DEACOM has announced that Tower Laboratories Ltd has selected its ERP solution. Tower Laboratories is a manufacturer of effervescent tablets, powders, and granulations. The Effervescent Products Market is set to have a CAGR of 8.7% from 2017 to 2025 (Source: Persistance Market Research). By 2022 the total addressable market is set to be US$22 Billion in North America alone.
To meet that growing demand Tower Laboratories has invested in the DEACOM ERP solution to optimize its processes and help it scale both domestically and abroad. The international market is set to reach $57 billion by 2025 with APAC growing fastest. Tower Laboratories are already seeing increasing demand and larger contracts from big box retailers.
The beauty of a single solution
The DEACOM solution will replace several disparate solutions. Tower Laboratories Ltd currently has systems for accounting, inventory, labour, warehouse management, and electronic data interchange (EDI). In replacing several products with a single solution it reduces costs of maintenance, both direct and indirect. It will also give the management a single view of the whole business performance. This will enable it to rapidly identify things that need resolving before they become issues.
DEACOM has a more traditional approach to ERP deployment than other vendors. The press release states that it: “writes critical business functionality in-house and directly into the core platform.” While this means that each of its clients receive their chosen bespoke functionality it also improves the core product. There are risks to this approach. The core ERP can become unwieldy and development can become unbalanced as they address specific customer requirements. The knack is to develop the software in a way that it retains its flexibility going forward for future customers.
For Tower Laboratories this was important as they looked to address some key challenges.
Four challenges faced
DEACOM identified four challenges facing Tower Laboratories that needed solving.
Validation: All Tower Laboratories products are US FDA and cGMP compliant. In centralising all the relevant procedures into single ERP solution it will simplify the process of validation for 21 CFR Part 11. Rather than checking with several systems Tower Laboratories can perform the validation from a single system.
EDI: With the retirement of a separate EDI solution, Tower Laboratories can streamline the whole EDI process. This is especially important when dealing with the large retailers that continue to use EDI for communication. The DEACOM ERP solution is configured to automatically send messages in the correct format at an appropriate time, without manual intervention, other than approval where required.
Quality Control and Lot traceability: Traceabiity is critical for Tower Laboratories. It needs to track supplier batches and in which products they are used. The new ERP solution and warehouse management will track lots through the entire supply chain. This ensures that it can identify the source batch should there be a quality issue in a finished product.
Internationalization: As Tower Laboratories looks to expand and sell into international markets, DEACOM provides the appropriate regulatory documents for each of the countries they operate in. It does this through a report designer. While DEACOM states that its ERP is internationally compliant in the press release, it is clear that this is a potential capability only. It does not mean that all the documentation for the relevant countries is already in place.
What does this mean
What is interesting is that this is one of the leading manufacturers in the market. It is also a growing market. If the implementation goes well and Tower Laboratories succeeds in growing internationally through export, then DEACOM will have provided them the single ERP solution that they need. However, if the company opts to expand operations abroad through acquisition it will be interesting to see whether they select DEACOM in those international locations. If they do then DEACOM might well consider its own international expansion plans in this market.
