Company Facts
- Location: Balcatta, Western Australia
- Industry: Aged Care
- Number of Residents: more than 4,000
- Website: juniper.org.au
“We were particularly impressed with the flexible nature and modular structure of Epicor’s ERP platform. We also enjoy a strong and productive relationship with Epicor’s Alliance Partner, Precise Business Solutions whose team demonstrates local expertise; impeccable on-the-ground support and ongoing technical advice.”
David Fisher,,
COO
JUNIPER
Customer profile
Juniper is a charitable organisation that delivers high quality services in residential facilities and in people’s homes across the state of Western Australia. Currently, Juniper provides services to over 4,000 people, employs more than 1,400 staff and receives support from 500 volunteers.
The organisation offers aged care, community care and support services in the following areas:
- Community Care: Therapy Services and Home and Community Care
- (HACC) services
- Residential Care : Dementia specific, high care, low care and respite care
- Independent Living and Serviced units
- Respite Care: Dedicated respite services
In total, Juniper operates 56 business sites, including 20 aged care facilities and 14 independent living villages.
SUCCESS HIGHLIGHTS
Challenges and Opportunities
Juniper currently manages independent living communities at fourteen retirement villages; thirteen low care residential services located either at retirement villages or on their own separate site; and, seven intermixed facilities with both low and high level care.
Epicor Solution and Services
- Epicor Senior Living Solution
- Epicor Financial Management
- Epicor Advanced Requisition Management (ARM)
Epicor Solution and Services
Juniper identified Epicor Software’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform as the one most able to fit its goal of deploying a strong, highly functional and low total cost of ownership financial and client/resident management platform.
Benefits
- Gained full control of and increased visibility to all of the more than 2,500 suppliers associated with the business
- Saved well in excess of $1 million throughout the 09/10 financial year to date
- Ease of integration with other applications and access to real time data
The Challenge
As a major player in the aged care market in Western Australia, Juniper wanted to have the correct technology platforms in place to manage growth and effectively cater for the changing needs of the business. As part of that objective, having previously used a paper-based system to process all of its financial requirements including the storage of data pertaining to individual suppliers, requisitions and purchase orders, the company wanted to drive greater efficiencies, improve its existing practices and gain greater visibility for management by moving to a fully automated electronic system.
The Solution
Juniper’s legacy finance system was simply not equipped to handle the changing needs of the business or its continued growth. Juniper identified Epicor Software’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as the most suitable platform on the market to deliver, highly functional and low total cost of ownership financial and client/ resident management. Juniper also implemented Epicor Advanced Requisition Management (ARM)—a core element within Epicor’s broader product suite which is designed and developed by Precise—with a view to improving its purchasing processes. Epicor ARM is an online requisition management and workflow solution that delivers full-cycle procurement functionality securely to the desktop through an individual user’s web browser.
Juniper works with Precise Business Solutions, to manage and continually enhance their enterprise information system. Commenting on his engagement with Precise, David Fisher said, “Precise Business Solutions demonstrated its ability to implement the system with their formal and rigorous methodology during the demos and various meetings.”
Juniper also uses Epicor Software’s Senior Living Solution (SLS) as it was particularly important that there was ease of integration between the company’s financial and resident management solutions.
The Result
Since implementing Epicor’s ERP platform, and more specifically as a result of leveraging the full capabilities of ARM, Juniper has achieved a number of significant business benefits.
Initially a secondary goal of the project, David Fisher describes ARM as something of a ‘surprise packet’ in terms of the extent of those benefits. The organisation has completely changed both practice and culture with its procurement processes, gaining full control of and increased visibility to all of the more than 2,500 suppliers associated with the business. In fact, it has significantly rationalised the number of vendors and greatly improved the relationships it has with its key providers of capital equipment, operational supplies and services. Not only can Juniper better assess the status of various suppliers, it can also forecast more effectively. With so much more accurate data available in real-time, at its disposal, Juniper knows ahead of time what each facility needs and the various quantities that are required, and so can negotiate discounted rates with suppliers.
In addition, if there is a need to change or replace an existing supplier at short notice, Juniper can execute such a change immediately due the flexibility and robust nature of ARM and Epicor’s ERP suite ensures that all data entered is integrated into the system accurately and in real-time. All this is achieved while improving visibility to commitments, exercising authorisation levels effectively and, ultimately, making life easier for end users. In terms of capital expenditure, operational supplies and R&M, Juniper believes it saved well in excess of $1 million throughout the 09/10 financial year to date due to tight control over the procurement and purchasing process.
“Epicor Advanced Requisition Management enables us to keep tight control over capital and operational expenditure. More importantly it has improved process efficiencies, optimised inventory levels, and reduced costs right across our organisation.” In addition to the greater controls Juniper has achieved throughout its purchasing processes, it no longer has to carry out accruals at month-end. Managers can also now access detailed information on history and trends for specific line items, cost categories, and individual people on a daily basis. ARM is highly intuitive and helps detect and prevent errors that were being routinely made prior to its implementation.
David Fisher provides a simple example. “One of our facilities hadn’t purchased any toilet roll to date this year, however its costs for office supplies were particularly high. On further investigation it transpired that it was entering the wrong code for paper, and thanks to ARM he was able to identify this error almost immediately.
Since Juniper has gone live with ARM, it has raised more than 25,000 purchase orders. Had they not implemented the solution, the organisation feels that it would not have the resources or the capacity to control this volume. Juniper believes that its decision to move purchasing and requisition processes onto an electronic system has generated innumerable benefits through its ease of integration with other applications and access to real-time data on an ongoing basis.
About Precise Business Solutions
Precise Business Solutions (Precise) has been a leading provider of business software solutions and associated services to the Australian and international marketplace since 1995. We are a wholly owned Western Australian company servicing a global customer base, with operations in Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States.
We empower medium to large businesses to optimise their operations with tailored Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solutions, implemented collaboratively using our agile Precision methodology.
Precise can help you to streamline your business operations and achieve your business objectives through flexible, industry specific software solutions. We make it our business to understand yours, with your project and business goals guiding each stage of the process.
