Med-Tech Maker’s Modern Data Platform Seamlessly Integrates Acquisition Operations

Company Overview

While it’s been a heady, successful decade of major mergers and acquisitions for a Fortune 500 medical technology maker, leaders haven’t lost sight of the competitive gains afforded by deep analytical insight. As this company adds wholly owned subsidiaries to its portfolio at a rapid clip, it’s committed to success through innovation.

In line with that commitment, BlueGranite – a longtime partner of this Great Lakes-based public company – recently delivered a cloud-based modern data platform that optimizes and integrates processes for one of the corporation’s newest, and (with a $1 billion-plus price tag), largest, acquisitions.

Offering rapid value without interrupting operations, our scalable, user-friendly Microsoft Azure-based design fosters calculated data access; agile data modeling; provides cost savings; and meets this corporation’s unique platform constraints.

The Challenge

Rapid onboarding and assimilation was critical after this corporation’s recent gain of a medical instrument maker. Rather than operating as a cohesive unit, the corporation’s existing instrument sales team and its new one were hindered from efficiently doing business by disparate enterprise resource planning technology that created redundancy and confusion. The tech limitations created two work streams and limited sales rep offerings to their company of origin, rather than the products that best fit their territory.

These opposing systems also made accurate financial calculation difficult, and clouded visibility into field employee success. While gaining operational sales and service insight quickly was crucial, so too was streamlining operations without interrupting business. BlueGranite’s solution needed to integrate two distinctly different enterprise resource planning systems while working within the constraints of enterprise’s existing, corporate-wide reporting solution.

The Solution

Our team designed a custom, flexible platform that swiftly adjusts to analyst source data edits (whether to accommodate updated journal entries or frequently changing product classifications), features nearly hourly and/or manual refresh options, and scales to easily incorporate future enterprise acquisitions.

We’ve unified the Excel data output by one ERP system – to maintain the reporting with which one set of users here were most comfortable – with the SQL data from another. We tied it all into a single Microsoft Power BI model; the platform affords fast, comprehensive insight to ease collaboration and inform day-to-day management decisions, simplifying operations and maximizing gains.

The platform is overseen and administered by business users. To ensure their success, BlueGranite trained this division’s data stewards and stakeholders in Power BI model management and troubleshooting.

Solution Architecture-3

The Results

As users ramp up their Power BI knowledge, they are discovering many ways to automate previously manual reporting. More importantly, the new platform unified a divided salesforce while simplifying operations. BlueGranite’s solution also allowed the company to eliminate the licensing cost of the service ticket software used by the newly acquired med-tech manufacturer.

This corporation’s recent double-digit share price increases prove the success of its ongoing modernization efforts and growth mindset. If you’re looking to deploy Power BI or maximize an existing investment, consider BlueGranite’s Catalyst Framework. Our experts uncover opportunity within your organization, accelerate time-to-value when leveraging your data, and minimize risk while amplifying your gains.