ethica Clinical Research's Custom ERP System from Mindprint Addresses Midsize Needs

Mindprint Inc. and ethica Clinical Research Inc. announced the successful implementation of a highly effective Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for managing all pre-sales, operations, and finance related processes for ethica Clinical Research Inc. ethica Clinical Research Inc. is a full-service Contract Research Organization (CRO) operating in Canada, Mexico and India that conducts and manages ethical clinical research on drugs, biologics, medical devices, and natural health products. ethica had evaluated multiple ERP systems and found that none fully met their requirements. All of the standard ERP systems either did not have the functionality needed to meet ethica's requirements or were so rigid that ethica would have had to change their internal processes to suit the software.

ethica originally engaged Mindprint for a two-week requirement gathering session that began with an assessment and exploration of ethica's internal work processes and resulted in the generation of the ideal processes for an ERP system that would fit ethica's size and culture. Mindprint then provided a fixed price quote for mapping all of ethica's work processes including customer relationship management, human resources, operations, timesheets, and invoicing into an Axpert based ERP system.

The entire ERP system implementation within ethica's organization (including design, development, installation, and data migration) was done in less than four months. Mindprint's iterative approach ensured that the key users at ethica were highly engaged during the entire implementation process and this resulted in a system that fit ethica like a glove. Mindprint's fixed price approach also significantly mitigated the financial risk of the project for ethica's senior management.

"Mindprint worked very efficiently and intuitively. It was very adept at understanding the complexities of our business processes and simplifying them in the context of developing an ERP system that suited our needs," said Dr. Janice Parente, President of ethica Clinical Research Inc. "Axpert has been successful at consolidating and centralizing ethica's key processes in a way that allows us to manage the business more effectively and efficiently."