Eckert & Ziegler Isotope Products segment: Successful Go-live in times of lockdown

The Eckert & Ziegler Group is one of the world's largest manufacturers of radioactive components for medical, scientific and metrological purposes. Seven years ago, BE-terna began providing ongoing support for this international group of companies. After a successful time in BE-terna's Service Center and the transition to a secure operation, the group with headquarters in Berlin, decided to replace its previous ERP system.

Dynamics 365 and BE-terna are a perfect match

At the beginning of 2018, the Isotope Products segment of the Eckert & Ziegler Group situated in the USA, also chose to implement Microsoft Dynamics F&O with BE-terna. The excellent consulting and support provided in Germany helped in the decision-making process as well as the agile project methodology. Thus, BE-terna's team prevailed against their American competitors and started the project to consolidate all applications worldwide in one solution.  

BE-terna first introduced Microsoft D365 in the Isotope Products segment in the areas of financial accounting and sales, followed by offices in the USA in 2019. The implementation of D365 F&O was close to the standard to ensure a homogeneous system landscape in the long term and lower follow-up costs for Eckert & Ziegler. In addition, the software-supported business processes were further optimised to generate more productivity, flexibility, and transparency in all company procedures. 

On 1st April, during the Covid-19 crisis, the last go-lives took place at companies in Germany and the Czech Republic.

A project during challenging times and crisis management  

Despite the pandemic lockdown, the management of Eckert & Ziegler Isotope Products segment decided to stick to their planned go-live agenda allowing its team and BE-terna to prove their competences in a new setting.

“We didn’t expect to need a crisis management team. Nevertheless, with the onset of the pandemic, BE-terna helped us to immediately realign our resources and planning”, stated Joe Hathcook, Chief Operating Officer of Eckert & Ziegler Isotope Products, Inc. He went on to say that

BE-terna, was chosen as an implementation partner for its international presence, technical capability, and lean structure. We were able to continue with the programming, data migration, validation, training, and troubleshooting using different resources, altered work shifts, and virtual interactions. We decided to hold to our schedule. Our go-live was a complete success with all support being provided 100% on-line. What we gained was transformational: Any team member can access inventory, production status, delivery details, place a quote, or enter an order, at any time, from any device, anywhere in the world.

Unusual times require special efforts

From the first day, support took place completely remotely. In daily remote meetings and sprint sessions, the whole project team discussed the most critical issues. Despite this new and unprecedented situation for the company, focus was maintained on the key topics, and efficiency was kept high without any requirements of travelling and meeting in person. The go-live in April covered all the relevant process steps within Microsoft Dynamics 365. Moreover, all necessary deliveries to customers could be made in time, which is an extremely important factor in the radiopharmaceutical business. 

Until this point, the history of other ERP migrations had been long for the Eckert & Ziegler Isotope Products segment and had featured many unhappy outcomes. This has now changed, as Joe Hathcook remarked:

BE-terna delivered an implementation that was on-schedule and on-budget using a positive, professional approach that never wavered. Achieving this result in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic was truly remarkable.

Subsequent rollouts are scheduled in April 2021 for their Brazilian companies. 

 

About Eckert & Ziegler Isotope Products, Inc.

The Eckert & Ziegler Group is one of the world's largest manufacturers of radioactive components for medical, scientific and metrological purposes. The company focuses on applications in cancer therapy, industrial radiometry and nuclear medical diagnostics. The operating business is divided into three segments: Radiotherapy, Isotope Products and Radiopharma. Eckert & Ziegler was founded in 1997 as a holding company. The oldest subsidiary, Eckert & Ziegler BEBIG GmbH, emerged in 1992 from the Central Institute for Isotope Technology, a research institute of the former Academy of Sciences of the GDR. Eckert & Ziegler has been listed on the stock exchange since 1999 and is listed in the Prime Standard of the German Stock Exchange in Frankfurt am Main.