Consolidate Moves “Back to the Future” Discovering that Progress OpenEdge is Still the Right Choice for Customers
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Industries:
HealthcareProducts:
OpenEdgeChallenge
Today’s hospitals need a reliable, integrated system to manage millions of pieces of medical equipment to help reduce healthcare costs.Solution
Progress Application Partner Consolidate delivers a state-of-the-art system to hospitals throughout Norway and Denmark for tracking medical equipment and inventory.Result
Provides customers with a highly reliable solution, a flexible system that can integrate efficiently with other technologies and platforms, and a low total cost of ownership.Full Story
Challenge
“Don’t fix what isn’t broken.” Rasmussen can attest to this maxim. When he and his partners launched Consolidate, they also secured the rights to Merida. Though the Progress-based application was a tremendous success and customer satisfaction was very high, the previous owners of Merida felt that the 20-year old solution needed to be replaced by a new platform. During the last year prior to the acquisition they undertook prototyping different technologies and eventually decided to replace the Progress OpenEdge platform with Microsoft .NET
Solution
With the launch of his new company and his recent acquisition of Merida, Rasmussen expected to deliver a state-of-the art, brand new solution to his customers based on Microsoft .NET. He soon found that the new Merida application lacked the reliability, flexibility and ease of maintenance so critical in a hospital environment and that Merida customers had come to expect. “There were too many issues with functionality and stability. Customers weren’t leaving us yet, but they were certainly considering it because they just didn’t trust our solution any longer.”
Realizing it needed to make a change, Consolidate reviewed its various options. “After testing the possibilities internally and to the market, we realized that the legacy and business processes that were supported in the previous, OpenEdge-based application were of huge value to our customers and at the same time hard to replace,” says Rasmussen. “Based on our company’s needs and our customers’ requirements, we determined that Progress was the best choice for our roadmap, and a well qualified decision was to modernize the Merida application using the OpenEdge platform as a part of our future solution.”
All of Consolidate’s Merida customers are now on the newest, modernized version of the OpenEdge-based solution, and Rasmussen says customer response has been very positive. “For the last year we have been focused on driving customer satisfaction. In fact, we held our customer conference just a few weeks ago and customer satisfaction has substantially improved since moving back to OpenEdge.”
Realizing it needed to make a change, Consolidate reviewed its various options. “After testing the possibilities internally and to the market, we realized that the legacy and business processes that were supported in the previous, OpenEdge-based application were of huge value to our customers and at the same time hard to replace,” says Rasmussen. “Based on our company’s needs and our customers’ requirements, we determined that Progress was the best choice for our roadmap, and a well qualified decision was to modernize the Merida application using the OpenEdge platform as a part of our future solution.”
All of Consolidate’s Merida customers are now on the newest, modernized version of the OpenEdge-based solution, and Rasmussen says customer response has been very positive. “For the last year we have been focused on driving customer satisfaction. In fact, we held our customer conference just a few weeks ago and customer satisfaction has substantially improved since moving back to OpenEdge.”
Result
Rasmussen has advice to other Progress Application Partners considering a move away from OpenEdge: “Building a brand new system from scratch with a new technology sounds exciting but it can be a very dangerous thing to do. Be careful. There should be very good reasons for changing platforms, not just because you want to play around with a different technology or new bells and whistles. This is your business, and any changes need to be done so with serious consideration and valid reasons. If you are just looking for new functionality, a new user interface (UI), etc., that can be accomplished by modernizing your application with Progress OpenEdge.”
Consolidate has re-discovered a valuable long-term partner in Progress, says Rasmussen. “Progress fits our long-term goals and meets the demanding and changing needs of our industry. They have been a trusted, strategic partner of ours for close to 20 years, and we hope the relationship continues for at least another 20.”
Consolidate has re-discovered a valuable long-term partner in Progress, says Rasmussen. “Progress fits our long-term goals and meets the demanding and changing needs of our industry. They have been a trusted, strategic partner of ours for close to 20 years, and we hope the relationship continues for at least another 20.”