Vianex

Pharmaceutical Firm Cuts Software Costs and Management Time with Volume Program

VIANEX is the leading pharmaceutical company in Greece. To consistently improve quality and productivity, and reduce waste, the company wanted to provide managers with a comprehensive view of sales and marketing data from its eight offices, and to more efficiently maintain critical documents required for ISO compliance. It also wanted to centralize software license acquisition and management. By enrolling in the Company-wide option of the Microsoft® Volume Licensing Open Value program , VIANEX reduced license acquisition costs by about 30 percent and license management time by 70 percent. Those savings helped facilitate deployment of a business intelligence solution based on Microsoft SQL Server® 2005, and upgrades to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007. As a result, VIANEX is seeing improved sales and marketing intelligence and enhanced communications.

 

Situation

VIANEX, the leading pharmaceutical company in Greece, was started in Athens in 1924, just as the pharmaceutical industry in that country began moving from in-store preparation of medications by pharmacists toward commercially manufactured products. The private company grew rapidly over the next several decades and, in 1971, became a societé anonyme (S.A.). Since then, VIANEX has continued to grow, increasing net sales from nearly €29.8 million (approximately U.S.$39.5 million) in 1990 to €354.5 million (approximately U.S.$470 million) in 2007. During that time, VIANEX established strategic partnerships with leading international pharmaceutical companies.

Today, the company markets and manufactures more than 400 pharmaceutical and over-the-counter products in compliance with the ISO 9001 standards. It sells those products to hospitals, pharmacies, and pharmaceutical warehouses throughout Greece, the rest of Europe, and other countries. VIANEX employs more than 1,000 people in eight offices—including its headquarters in Nea Erythrea—and four factories located throughout Greece. To stay competitive, the company dedicates extensive resources to research and development to constantly improve quality, reduce waste, and extend product shelf life.

Now that we can more accurately estimate our licensing costs over the next three years, we can make better decisions about the new IT projects we want to initiate. Pavlos Giannakopoulos President, VIANEX

With its offices spread out across Greece, it was difficult for VIANEX to get a comprehensive view of sales results or the response to marketing efforts. The company’s immediate customers are hospitals and major pharmaceutical warehouses that distribute VIANEX products to small pharmacies across a large geographic area. To analyze the sales and the market potential of a geographic area, VIANEX had to combine sales information from various data sources within the distribution pipeline. “One of the critical issues that our company faces is the need for companywide sales and marketing analysis,” says Christos Meschinis, CIO for VIANEX. “In the past, the data came from several disconnected data sources, which made it difficult for managers to get a broad picture of what was selling and where. We really needed a business intelligence solution that would be easy to use, and would provide decision makers in all the offices with detailed, real-time reporting and analysis tools.”

Another challenge the company faced was communication and collaboration among all of its offices for both product development and marketing. “As a pharmaceutical company, we’re obliged to maintain a lot of critical documents, including product specifications, operating procedures, and machine production statistics, to comply with ISO standards and other government regulations,” says Meschinis. “We really needed to maintain a centralized documentation store in digital form so that we could show all the steps in the process and find the latest versions of those documents quickly.”

The solutions that VIANEX chose to address each of its challenges needed to integrate smoothly with its existing desktop environment, adapt easily to specific needs, and be efficient to manage and maintain. At the time, most of the company’s 200 desktop and 170 laptop computers were running the Windows® XP operating system; the remainder ran the Windows Vista® operating system.

Also, each VIANEX office was responsible for acquiring and managing its own set of Microsoft® software licenses. This was time consuming and resulted in duplicated management effort, and inconsistencies in the software versions being used in each office. It also made it difficult for the company to accurately predict software costs and prevented it from taking advantage of its total license volume to get the best price.

Solution

In 2008, the company redesigned its network infrastructure to centralize management and improve collaboration among all the offices. The new network consists of 34 IBM System x servers distributed over four sites. Ten of the servers run the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise operating system, and 24 run Windows Server 2003 Standard. As part of the network redesign, VIANEX centralized all network management at its Nea Erythrea headquarters. It decided to establish a single Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement for all the Microsoft software used throughout the organization so that it could benefit from volume pricing and centralized license management while allowing individual offices to acquire licenses as needed. This move would also support standardizing software across the company so that all workers would have the same versions of software to help increase collaboration and productivity.

VIANEX enrolled in the Company-wide option within the Microsoft Volume Licensing Open Value program. The Company-wide option provides the company with a single license price per desktop for Microsoft enterprise products. VIANEX chose this licensing program because it is standardizing all of its desktops on Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 and also needs client access licenses (CALs) for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise.

In addition to getting a single price per desktop by licensing with the Open Value Company-wide option, VIANEX gained the benefit of Microsoft Software Assurance that is included with the Open Value program. Through Software Assurance VIANEX is taking advantage of:

• New version rights to upgrade software at any time, eliminating the need to track versions or open new agreements.
• Spread payments to reduce upfront costs and have predictable annual payments over three years.
• Microsoft E-Learning self-paced, interactive training on Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 for end users.
• A TechNet subscription that includes TechNet Online Concierge Chat, TechNet Managed Newsgroups, and TechNet Plus Direct.

