Meridian Bioscience, Inc.

Life Science Company Standardizes on Latest Technology to Boost Productivity

For the last five years, Cincinnati, Ohio-based Meridian Bioscience has enjoyed significant growth, and management wanted to capitalize on that momentum by updating and standardizing the company’s IT infrastructure. Its technically savvy information workers needed current desktop productivity software and an efficient communication and collaboration solution. Its IT staff needed better tools to more effectively manage the desktop environment at headquarters and at two remote locations. In 2006, Meridian Bioscience acquired its Microsoft® Enterprise Agreement license, which covers the latest Microsoft desktop software, foundational server products, and maintenance benefits under one comprehensive license agreement. Today, Meridian Bioscience employees are collaborating better through a new corporate intranet, and IT staffers are saving time using powerful tools to remotely manage the desktop.

 

Situation

Founded in 1977, Meridian Bioscience manufactures immunodiagnostic test kits and transport media for reference laboratories, hospitals, and doctors' offices. Its products enable clinicians and health researchers to perform rapid diagnostic tests for respiratory illness, gastrointestinal disease, viruses, and parasites. Its Life Science division, which is based in Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Maine, manufactures and sells antigens, antibodies, and reagents used by researchers and diagnostics firms. It also manufactures proteins and other biologics for drug developers. Meridian Bioscience has a European sales and distribution office in Milan, Italy, and markets its products in more than 60 countries.

We wanted to provide our employees with the latest tools so they could work to their highest potential, but our technology platform was slowing them down. Keith Crispin MIS Supervisor, Meridian Bioscience

For the past five years, Meridian Bioscience has enjoyed consistent growth, attributable to new product development; increased distribution of its high-value, high margin, rapid diagnostic tests; and a profitable series of acquisitions. Sales have increased from U.S.$65 million annually in 2003 to between $140 and $142 million in 2008.

However, the company’s IT environment had not kept pace with this growth. At the Cincinnati headquarters, Meridian Bioscience employees used an older version of the Microsoft® Office System. They had difficulties scanning documents and opening files received from other companies, and calls to the help desk were frequent. “Our employees are innovative, technologically savvy people,” says David Shardelow, Director of Information Services and Technology at Meridian Bioscience. “We wanted to provide our employees with the latest tools so they could work to their highest potential, but our technology platform was slowing them down.”

In essence, employees could not collaborate efficiently across business or departmental units. People shared documents via e-mail, which created versioning and storage problems. Employees also wasted time trying to find business information stored on a shared network drive. Well aware of these problems, the executive management team asked for a corporate intranet to provide a communication and collaboration environment where data could be consolidated, accessed, and shared.

The IT department had to manage the growing number of personal computers and laptops required by the increasing staff. Their job was complicated by the more than 50 desktop images they had to maintain. Routine administrative tasks, such as issuing new personal computers, deploying new software, performing security updates, and troubleshooting employees’ issues all required IT staff to physically visit the desktop. This caused unproductive downtime for employees. “Our relatively small IT staff did not have the centralized tools to perform desktop management remotely,” says Shardelow. “We needed tools and technology that would free them from unproductive labor and help them to provide better service to our employees.”

Meridian Bioscience also has to ensure compliance with Federal Drug Agency (FDA) requirements concerning application validation. The testing and verification of some of Meridian Biosciences applications to meet FDA regulations was complicated by the number of different versions of those applications within the company. 

The combination of these factors prompted Meridian Bioscience to take action. As a result, the company decided to standardize its IT environment on current Microsoft products and technologies. In late 2005, Shardelow and his team began investigating cost-effective, planned approaches to acquiring an integrated suite of Microsoft desktop and server software that he could present to senior management.

Solution

To support Meridian Bioscience’s aggressive sales and profit growth plans, the IT team chose to work closely with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner PCMS. PCMS helped put in place a Microsoft technology acquisition and implementation plan. The plan aligned with Meridian Biosciences’s strategic information technology goals to:

• Standardize the IT environment on the current Microsoft technology.
• Provide end users with up-to-date business productivity tools.
• Implement a corporate intranet.
• Improve desktop infrastructure optimization.

“We don’t have the time to familiarize ourselves with the intricacies of licensing agreements,” says Shardelow. “PCMS has a deep understanding of the full array of Microsoft promotions, programs, and licensing agreements. We shared our strategic business plans with them and based on their understanding of our infrastructure, we came up with a product acquisition and phased deployment strategy that included full use of Microsoft licensing programs, services, and promotions.”

