Transcript No Slide Title

Financial Systems Integration
Executing the Strategy
Pam McGregor
Toni Cobb
Jeff Mayo
Carol Praplaski
June 14, 2002
Agenda
•About NDCHealth
•Financial Systems Strategy
•Phased Delivery Approach
•Implementation Accomplishments and Challenges:
•Accounts Receivable
•Order Management
•Project Accounting
•iTime & iExpense
About NDCHealth

NDCHealth has been providing integrated information
support to all segments of the health industry for over two
decades. This experience, leveraged with our powerful
network and information management capabilities, has
built our reputation as a premier provider of value-added
information services serving more segments of the
healthcare industry than any other similar company.
About NDCHealth
Technology and Resources
 Intelligent network processes over 2 billion real-time health
care transactions annually, peak rate of 650
transactions/second
 Connected to over 4,000 payer plans
 39% of nation’s hospitals > 400 beds, about 1,200 hospitals
 90% of nation’s pharmacies, about 50,000 pharmacies
 > 150,000 physicians
 25 terabyte Oracle database for the pharmaceutical industry,
over 100 pharmaceutical manufacturers
 Over 3.5 billion prescriptions on file
NDCHealth’s Financial Systems Strategy
“Create integrated financial information system
effectively supporting company goals and
objectives” - 1999
Gradual Execution of Strategy
1999 & Earlier

Y2K Remediation

Lawson HR/Payroll
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Financials Benchmark
Financial Package
Evaluation and Selection
Implement Oracle
Financials (PO, AP, CE,
FA, GL)
2000
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Procurement Card
2001
2002
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Upgrade Lawson
April: Go Live
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Lawson’s Employee
Self Service

Revenue & Accounting
Shared Service Center

Upgrade Oracle 11i

Oracle AR (Reporting
and Cash Application)