VIANEX also plans to take advantage of the Home Use Program Software Assurance benefit that permits eligible employees to acquire a licensed copy of most 2007 Microsoft Office programs for use on a home computer.

After the new network infrastructure was in place, the company upgraded from Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise to take advantage of improved collaboration, enhanced safeguards against spam and viruses, and to benefit from easier management.

[By] eliminating the need to track versions and open new agreements, and by taking advantage of the online management tools, we reduced our license management time by about 70 percent with the Open Value program. Pavlos Giannakopoulos President, VIANEX

Then, to address its need for companywide sales and marketing analysis tools, VIANEX implemented a business intelligence (BI) solution based on Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 data management software. The solution includes a near real-time SQL Server 2005 data warehouse system, which is updated from the company’s eight data sources through SQL Server Integration Services. VIANEX also uses SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services to aggregate the sales and marketing data from all of the offices. Managers use an in-house-developed client application built on the Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 to visualize the data in charts and geographical maps and to generate customized reports that focus on the parameters they are interested in, whether by product, market, or geographic territory.

In mid-2008, VIANEX upgraded its desktop computers to Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 to prepare for eventually setting up a document management system in Office SharePoint® Server 2007. “We upgraded to the 2007 release of Microsoft Office because of its deep integration with Office SharePoint Server 2007,” says Angelos Charalambidis, Head of Software and System Engineering for VIANEX. The company is currently hosting a set of management reports in a Windows SharePoint Services environment and plans to expand that environment in the coming months.

“We’re planning to develop an advanced intranet environment for our employees based on Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007,” says Charalambidis. “In addition to company forms, collaboration capabilities, and shared calendars, employees will use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to automate workflows, streamline content review and approval processes, and safeguard digital information from unauthorized use.”

To further reduce costs and enhance communications so that it can respond more effectively to customer issues, VIANEX is looking at replacing its Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system with a Microsoft unified communications solution using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007.

Benefits

By enrolling in the Company-wide option of the Open Value program, VIANEX reduced its licensing costs by 30 percent, cut license management time by 70 percent, and gained flexibility for adding licenses throughout the agreement term. In addition, deploying a BI solution based on SQL Server and upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 and Office Enterprise 2007 helped the company provide managers with information they need for more informed decision making, and provide employees with tools for enhanced communication and collaboration.

Reduced Licensing Costs 30 percent and Management Time 70 percent

VIANEX estimates that in the first year of its enrollment in the Open Value program with the Company-wide option, it reduced its software licensing costs by about 30 percent while standardizing the software on all of its desktops.

The company also manages licenses more efficiently with the online license management tools available through the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center (formerly the eOpen Web site). The VIANEX license administrator tracks the company’s license acquisitions, downloads software available under the agreement, and accesses the Volume License Product Keys to install software all from the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC). “By centralizing Microsoft software license management, eliminating the need to track versions and open new agreements, and by taking advantage of the online management tools, we’ve reduced our license management time by about 70 percent with the Open Value program,” says Pavlos Giannakopoulos, President of VIANEX.

Gained Licensing Flexibility and Predictability

VIANEX has also gained flexibility with the Open Value Company-wide option in addition to more predictable licensing costs. It pays annually for the licenses specified in the initial agreement, but it can add new licenses as needed and pay for them during the month they are deployed. By locking in a discounted price for those licenses for three years, VIANEX can better predict its costs during the term of the agreement. “Now that we can more accurately estimate our licensing costs over the next three years, we can make better decisions about the new IT projects we want to initiate, such as implementing Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the unified communications solution,” says Giannakopoulos.

Maximized Software Assurance Value

Using the TechNet subscription resources included with the Software Assurance benefits helped VIANEX expedite its Exchange Server 2007 upgrade and the BI solution implementation. In addition, VIANEX plans to implement the self-paced E-Learning training and Home Use Program available through Software Assurance, to train end users on Microsoft Office applications including Office SharePoint Server 2007. The company expects this to reduce training costs and disruption to the organization during product deployments. “Users will be able to access the E-Learning sessions at their convenience and practice on Office 2007 applications installed on their home PCs through the Home Use Program which will eliminate the need for formal classroom training,” says Charalambidis.

Improved Sales and Marketing Intelligence

Now, with the BI solution based on SQL Server 2005, VIANEX managers get an aggregated view of sales and marketing data from many different data sources. “With SQL Server technologies, our managers are able to easily aggregate the input from all the data sources and analyze it in a meaningful way, by geographic area, target market, and other parameters,” says Meschinis. “They also can quickly create customized reports to support better informed decisions.”

Enhanced Communications

With the built-in security technologies in Exchange Server 2007, VIANEX is reducing spam and viruses, supporting confidential communications, and maintaining regulatory compliance. “We estimate that, since upgrading to Exchange Server 2007, we’ve reduced spam by 95 percent, which definitely helps increase our employees’ productivity,” says Charalambidis.

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 VIANEX products and services, call (30) (210) 8009111 or visit the Web site at:
www.vianex.gr