Metropolis to implement ERP

Pragati Simlote

NEW DELHI: Thirty thousand diagnostic tests a day, with a service catering to more than 3,000 labs and 10,000 consultants!

Metropolis Health Services, a corporate chain of diagnostic centers, is planning to connect all its centers for better functioning and coordination. It is in the process of implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) application across all its centers.

It comprises SAP and laboratory information management solution (LIMS) and is expected to go live by September 2006.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) is the solution provider and implementation partner for the project, with an estimated cost of Rs 3-4 crore.

Once implemented, around 1,200-1,300 users across all Metropolis centers are expected to access the system. The company is also setting up a data center for consolidating all the data at one place. Metropolis is in now in the process of selecting a company for setting up the data center.

Started in 1981 as a Mumbai-based lab, Metropolis now has a network of eight central laboratories and over 125 collection centers across India, besides labs in Seychelles, UAE and Sri Lanka.

Dr. Nilesh Shah, Metropolis Health Services senior vice president said, “Once up and running, the system is expected to enable Metropolis to have superior automation, data management, documentation and audit trail, which will be CFR part 11 and HL7 compliant, web access for remote registration, printing, payment, billing and reporting and centralized financial accounting, material management, HR, CRM, etc. to provide online MIS for the group/center among others.”

He added, “IT plays very critical role in Metropolis operations and services to customers. The annual IT budget for this year is approximately Rs 4 crore and the major challenge for us will be error free/efficient implementation of the new ERP system without affecting day to day operations.”

Metropolis plans to integrate the ERP solution with its portal to provide a web-based solution to its customers. Users can login to the portal to avail services like online test request, real-time online sample and order tracking, real-time WebReport, online MAT charts and trend analysis for customers.

Metropolis currently has a network of 100 computers connected to a high-end SQL server. This is replicated in its entire sister labs.

Its IT partners include Image computers, which provides software support and Orient technology, which provides hardware/network support.

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