Billing Assessment
Across multiple
Business Units

Project Costing and
Billing

Order Management
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iTime

iExpense
Procure to Pay Shared
Service Center

Begin Phased Billing
Implementation
In Process:
Phased Advanced Pricing /
Contracts / OM Solution
Billing Implementation Quick Wins
 Improved cash flow through a centralized automated billing and AR system
 Global reporting
 Centralized processing
 Fewer lockboxes
 Timely and accurate recording of AR transactions
 One global customer master file utilized company wide
 Natural Integration between Oracle subsystems (AR, OM, PA and GL)
 Improved customer AR account status information provided by on-line inquiry
to record all customer issues
 Online collection activity comments with automatic follow-up notification
 Automated, real-time credit card payment method utilizing Authorize.Net
Implementation Accomplishments &
Challenges
• Accounts Receivable
• Order Management
• Project Billing / Project Costing
• iTime & iExpense
Accounts Receivable
 Business Drivers
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Antiquated and non-integrated financial systems
Standalone billing/AR systems
Lack of Customer Master
Lack of management information – Consolidated DSO Analysis
Desire for centralized shared services
Desire for improved cash flow through automated, centralized
processes
 High cost of manual and duplicate processes
 Billing
 Customer Maintenance
Accounts Receivable
 Converted data – from multiple systems:
 Customers
 Open Balances for Customers
 Customer Bank Information
 Items
 Installed Customizations/Interfaces
 Credit Card process using 3rd party tool - Auth.net
 AR Open Balances to HP3000 to keep opening balance on invoices
generated in HP3000
 AR Customer Update to HP3000 to keep new/modified customers in sync
in both systems
 HP Items to Oracle Interface - as new service codes are added in HP3000
automated way to bring data into Oracle
Accounts Receivable
 Challenges:
 Reporting by individual Business Unit in a single organization
environment
 Customer data review and cleansing needs to happen in a
controlled timely manner by end users most familiar with data
 Same customers with multiple bill-to and ship-to’s in several
legacy systems
 Determining naming convention and data entry standards
 Creating a shared services environment at same time we were
implementing new applications
Order Management
 Business Drivers
 Lack of integrated order management system into Oracle
Financials
 Lack of easily obtained OM information
 Need for improved management information
Order Management
 Converted Data
 Price Lists
 Customers in conjunction with AR
 Inventory items
 Customizations
 Freight calculation for orders based on ship-from and ship-to zip codes, using UPS
rate table information.
 Shipping UPS interface that will request, generate and print UPS shipping labels,
using UPS web interface and custom NDC code.
 Order fulfillment sets assignment. Automatically set all order lines to an order
fulfillment set to insure discounts and service items invoice together with shippable
items, especially since most sales are paid with credit cards.
 Credit card authorization customization using Auth.net web interface.
Order Management
 Challenges
 Existing Oracle Inventory lacked item categories
 Data cleansing
 Functional involvement
Project Accounting
 Business Drivers
 A need for a centralized, automated, integrated capital
expense tracking system
 A need for a centralized, integrated customer billing system
Project Accounting
 Data Converted
 Projects – contract & capital
 Project costs and revenue
 AR contact
 Customizations
– Event Spawning – Ability to automatically create events on a weekly, monthly, or
quarterly basis
– Additional Invoice Information – Customized the PRC: INTERFACE INVOICE
TO RECEIVABLES program to include descriptive flex field, and product
information.
– Created Custom Invoice Printing using Optio.
– Custom Tax Program to accommodate multiple taxing jurisdictions by project
– Created interface to load external expenditures.
Project Accounting
• Challenges
 Project “Name” data was not unique in legacy system and
exceeded field length, had to clean data
 Agreement on Auto Accounting setup
 Determining standardized burdening rates
iTime & iExpense
• Business Drivers
 Eliminate paper driven system
 Lack of standardized labor collection process
 Enforce business policy
 Eliminate manual processes
iTime & iExpense
• Implementation
 Interfaces/Customizations
 Created interface between non-Oracle HR/Payroll system for
employee add/update/terminations
 Automated “User” maintenance for new employees
 Created custom workflows for Approvals
 Use of Email Alerts
 Notifications
 Missing Timecards
 System Administration
iTime & iExpense
• Challenges
 Routing driven off HR supervisor – ensure data accuracy
prior to deployment
 Develop process to update HR supervisor to avoid
document routing problems
 Develop a realistic expense report approval hierarchy
 Adequately staff a “Help Desk” to answer user questions
 Be prepared for quirky PC desktop problems due
various browser versions and other desktop PC
configurations
Centralization During
Implementation

Challenges
 Centralization of processes & procedures
 New players have much to learn
 Old players lose interest in project
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Mitigate Risk to Project Success
 Excessive training
 Facilitate knowledge transfer sessions between old and new players
 Hold a post go-live “pass the torch” meeting between project team and
users
 Hold regular “lessons learned” meetings after each month-end close
 Don’t accept excuses from new players
Implementation Recommendations
 Data Conversion:
 Determine naming conventions early on in the project
 Provide enough time for data cleansing
 Perform Static Conversions 1 month prior to go-live and ensure totals in
legacy systems match totals converted in Oracle
 Resources:
 Secure upper management support
 Identify the most knowledgeable, internal functional staff for the project
and dedicate them for the project’s duration
 Testing:
 Identify all business scenarios and fully test.
 Perform at least two full integration tests.
Implementation Recommendations
 Training:
 Complete Policies and Procedures for new business processes prior to go-live
 Implement Help Desk Support/Procedures for Oracle Applications
 Complete end-user training 1-2 weeks prior to go-live
 Leverage the Train-the-Trainer approach.
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Keep legacy system query capabilities available for 3-6 months after production
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Freeze application setups 1 month prior to go-live
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Prior to go-live, put process in place to address requests for new requirements and
related enhancements
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Determine Key Success Factors prior to project start-up and evaluate 3 to 6 months
after implementation
Questions?