Advanced Medical Solutions Group Gains Flexible Foundation for International Growth with GL Wand for Oracle

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY 2013-2014

“We downloaded GL Wand and within an hour, I was trialling the reporting solution and using it to drill directly into Oracle from Excel. That immediately told us just how powerful GL Wand was.” - Sam Wilkinson, Business Unit Financial Controller, Advanced Medical Solutions Group plc

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY2013–2014

Advanced Medical Solutions Group plc is a company in high-growth mode, having made recent acquisitions that have dramatically expanded its international footprint and global sales. It chose Excel4apps as its partner because GL Wand is an easy-to-use financial reporting tool for Oracle that flexibly accommodates change and growth, even with limited IT resources. With GL Wand’s ability to drill into live Oracle, subledger details are at the fingertips of the financial team, expediting inter-company reconciliations.

When you grow as quickly as Advanced Medical

Solutions Group (AMS), developer and manufacturer

of innovative wound care products, you don’t want

anything to slow you down or hold you back—least of

all your back-office processes. That is why the UK-based

firm selected Excel4apps’ GL Wand solution for financial

reporting from its Oracle 12.1.2 system, even before the

Oracle system went live in February 2012.

“We knew Oracle was a really good tool for transacting,

but we also knew we needed something more for

reporting,” said Sam Wilkinson, Business Unit Financial

Controller for AMS and finance lead on the Oracle

project. “GL Wand lets us drill down easily from

the general ledger to see exactly what is going on

in the business.”

Keeping a tight focus on manufacturing and its ongoing

impact on the company’s bottom line is critical for

AMS, which has grown rapidly since its founding in 1991

through strategic acquisitions that added manufacturing

operations in the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech

Republic to its portfolio. Today, the company has a

global customer base and employs more than 400

people globally. Yet its growth has been prudent as well

as fast. AMS keeps a tight rein on IT resources. That was

another reason GL Wand looked like such a good fit.

Cost Effective and Easy to Sse“We looked at Oracle’s Financial Statement

Generator (FSG), but it would have required

IT development,” said Wilkinson. “One of the

good things about GL Wand is that once you’ve

installed it, IT could leave finance to do all their

own reporting. That was a big plus for us. Once

we got GL Wand plugged in, we could write the

reports ourselves.”

In addition, Oracle’s Discoverer and OBIEE products

weren’t the right fit, either, from functionality and

“We have made two major acquisitions recently. With this degree of change in the organisation, it is important to have the ability to change financial reports on the fly as we need them. GL Wand provides that.” - Sam Wilkinson, Business Unit Financial Controller, Advanced Medical Solutions Group plc

cost perspectives, so GL Wand was exactly the solution

AMS needed. The easy download and free trial proved

how easy the Excel-based reporting tool was to use.

“I started Googling and happened to find GL Wand,” he

said. “We downloaded GL Wand and within an hour, I

was trialling the reporting solution and using it to drill

directly into Oracle from Excel. That immediately told us

just how powerful GL Wand was.”

Not only were the finance team impressed, IT liked what it

saw, too. “As soon as IT saw it would make their life easier

because we wouldn’t need them from a development

perspective, they bought into it.

Drill-Down Capabilities a Key StrengthAt the time of this case study in early 2014, 13 finance

people were using GL Wand. The solution first went

live in early 2012 at AMS’ Plymouth facility in the

UK, where medical glues and sealants are manufactured.

GL Wand is also now operating in the company’s

main manufacturing site in Winsford UK, which went

live more recently in February 2014. Holland will be next

in line for rollout.

AMS uses GL Wand for monthly financial closes as well as

ad hoc reports. After the system went live in Plymouth,

the finance team developed some standard P&L and

balance sheet reporting in Excel using GL Wand. “The

drill-down capability is what we find particularly useful

in GL Wand. You can look at either your financial

statement or trial balance, and if something doesn’t

make sense, in a couple of clicks you can get right

www.excel4apps.com

AMS was founded in 1991 in Winsford, Cheshire, UK.

The company develops and manufactures advanced wound care and wound closure products.

Recent acquisitions extend AMS’ reach beyond the UK and the US to Germany, Czech Republic and Russia.

About 70% of the company’s sales are international, with 20%-30% in the UK.

AMS rolled out GL Wand at the same time as its Oracle implementation.

down to the subledgers and see what is happening

in Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable or within

manufacturing and inventory.”

Up and Running QuicklyGetting started was easy. Excel4apps conducted

30 minutes of training as part of the initial sales presentation

to AMS. The finance team were able to handle things

from there.

“The templates approach that comes out of the box is

very easy and helps you get started because of the

wizard that is built in to GL Wand,” Wilkinson described. “If

you have reasonably good Excel skills, which most finance

people do, then you can link in pretty quickly.”

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Excel4apps is a best-in-class provider of Excel-based reporting, inquiry, and budget-loading software for Oracle and SAP. Designed for finance professionals, its award-winning GL Wand, Reports Wand and Budget Wand products easily and securely deliver real-time ERP data using Microsoft Excel® to save reporting time and effort. Excel4apps serves over 17,000 Oracle and SAP users in 62 countries, with offices in Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and South Africa.

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Foundation For GrowthGL Wand’s ability to handle inter-company reconciliations

is also a benefit. “We have always struggled with that.

Of course, having a single database with Oracle is a

big help. But with GL Wand, we can set up side-by-side

our intercompany balances by legal entity on a single

spreadsheet, and then we can immediately drill down

and easily spot where we have balances that haven’t

been posted on one side of the business.”

For AMS, the integrity of the GL Wand solution also provides

peace of mind. “It combines the integrity of an Oracle

database in the background, so you know you can

trust the numbers, but within the front-end reporting,

you get the flexibility, which is important to us as we

grow. Even if we change our organisational structure, GL

Wand is able to move with us. That is vital for a growing

company like ours.”

About Advanced Medical Solutions Group plc AMS manufactures wound care products for an extensive

list of Original Equipment Manufacturer (“OEM”) customers

www.excel4apps.com

“With GL Wand, you need very little IT support, so finance can own it and use it to their heart’s content.” - Sam Wilkinson, Business Unit Financial Controller, Advanced Medical Solutions Group plc

around the world, but the majority of the Group’s

revenues now come from its own brands – ActivHeal®

wound care products in the UK to the NHS, LiquiBand®

cyanoacrylate products primarily in the UK, Europe and

the USA, and RESORBA® sutures and collagen wound care

products primarily in Europe. AMS develops innovative

products from its R&D pipeline which it commercialises

globally, either directly or through partnerships with its

OEM customers.

AMS’s products are sold globally via a network of regional

or multinational partners and distributors, as well as via

AMS’s own direct sales forces in the UK, Germany, the

Czech Republic and Russia.

With 450 employees operating under four distinct business

units (Branded Direct, Branded Distributed, OEM and

Bulk Materials) that match its multiple products and

routes-to-market, AMS’s products are manufactured from

two sites in the UK, one in the Netherlands, two in Germany and one in the Czech Republic. For more information, visit www.admedsol.com.