Challenge
When the Florida State Government passed the regulation in 2006 requiring pedigrees- or a drug’s life history- to be mailed with every drug to each individual customer, ExpertMed was confronted with a substantial increase in the amount of documents and forms it had to both produce and deliver. Expert-Med faced sending out a minimum of a hundred invoices and pedigrees per day, resulting in astronomical material, printing, and shipping costs. Money was also being wasted on costly pre-printed forms, which were constantly being outdated; employees were spending about 2-3 hours a day manually faxing; and lastly ExpertMed was paying outside companies to do all their direct emailing.
Solution
Expert-Med found a solution in Quadrant Software’s Formtastic and FastFax. Working in tandem, the solutions served as a panacea for Expert-Med’s headaches. Formtastic gave ExpertMed a way to send a pedigree out as a professional-looking form, and FastFax gave them a way to deliver the overwhelming number of pedigrees and invoices to their customers – in ways that they specified: by email, by fax, or if they wanted, by regular mail. FastFax stored their preferences for quick and easy delivery. Their forms were now eye-catching and complied with state regulations, automatically populated without user intervention. They eliminated the need for multi-part pre-printed forms saving thousands of dollars, and automated document distribution with FastFax, eliminating the need for manual faxing.
Expert-Med even began using FastFax beyond their original goals of pedigrees and invoices. The solution has been used to email internal documents, such as commission reports and daily sales records, to Expert- Med’s sales teams, whether they’re in the office or out in the field. FastFax also works in tandem with the system processes that Expert-Med already has in place, such as end-of-day batch processes that run on their iSeries every night. Once these processes finished running, usually at 10 or 10:30 at night, it propagates everything into the spool files. Formtastic reads them, puts the information into the forms, where FastFax automatically picks the files up and sends them to the various customers according to their preferences. No intervention is needed.
Result
“The savings from Formtastic would definitely be in the thousand of dollars. We have more than paid for the software already. We’ve saved just by not buying any new preprinted forms.”
“Anyone can take a blank sheet of paper, and theoretically design their own form in a matter of just a few minutes. I took our forms and completely redesigned them because of the flexibility Formtastic allowed. When I first got them on the page I said, ‘Well, this just doesn’t look right.’ So I would tweak it, and move it, shrink it, and expand it, whatever I needed to make it look like a decent form.”
“FastFax has been kind of a saving. It really saved us because we didn’t have an easy way to get these pedigrees and invoices out.”
“Some of the customers want the invoice before they get the product. The problem is they want the invoice with the lot number, and the lot number is actually on the drug. When we first do an invoice it doesn’t have a lot number because it hasn’t been scanned. We scan it in, and then when we reprint the invoice. FastFax automatically picks up the lot number and sends it out to the customer. So they actually have the invoice that evening, before they even get the product.”
“FastFax makes it real simple. My job is a lot easier.”
“What I like is that Quadrant Software is never stopping. They’re constantly developing. I’m always getting new information, new products. They’re very innovative.”
Johnny Johnson, IT Manager, Expert-Med