Document management for Salesforce©:
“Clear the way for efficient work and growth”
In the past, pharmacists had to go to great lengths to produce medicines on site. In the meantime, the whole world has become a pharmacy. From central China alone, Europe imports thousands of active ingredients that are considered relevant to supply. This international cooperation is only possible because there are well-connected companies that keep an eye on their markets and know what is needed where and when. At the same time, quality and product safety are the highest priorities in this economic sector in order to protect patients.
The ferropharma group is one of these companies. Since 1989, the group has been importing and exporting pharmaceutical products worldwide, now no longer primarily from India and China. ferropharma is having more and more production carried out in European-approved production facilities. The declared goal: to make supply chains as short as possible. This keeps transaction and transport costs low for all parties involved. “We deliver the medicine that patients need worldwide,” explains Christian Schulenburg, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at ferropharma.
Patients and healthcare systems benefit from fair prices for drugs and active ingredients, especially in ferropharma’s core markets – Latin America and Europe. For years, ferropharma relied on paper documents, e-mail, and MS Office programs for this international supply chain. This system eventually reached its limits. As a company grows, paper-based processes and folder structures within email programs and distributed data cannot grow as fast as they should. In addition, documentation must be available at all times.
d.velop documents for Salesforce
Product
Pharmacy
Industry
24
Number of employees
System-specific hurdles with Salesforce
In 2017, ferropharma was therefore looking for a solution to digitize parts of its own value creation process. The pharmaceutical specialists found what they were looking for in the Salesforce platform. Salesforce is a widely used CRM system that companies can use to make business relationships digitally usable, but it also offers much more. From procurement and quoting to back-office processes such as invoice receipt entry or travel expense reporting, the company digitally converted its previous paper processes to Salesforce.
The limitations of working with documents on a daily basis quickly led ferropharma to look for a complement – an integrated document management system (DMS). In its search, ferropharma quickly came across d.velop documents for Salesforce© , a native cloud DMS that makes working with digital documents and files in Salesforce easy.
“d.velop documents for Salesforce© works completely within Salesforce,” describes Ozan Sevinc, Business Partner Manager at d.velop AG. “For this, we see beyond the end of our nose and also make adjustments for our partners.” This was also the case at ferropharma: “Another column here, another view of documents there, or even an input field for product properties – the integration in Salesforce was seamless,” says Schulenburg.
Until 2017, we worked a lot with paper and distributed data in Excel files and emails. Now we have digitized our value creation process with Salesforce. But: The document management of Salesforce was not sufficient for our project to let all global locations work paperless with each other. With d.velop documents for Saleforce, working is now possible more efficiently, it is easy to use and it works low-maintenance in the background. Clear the way for efficient work and growth.
Christian Schulenberg
CTO | ferropharma group
Edit Word and PDF documents from within Salesforce – always up-to-date
After a short setup phase, ferropharma’s employees notice that they work faster and with fewer errors. “You don’t even notice how the document management system works in the background,” says Schulenburg, “as an employee, you are guided and intuitively switch between the systems without noticing the transition.”
ferropharma maps entire processes in Salesforce, such as customer care or the design of offers. With d.velop documents for Salesforce© , the employees no longer have to change the software; editing and displaying documents works within Salesforce itself. The user interface remains the familiar Salesforce environment, supplemented by document views and editing options. An interface transfers data between Salesforce and the d.velop DMS. Processes of the operative day-to-day business are now combined by ferropharma with the usability and services of a complete document management system.
The pharmaceutical and active ingredient supplier thus has an expanded toolbox for Salesforce. “You can use it to categorize documents, for example,” says Dennis Reese, Product Manager at d.velop AG. In this context, d.velop documents for Salesforce acts as a starting point for further document-based processes. For example, the software automatically uses page separators during scanning and recognizes attributes such as suppliers, bank details and invoice numbers.
In this way, the d.velop software complements the existing functions of Salesforce to model processes, and does so in an audit-proof and GoBD-compliant manner. The abbreviation “GoBD” describes the “principles for the proper keeping and storage of books”.
„Kill two birds with one stone”
One example: working with PDF documents. Employees can, for example, view and comment on PDF contracts or PDF invoices in their familiar Salesforce environment. Office documents can be edited as usual. Even comments on photographs of delivery bills, shipments or invoices are provided for.
“We used to have to download documents from Salesforce, then edit them, save a new version and upload it again,” Schulenburg says. Employees create drafts online and continue to edit them as a team, safe in the knowledge that they are always working on the most up-to-date version.
With d.velop documents for Salesforce© ferropharma catches “To kill two birds with one stone”, as Christian Schulenburg says.
Usability is much better, memory is easy to get. With d.velop documents for Salesforce© working in Salesforce is more efficient, it is easier and error-free to use. Clear the way for growth.
Christian Schulenberg
CTO | ferropharma group