Manufacturer Solves Data Problem with BI Solution

Business Challenge

Varian Medical Systems (Varian) is a leading manufacturer of medical devices and software for the treatment of cancer and other medical conditions, with 6,000 global employees sharing a vision to help save millions of lives every year. The company’s leading technologies—including Edge^TM, Calypso^®, PerfectPitchTM and RapidArc^®—continue to gain momentum in the medical device market, having received more than $3 billion in net product orders during fiscal year 2012.

As a result of their success, Varian experienced an increase in demand for product installations, launches, and maintenance and support services—leading to a stockpile of data from already-installed products, which was not being used to provide the competitive advantage needed to continue accelerating Varian’s growth.

Varian needed a solution that would provide user-friendly and intuitive dashboard analyses, enable system-wide software compatibility and support multiple languages. Varian turned to the experts at Armanino to take a closer look at their business intelligence (BI) systems and product maintenance processes, and asked us to recommend enhancements.

As a result of their success, Varian experienced an increase in demand for product installations, launches, and maintenance and support services—leading to a stockpile of data from already-installed products, which was not being used to provide the competitive advantage needed to continue accelerating Varian’s growth.

Varian needed a solution that would provide user-friendly and intuitive dashboard analyses, enable system-wide software compatibility and support multiple languages. Varian turned to the experts at Armanino to take a closer look at their business intelligence (BI) systems and product maintenance processes, and asked us to recommend enhancements.

Business Solution

Armanino completed a system health check, recommended system improvements and developed a customized design and roll-out plan to help Varian overcome their big data problem. Our solution included:

• Integrated Systems – To help Varian seamlessly integrated their existing systems and software with QlikView, Armanino used QlikView’s SAP Connector to ensure data continuity and integrity.
• Customized Language Solution – Due to the international customer base Varian caters to, Armanino translated select dashboards and reports in 13 different languages.
• User-Friendly Interface – Due to the varying ages of Varian’s customers, some were resistant to using mobile or different reporting technologies. Armanino ensured QlikView’s dashboards were userfriendly and intuitive.
• Focused Sales Efforts – With QlikView, Varian was able to identify potential device or software clients by region, sorting the results based on the size of the business, the type of customers and other custom categories.

Business Outcome

Based on Armanino’s assessments and recommendations, Varian successfully implemented Armanino’s BI Solution—QlikView. Some of the many positive outcomes Varian achieved include:

• Customized Dashboards Built by Armanino – Key Armaninodeveloped QlikView dashboards allowed Varian to make sense of their large amount of medical device data by breaking that data into manageable sets and allowing customized, self-service reporting. Armanino’s QlikView dashboards included:
• Contract Performance Dashboard
• Equipment and Contract Information
• Help Desk Utilization
• Maintenance and Product Notification Data
• CSS Databook Dashboard
• Contract Capture Rate
• Install Base Rate
• Average Selling Price
• Projected Contract Revenue
• Gross Margin Tracking
• Clinical Availability Dashboard
• Up/downtime Tracking
• Clinical Availability of Products at Customer Sites
• Fault and Beam Dashboards
• Error log tracking
• Fault Reports and Statistics
• Product Usage Data

• Customized Dashboards Built by Varian – QlikView provides the ultimate user-friendly interface, allowing Varian’s internal team to create additional dashboards. To date, Varian has created the following tracking and reporting dashboards:
• Shipping Data Dashboard
• Order Accuracy Dashboard
• Market Clearance Dashboard

QlikView and Armanino helped Varian empower their contract and fulltime customers with information that is easy to isolate, understand and present. Data that was not easily obtained before is now quickly available due to the various customized dashboard implementations. Armanino delivered the strategic competitive advantage, helping Varian implement a more widely adopted, successful BI platform so that they could focus on what matters most to their business: innovation and high performance standards.

March 12, 2015