It was in March 2006 that Meridian Bioscience entered into a three-year Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. This licensing program provides the company with cost-effective pricing based on the number of desktops covered, and it includes access to new version rights for the software covered under the agreement. Meridian Bioscience’s agreement covers licenses for Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and the Windows® XP Professional operating system on 400 desktops. The Enterprise Agreement also includes the Microsoft Core Client Access License (CAL) Suite that comprises four foundational servers to support the company’s business goals over time. These server products include:

• Windows Server® 2003 R2 operating system to provide identity management and tools that simplify software deployment, management, and network administration.
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to provide enterprise communications.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to provide collaborative workspaces, content management, streamlined business processes, and search.
• Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 R2 to provide software distribution and asset management.

Meridian Bioscience also decided to take advantage of Microsoft Software Assurance for Volume Licensing under its Enterprise Agreement. Software Assurance is a comprehensive maintenance benefit that Meridian Bioscience uses to maximize the value of its technology investment, such as taking advantage of new version upgrades. Since signing the agreement, Meridian Bioscience has upgraded to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and is finalizing their upgrade to Microsoft Office Professional 2007. The company has also added two Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 database software licenses to the agreement.

“We used our Microsoft licensing agreement to take advantage of emerging technologies that meet our goals to deploy an organization-wide, standardized infrastructure at a single price,” says Shardelow. “In this competitive environment, our Microsoft licensing agreement helps us proactively build a well-managed IT infrastructure that becomes a strategic asset we can use to deliver results.”

Benefits

Since signing its Enterprise Agreement two years ago, Meridian Bioscience increased the value of its IT investments through significant cost savings and the support tools and productivity benefits included under Software Assurance. The company also gained an IT infrastructure that amplifies its employees’ productivity across the enterprise and improves desktop infrastructure optimization. At the same time, Meridian Bioscience is enjoying a simplified, flexible approach to procuring and deploying Microsoft products.

Increasing the Value of IT Investments

For Meridian Bioscience, an Enterprise Agreement delivers the most cost effective pricing for a company of its size. “PCMS completed a cost analysis that was instrumental in our cost justification and documenting the overall value of the software provided to Meridian Bioscience,” says Shardelow. “We also benefit from making predictable yearly payments over time to assist with cash flow, and from the program’s deployment flexibility. This was a boon, because we only had the IT personnel bandwidth to deploy some of the software during the first year.”

Through Software Assurance, access to the latest version of Microsoft Office at no extra cost means our employees can use Microsoft technology as soon as we are ready, without a lengthy approval process. David Shardelow Director of Information Services and Technology, Meridian Bioscience

And with Software Assurance New Version Rights, Meridian Bioscience will save money on two significant product upgrades before the end of its Enterprise Agreement. “Through Software Assurance, access to the latest version of Microsoft Office at no additional cost means our employees can use Microsoft technology as soon as we are ready, without a lengthy approval process,” says Shardelow. “Now we can offer them the desktop productivity tools they need to maintain our competitive edge.”

Meridian Bioscience saved money on training costs because IT staffers used training vouchers available under Software Assurance to learn how to efficiently maintain and support new communication and collaboration technologies such as Microsoft Systems Management Server and Exchange Server 2007.

Meridian Bioscience employees also benefit from the value of discounted Microsoft Office software available through the Home Use Program. “Many employees have purchased Office Professional 2003 and we are encouraging and seeing our employees getting their licensed copy of Office Professional 2007 to take home and use,” says Shardelow. “It’s going to cut down on our formal training costs. We have 400 copies available for employees and they only pay the cost of shipping.”

Amplifying Employees’ Productivity

Meridian Bioscience’s Enterprise Agreement provides a simple, cost-effective way to acquire current Microsoft technologies that employees can use to work more productively. The company worked with PCMS to build a corporate intranet using Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, taking advantage of some funding from Microsoft to offset a portion of the deployment costs. Since upgrading to Office SharePoint Server 2007 in January 2008, the company is expanding its collaboration infrastructure to facilitate cross-business and cross-departmental projects and streamline workflow.

“Product development is a key element of our corporate growth strategy,” says Shardelow. “As part of our Core CAL license, our researchers can use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to collaborate and innovate to expand our product lines and grow the business.”

