Sales & Marketing Interests

SRI Surgical Express Performs Data Operations with DI-ProDiver

SRI Surgical Express, headquartered in Tampa, Florida, provides, delivers, and services all textiles, instruments, and products necessary for surgical procedures. To analyze inventory and sales dollars for over 400 customers and 6,200 products, SRI runs DI Solution on Windows NT and users access data Models with DI-ProDiver from Windows 95/98 clients.

"I am not in the MIS department, but my entire job used to be downloading volumes of data from the ERP system and preparing reports with Microsoft Access. SRI started looking for a reporting solution because we needed a better way to access and perform in-depth analysis on the data. As the company was growing, it became more of a challenge just to let the executives know what was going on in the company," explains Cezar Sniadecki, Senior Sales Analyst. "We implemented DI-ProDiver in the Sales Department, and the benefits of the solution quickly became obvious, so we expanded into Accounting, Operations, Quality Control, and Purchasing Departments."

"About twenty-five users now have access to the data from their desktops, and they can see where the company is going on a daily basis. I would say the greatest strengths of DI-ProDiver are its speed and ease of use. The nature of reports is that they provoke more questions, and with DI-ProDiver, users can go anywhere in the data to answer their questions, instead of asking for another report. They like the logic of it, and how it flows. They are familiar with the elements and can mix and match, so looking at something such as sales by state by month is like second nature. DI-ProDiver saves us time because the electronic reports we've created are updated as the data Models are updated. After we've saved and distributed the initial requests, the system drives itself. Those people who constantly requested different permutations of the data can help themselves now," says Sniadecki.

"SRI prepares packs for specific doctors and procedures. Device Master reports keep track of how the packs should be built. A pack prepared for heart surgery may contain 200 different components, while another pack may consist of only a few. Within the packs, we also have to monitor regulatory data - whether it's latex, glass, or dry natural rubber, for example. From a Quality Control perspective, this has to be stated on the packaging and the company has to be aware of it throughout production, because some patients may be allergic to latex. Each day, the necessary packs are delivered to hospitals, and the reusable products from used packs are picked up and brought back to one of our processing facilities. We have massive warehouses were all the products are tracked by scanning bar codes. DI-ProDiver allows users to see daily inventory transactions and the inventory status. We analyze scan counts, and we have reports where we track inventory across all of our warehouses. This information has helped inventory managers and the Purchasing department, because we're able to transfer product between warehouses if one is depleted and another has extra product. DI-ProDiver keeps very good track of our fast moving inventory," continues Sniadecki.

"In one of our inventory Models that tracks mark-ups and activity based on the bar codes, I've been able to calculate how long it has been since the bar code was scanned. If a certain bar code hasn't shown up for 42 days, it's overdue and the system stamps it as overdue. Over 200 days it is considered to be lost and written off."

"We also use DI-ProDiver to create sales variance reports, weekly variances by customer, weekly trends, percent changes, and apparent sales versus eight week averages. We have commissions reports, and Sales Rep summaries and details. We also have gross profit reports by company, customer, Sales Rep, state or zip code, which reveal dollar amounts and year-to-date numbers by any time period. The amortization of products and how much we paid for them is also calculated. All of these reports down to the product level are updated daily."

"Our company is aware of its revenue on a weekly basis. Even though we invoice once a week, we have DI-ProDiver looking at the shipment files on the ERP system. When we look at daily shipments, we're able to calculate the revenue for the day, and an estimate for the week. Based on scheduled shipments, executives can estimate the amount of revenue for the week, month, or quarter. One week the sales may be higher, another week they are lower, so we look at those trends and quickly find out what caused the changes in the revenue. Needless to say, everyone likes the quick access to the data because it helps them understand the company's business cycles. With ProDiver, we can do this; nothing else could have given us this information," concludes Sniadecki.