Key Features of QAD APM Medical
- Flexible definition and management of contracts, deals and promotions
- Visibility and management of trade spending and budgets
- Controlled and efficient processing of claims and rebates
- User-definable customer/item attributes and customer grouping structures to support brokers and group purchasing organizations
- Includes a Division/Region/Area/Zone structure for clear definition of sales channels
- Automates price list management for Sales Order Entry via new deal/promotion records
- Supports complex rebates and comprehensive accrual processing
- Integrated with QAD General Ledger, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable for all financial transactions
- Provides a full "trade spend" control mechanism including budgets
- Buying Groups, with date effective membership
Life Sciences contract complexity
Planning
- Contracts, deductions and invoices are validated against planned amounts
- Incentive/rebate tables are maintained with automatic period processing
- Optional accruals can automatically show the company's true exposure to outstanding claims, ensuring correct accounting
- High-level, promotional budgets are maintained enabling management to monitor activities
Monitor planned versus actual performance in units or dollars
Customer and Sales Structures
- Buying Groups, brokers and individual customers are easily managed through grouping structures and site-definable attributes
- Customer Groups can be explicitly created or created using templates of site-defined attributes enabling easier promotion and pricing management
- QAD APM Medical enables sales processes to be divided into many sales channels, and can be executed from the same manufacturing and distribution setup
- Contracts can easily be created for buying groups with links to their member companies with date effective membership.
Contracts, Deals and Promotions
- Contract and Promotion structure is extremely flexible, allowing a wide variety of formats, which can be implemented concurrently or consecutively
- Contracts and Promotions can be linked to individual customers, customer groups, or to buying groups, such as brokers, GPOs, or IDNs.
- Links all trade-related claims and deductions to a promotion, and automates the associated accounting so a company can effectively track the costs associated with any individual promotion
- Extensive tracking is available for reporting purposes
- Sales can be traced to purchasing medical institutions for accurate tracking of purchases and related rebates
Contracts or promotions established by product or product group
Budgets
- Provides the ability to compare planned and actual trade spending against a preset budget providing a strong management tool and control mechanism
- Allows a high-level view of budgets, summarizing them at relevant control points and highlighting exceptional conditions
Rebates
- Rebates, or retrospective discounts, as well as commissions, royalties and bonuses can be paid on a periodic (monthly/quarterly/annual) basis
- To support this activity, QAD APM Medical provides accrual and adjustment functionality
Claims
- Documents all aspects of deal activity including retrospective deals such as rebates, claims, samples and seed money
- When claims or deductions are received, the promotion data can be validated for an accurate determination of the claim's acceptability
- Automatic validation of chargeback requests is also available
QAD Advanced Pricing Medical – Implementation Services
Plan
Policies and Operations Analysis involves defining project scope along with data and resource requirements, identifying the coding and configuration schemes that will be used to organize and identify customers and products, evaluating the financial impact of trade spending, and understanding how your company wants to account for accruals and expenses.
Pricing Review involves reviewing existing pricing strategies and mechanisms as they translate into trade management, evaluating future policies to ensure sufficient flexibility to accommodate future requirements, and identifying external and internal categories of customers, groups of customers, and products that will drive pricing and subsequent promotions and rebates.
Promotions Review involves reviewing types and durations of company promotions, seeing how they are processed through the financial organization, and identifying the types of promotions used and the target audiences. Analysis is done to determine the accounting needed, how month-end procedures might be affected and what GL accounts would be used.
Rebates Review involves identifying the situations where rebates are offered, the main drivers for rebates, how the financial activities would flow and how the functionality of APM Medical could leverage rebates.
Deductions Analysis involves evaluation of using the deductions functionality that comes with QAD APM Medical for claim-based promotions.
Plan Development includes a definition of scope, the assignment of a complete project team with roles and responsibilities, technical requirements, integration needs, detailed budgets, and project risks with appropriate mitigation.
Design
General Setup involves setting up the environment and defining system-level settings and definitions of codes critical for system operation, including:
- Install the QAD APM Medical product and set up the conference room pilot (CRP) prototype
- Define example customers, buying groups and products with preliminary coding schemes and structures suggested by the Plan phase
- Define basic price lists, promotions, and rebates
- Configure deductions per the plan phase
- Set up minimum accounting structures so that CRP and testing can proceed
- Model base use of Pricing, Promotions, and Rebates functions per the plan phase
- Refine models to cover all current and future situations.
Conference Room Pilots (CRPs) involve an iterative process to refine coding schemes, test how the module will be used, and demonstrate that the model meets your objectives. CRPs help refine the basic design and prove that it will work; the number and intensity of depends on the scale and scope of the company’s operations.
Implement
Managing Final Rollout involves defining and managing the rollout process, creating rollout plans and project-managing all tasks to their completion. QAD APM Medical involves both revenue and customer service cycles, so the final cutover process is planned and managed with a high level of discipline.
Final Technical Setup involves performing final hardware and system software setup and testing; includes verification of performance estimates and key performance optimization that is specific to the QAD APM Medical product.
Final Data Conversion involves the final input of static data such as customer groupings and profile values; may involve converting data or active promotions from a legacy system.
System and Compliance Testing involves developing a complete, business- and industry-specific test plan for QAD APM Medical that also includes execution and documentation of the tests.
End User Training involves training your users on the procedures that were proven in the CRPs and on aspects of QAD APM Medical that are specific to your company’s needs; includes the final system handover, with verification that your organization is ready to take advantage of the system.
Manage
Value Audit involves evaluating the benefits you have achieved from implementing QAD APM Medical; this process may identify other areas of opportunity for your organization.
Typical Implementation Plan for One Site
The resource requirements and timeline for a QAD APM Medical consulting engagement is directly related to the complexity of selling strategies, the range of products, and the extent of promotional activity.
This estimate is specific to implementing APM Medical. Implementing Promotions, Rebates, and Deductions will add additional time to the plan.
