Case Studies
Project Profile for the Quote Management System
Executive Summary
Company
MEDRAD, headquartered in Warrendale, PA, was founded in 1964. The company employs more than 1,700 people.
Solution Description
The Access Data Project provides a solution to easily create custom quotes while accessing up-to-date data on customers and products from a central database.
Benefits
Central Database
Users have access to real-time customers, products, and sales history. The previous program required manual system updates.
System Maintenance
The system is now intuitive and easy to maintain. Multiple people now can easily update the system, allowing more coverage and support to sales people.
Software and Services
- Microsoft Access 2003
- SQL Server 2005
Customer Profile
Sector: Surgical Appliance and Supplies Manufacturing
Industry: Health Care
Annual Revenue: $478 million
MEDRAD is a worldwide market leader of medical devices and services that enable or enhance diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. MEDRAD has offices in 16 different countries and provides their products and services to hospitals and medical centers in 85 countries.
Business Situation
Service representatives at MEDRAD routinely sell contracts while servicing equipment in the field. The company relied on a standalone Microsoft Excel-based tool to quote these service contracts. The spreadsheet featured a series of calculations that determine pricing based on contract length, customer type and product mix. The company wanted to centrally administer these specifications while making the system available to distributed sales team.
Solution
Quote Management System
The new system is built on the Microsoft Access platform as an Access Data Project. The front-end application interfaces to a SQL Server database where data is centrally stored. The Quote Management System provides a robust backend database that allows for access from service representatives nationwide.
The team at alligatortek reverse-engineered the complex Excel-based quoting tool to solution a new product with the same specifications. The new system mirrors the previous user interface and offers enhanced functionality.
Service representatives are now able to view the entire base of customers and products, as well as view quote history for these customers. The administrative module provides managers the ability to control quote specifications. These users can update products, pricing, system users, salesperson discount levels, and other quoting controls. The new system is flexible and can adapt to business changes.