Utah Distributor Picks IBS for Supply Chain Management

December 4, 2007 Alex Woodie

Superior Care Pharmacy will install a suite of i5/OS-based supply chain management software from International Business Systems (IBS) to help it manage its distribution business, IBS announced last month.

Superior Care Pharmacy was founded in 1988 as a long-term care pharmacy, and added medical supplies, oxygen tanks, and an equipment rental division four years later. Today, the Salt Lake City, Utah, company has grown to supply about 2,000 nursing facilities, hospitals, and rehabilitation facilities around the country with supplies, oxygen, over-the-counter drugs, and nutritional supplements.

Recently, the company set out to find a software solution that could help the company chart a new direction, according to Jonathan Wood, director of specialty products at Superior Care. “We wanted to focus on distribution and inventory management,” Wood says.

The company analyzed several offerings, and settled on IBS Enterprise, which runs exclusively on the IBM i Server. “During the software evaluation, we were very impressed with IBS Enterprise, specifically e-commerce and vendor rebates management,” Wood says, adding that ” . . . We knew that IBS was the most logical way to go.”

When fully implemented, the new system will be composed of several IBS products, including distribution, financials, warehouse management, e-commerce, rebates and chargebacks, and distribution resource planning.

Over the years, IBS–which is headquartered in Sweden and is one of the few ERP software companies not to have participated in the recent wave of industry consolidation–has developed experience dealing with issues unique to the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and medical supplies and equipment industries, including its vendor rebates and chargeback functionality, and lot and serial control tracking.

That expertise should work well for Superior Care Pharmacy, says Dan Wells, vice president of marketing for IBS North America, which is based in Folsom, California. “We know that they are going to be very pleased with IBS Enterprise,” he says.

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