Download the Invacare Corporation Customer Profile in ... - Noetix

C U S T O M E R P R O F I L EInvacare CorporationInvacare Corporation (NYSE: IVC), headquartered in Elyria, Ohio, is the globalleader in the manufacture and distribution of innovative home and long-termcare medical products that promote recovery and active lifestyles. The companyhas 6,200 associates and markets its products in 80 countries around the world.“One of the winning aspects ofNoetix is that it’s very easy to use.Users breeze through training andreally like the tool’s intuitive drill-downPROBLEMInvacare began a corporate-wide re-invention in 2006. Principle to that wasa new IT initiative called the Invacare Business Management System (knowninternally as iBiz), which brought to light the need for a modern businessintelligence (BI) system. In particular, Invacare management wanted theability to conduct invoice line item detail, in order to drill down into thedetails of things such as sales orders. To date, they had only been able toview the business’ financial data at a very high level.capabilities.”David MewesCIOInvacare Corporation“When I came on board, the company was starved for information,” saidDavid Mewes, CIO of Invacare. “We weren’t able to obtain timelyinformation with spreadsheets being downloaded from the transactionalsystem. We decided we needed a good old-fashioned data warehouse, or arepository, which fit the newer model of business intelligence.”As the economy began a global downturn, Invacare management commenceda search for a BI tool to meet their needs and help them remaincompetitive in the marketplace. Initially, the company was focused onobtaining financial data from Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), with the endgoal of having the tool connect information from a series of databasesworldwide.SOLUTIONInvacare’s IT department conducted analysis with several major BI tools anddecided on Noetix Analytics because the company had a strong competencyaround Oracle—it was also more affordable and flexible than the otheravailable options. In addition, Noetix Analytics had the ability to conformto most of Invacare’s non-standard product hierarchies.As part of Invacare’s iBiz initiative, the Noetix implementation took six toeight months, much longer than usual due to the intense testing hurdlesto which the IT team subjected the product. Code writers within the ITteam set up the tables in such a way that different end users - sales teams,engineering teams, and product teams - could use the tool to do their ownwww.noetix.com(Toll-free) 866-4NOETIX

Invacare Corporationdrill-downs without IT assistance.Today, 100 end users are accessing financial reports through Noetix Analytics linked with Cognos 10Business Intelligence, and more users are trained daily. Mewes, who hails from the automotive industry,says this is absolutely revolutionary for the medical products field, which has historically not used cuttingedge technology to conduct this type of business.“The medical device industry is not as mature as other supply chain-type industries, so when we’re doingthings like capturing profitability on each line item detail, and we’re able to itemize different componentsand see the profitability of each specific component - we’re being very innovative,” said Mewes. “Thisindustry doesn’t use a lot of IT tools and we’re finding Noetix Analytics to be very much a game-changerfor Invacare.”RESULTProfitability is more important than ever in the medical devices industry due to government financialreimbursement and the ways competitive costs are scrutinized. The financial analytic reporting thatInvacare has been able to conduct around its profitability has radically changed the company’s businessoutlook. For example, the sales team was able to recognize that the customer information it was using,including sales figures, was not always accurate.“For us, the key aspect is that we’re now able to understand what profitability looks like at Invacare,” saidMewes. “And we now have a plethora of profitability reports that are really helping the business makebetter decisions.”Invacare is in the process of implementing Noetix Analytics as its global management reporting tool,positioning it as the data repository for all of the company’s transactional systems, including OracleE-Business Suite, JD Edwards, and MFG/PRO.Noetix Corporation5010 148th Avenue NE, Suite 100 (Toll-free) 866-4NOETIXRedmond WA, 98052-5119www.noetix.com