Platform to leverage the functionality that was available without having to outsource the development. Guy Normandeau used both Progress’ OpenEdge OOABL application and TypeScript to create the extensions the company needed to support its unique field service processes. 

“The platform is much more flexible. It’s much easier to create screens or to add fields and attach logic. I use TypeScript whenever the system needs an immediate response,” explained Guy.

“Guy is our expert! I’ve noticed in the short couple of months that we’ve had it, Guy does development more quickly than he would be able to do in the old system. And the ability to customize is actually there, but without creating a rigid system that is difficult to upgrade in 
the future. So, for me, it’s using the core QAD functionality, which I know and love, with a new interface that’s easier to use and easier to customize and extend,” highlights April.

“In the beginning of the project, working with the QAD team, we put a couple of things in place that would be able to measure the success of the project. I think two of the biggest metrics for us were reducing the amount of time for recording a service call and reducing the number of clicks required,” stated April. “And with the new Adaptive UX, we have definitely seen improvements.”

“The new streamlined business processes have met user approval, and all the feedback has been good. Users love being able to access the system with a browser and not having to log in to a VPN to gain access, and they are very comfortable with navigating the system. Field service records can be completed much more quickly, even for infrequent users.”

“When they are working in a custom extension, users have no idea the screens they are using aren’t standard QAD,” says April.

The IT team at IMRIS agrees the move to QAD Adaptive ERP and the Adaptive UX was worth the upgrade. Users are more productive, processes require fewer clicks and less time to complete, and all of the company’s customizations are fully documented.

“Overall we are really happy with the project. Yes, there was a learning curve, but we learned so much. And again, it’s about the users, right? It’s about them coming back to us and saying, “This is so much easier. And it was so much easier to learn it,” shared April. “I think that’s really exciting.”