Within IT, staffers are also collaborating more effectively. When Meridian Bioscience performed an upgrade of its enterprise resource planning system at the Cincinnati, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; and Portland, Maine facilities, employees from all locations used an Office SharePoint Server 2007 site to improve team work and project management. Another SharePoint site forms a collaboration portal for financial employees to streamline the accounts payable process. Finance staffers in Cincinnati scan all invoices and send the images to the remote locations where they are approved and then returned to headquarters for processing—all through automated e-mails that follow a prescribed workflow. “We used Office SharePoint Server 2007 to eliminate a manual business process at our U.S. remote offices,” says Keith Crispin, MIS Supervisor at Meridian Bioscience. “Now staffers in our remote locations are free to pursue more important financial duties.”

Meridian Bioscience is also planning to deploy the enterprise search functionality within Office SharePoint Server 2007. “PCMS told us about a Microsoft promotion to offset the cost of migrating our shared drive storage to Office SharePoint Server 2007 and deploying the Office SharePoint Server 2007 search engine,” says Shardelow. “Now we can respond to our employee’s requests for better search.”

Improving Desktop Infrastructure Optimization

IT department staffers are working more efficiently and improving desktop management using Systems Management Server 2003 centralized tools for comprehensive inventory analysis, operating system and software distribution, software usage tracking, and reporting.

“Implementing Systems Management Server 2003 through our Enterprise Agreement, we made progress towards desktop infrastructure optimization using automated processes to save IT staffers’ time, reduce disruptions for our end users, and ultimately reduce Meridian Bioscience’s costs,” says Crispin. “Using Systems Management Server 2003 to deploy Office 2003 remotely to all Cincinnati desktops we saved five calendar weeks. We’ve reduced the time required for single security updates from 10 days to 2, and used reporting functionality to see which machines received the updates correctly. We are not visiting peoples’ desktops, and employees are not being disrupted. And when we phase in the two remote sites, the benefits will apply to those offices as well.”

We used Office SharePoint Server 2007 to eliminate a manual business process at our U.S. remote offices. Now staffers in our remote locations are free to pursue more important financial duties. Keith Crispin MIS Supervisor, Meridian Bioscience

IT staffers are also using the User State Migration Tool 3.0 that comes with Windows XP Professional to reduce by 50 percent the time it takes to migrate user files and settings from one machine to another. This reduces downtime for employees who are waiting for a new or replacement computer. 

Since signing its Enterprise Agreement, Meridian Bioscience has reduced the number of images that IT staffers have to maintain from 50 to 4. “This saves time for IT staffers and makes it easier for Meridian Bioscience to ensure compliance with FDA regulations,” says Shardelow. “For example, we have to validate that our document management system is compatible with [Microsoft Office] Word, and this is much easier if we only have one version of Word to validate against.”

Simplifying Software License Management

With its Enterprise Agreement, Meridian Bioscience simplified license management by placing just one purchase order annually. Using the annual true-up capability, Meridian Bioscience can run software on its desktops as it is acquired during the year, then pay a pre-determined price for the software licenses at each anniversary date. This cuts a lot of paperwork out of busy IT employees’ duties, especially for a growing company that’s adding new people.

“As we continue our growth and expand the use of Microsoft products, true-up is a productivity enhancer because it minimizes the time that we have to worry about administrative details. Not only in IT, but in Purchasing, Accounts Payable, and other departments, True-up allows us to focus on strategic IT work,” says Shardelow. “This Enterprise Agreement proved to be a simple, flexible, and cost-effective method to acquire productivity enhancing technology that supports our long-term goals.”

Microsoft Volume Licensing
Microsoft® Volume Licensing offers customized programs that are designed to meet the needs of your business. Tailored for companies of different sizes and purchasing preferences, these Volume Licensing programs provide simple, flexible, and affordable solutions that can help you manage your licenses with ease. Whether you have five or thousands of desktop PCs, Microsoft Volume Licensing has the right program for you.   

To acquire the latest Microsoft technology at a significant cost savings through Microsoft Volume Licensing, contact your Microsoft Partner or local reseller.

To learn more about Microsoft Volume Licensing, visit:
www.microsoft.com/licensing

 

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about PCMS products and services, call (513) 587-3100 or visit the Web site at:
www.itadvisorgroup.com

For more information about Meridian Bioscience products and services, call (513) 271-3700 or visit the Web site at:
www.meridianbioscience.com