Overview
A leading international medical device manufacturer has successfully transformed access to data and analytics to unlock revolutionary business insights and informed decision making. Partnering with Dufrain to drive the project forward and leverage expert knowledge in upskilling its in-house analytics team, the results of the project are now cascading across the business, setting a new standard as it kicks on with bright expansion plans in new markets.
The client
About Salts Healthcare
Salts Healthcare is one of the UK’s oldest family-run companies, renowned as a highly successful international medical device manufacturer.
Investing heavily in research and development, it works closely with healthcare professionals and educational facilities to continually improve and innovate, designing products that truly transform the lives of patients.
Dufrain services covered:
- Data Warehousing
- Regulatory Reporting
Technologies:
Tom Wells, Strategic Head of Commercial says
I would describe working with Dufrain as, exciting, assuring, and collaborative.
This project was the first time we really had to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. But we were also excited about opportunities this would bring to make a big difference and take the business forward. The very core of what Dufrain offer is what we needed, and we felt comfortable with them from the first meeting.
The opportunity
Salts Healthcare was looking to build on its reputation as a leading provider of life-changing healthcare products and enter a new phase of growth.
The ambition was simple: how it could expand its core business and bring solutions to new healthcare segments in a logical and complementary manner?
Achieving these goals would be reliant upon the right strategic approach.
From an operational perspective, Salts Healthcare needed to ensure that all key decisions would be made on an informed basis, collecting vital information on prospective new markets and regions. This required rapid access to data to quickly distribute key insights to the wider business.
However, outdated on-premises IT infrastructure, manual processes and long ETL cycles were not allowing it to move at the pace required. Equally, a recent personnel change in its analytics team meant Salts Healthcare needed to upskill its data employees quickly by providing them with expert support.
Why did Salts Healthcare choose Dufrain?
Exciting. Assuring. Collaborative.
Salts Healthcare had two core goals for the project:
- Improve access to data and analytics to drive improved business insights and informed decision making
- Upskill its analytics team at speed with the support of experts.
Finding a vendor which could tick both these boxes proved more difficult than first anticipated, but establishing the right relationship was hugely important. Salts Healthcare required a true partner that would be forthcoming in terms of advice and support to ensure the project was tailored to its needs, and a collaborative relationship that enabled the right approach to its IT transformation. It quickly saw this potential in Dufrain.
The solution
- Understanding of business strategy and its link to data
- Discovery and proof of value
- Central Azure cloud based platform
- Roll out to the business
- Training and ongoing support.
Salts Healthcare thought a major assessment of its existing data, systems and business would be required. However, by instead focusing on understanding the specific goals of the company from the outset, Dufrain proposed a proof-of-concept build that would enable value at speed, without any need for a long, laborious assessment.
The merits of this approach were quickly realised. By bringing data into an intuitive central cloud-based platform, a vast array of insights was rapidly unlocked which the company could use to drive more informed decision making.
Salts Healthcare was delighted at how quickly it could adapt and change the solution to its needs, soon applying the model to every part of the business. Dufrain also worked closely with the internal analytics team throughout the entire project, training them and supporting them to ensure they felt comfortable and confident every step of the way.
Tom Wells, Strategic Head of Commercial says
All our data is fed directly into our new platform, setting a new standard for the business going forward. This is exactly what we needed and Dufrain put us totally at ease. We felt so assured with everything – these guys are the best at what they do.
The impact
Salts Healthcare described the upskilling of its staff by Dufrain as “invaluable”, paying particular thanks to Data Engineer Jacob Wilde who subsequently received a promotion.
The project has since spread across the entire company as the Salts Healthcare executive team realise the true value of the transformation.
With the internal transformation proving successful, Salts Healthcare has now identified a new target market, launching a flagship manufacturing project comprising investment in new machinery and the development of a product warehouse.
The company is now also looking at monetising its newfound data capabilities – a potential business avenue that it never would have explored previously.
- Enabled consolidation of various disparate sources of data into one central platform creating a single view
- Revolutionary business insights unlocked at speed via deeper analysis and reporting supporting future growth and informed decision making
- Increased efficiency by greatly reducing repeated effort from analytics team required to gather data from external sources
- Automation of data gathering allowed focus on development of the analytics function
- Internal data transformation
- Identification of new target markets with the additional benefit of revenue growth in the future.
Conor McHarg, Senior Consultant says
Salts Healthcare’s requirement to revolutionise its data platform and upskill their analytics team perfectly suited the skills and experience that Dufrain bring to the table. We were able to build a strong collaborative partnership over the course of our work together and rapidly deliver real business value through use of leading edge data technologies.
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