FDMC: Digitizing the healthcare industry with low-code

The company

Established in 2007, FDMC—or Fourth Dimensional Medical Company—is a healthcare service and equipment provider based out of Kuwait. They provide products and services for a diverse range of medical needs, including respiratory care, mobility aids, surgical disposables, pharmaceuticals, compression garments, dermatology, and plastic surgery. Although FDMC is renowned for their home medical equipment and surgical instruments, one of their primary divisions is their retail pharmacies.

We recently interviewed Bashar Gerges, CRM and software development manager, and Mohamed Roshan, senior developer, of FDMC to learn about their processes and why they needed a low-code solution.

Here's their story.

The challenge

Being one of the largest medical equipment showrooms in Kuwait, FDMC receives orders and inquiries via many channels, including calls on their PBX, WhatsApp, and Instagram. They also have a dedicated team to handle these orders.

However, since these orders were handled manually, the whole process was chaotic. It affected the speed of delivery, inventory visibility, and overall productivity of their employees.

Major bottlenecks

• Zero traceability - Nobody could tell the source of an order, who had attended to it, or which pharmacy it was procured from.
• Slow TAT - Many orders were missed and delayed during peak demand since there wasn't a system in place to record the data.
• Inventory visibility - Each time an order came in, the call center had to make a call and check with the other pharmacies on the stock of that particular item.

The solution

To handle this large volume of orders from multiple sources, they needed omnichannel software that could also be integrated with their PBX (Private Branch Exchange), across all 8 branches.

At first, Gerges considered the obvious options:

• Purchase software as-is and ask the providers to customize it based on the business' needs, which can be expensive.
• Build the software from scratch, which is time-consuming.

However, after a lot of thinking, he decided he wanted the best of both worlds—low-code.

He was already familiar with the Zoho ecosystem, and was up to date on all the different apps we provide. Since Zoho Creator supported customization, workflows, and validations, he thought it fit FDMC's requirements and decided to give it a shot.

In three months, they built their first application—OMS, an order management system. It acts as a front end application, and is integrated with their ERP (built-on Odoo), and multiple other third-party services.

The initial skeleton of the OMS was created in less than a month. In the next two months, with the help of their senior developer Mohamed Roshan, the application structure, tweaks on modules based on the business use case, and other enhancements were done.

With OMS, FDMC's order management process became a well-oiled machine. Be it receiving the order, keeping every stakeholder updated, tracking order status in real time, or automating the payment process, everything is streamlined and traceable.

After implementing OMS, they now have:

• High visibility - Pre-Creator, they couldn't keep track of which customer reached out to them via which channel. But now their team is able to log every call, every Whatsapp chat, and every Instagram DM, owing to the integrations between their PBX, ERP, and the Creator-built Order Management System.
• Better customer experience - Even if an order has been placed and they don't have that item, the customer details and what they requested are logged in Zoho Creator. Whenever the items are back in stock, they pull the data, reach out to the respective customers, and drop them a message. This kind of targeted marketing helped them improve their relationships with their customers.
• Deep insights - The choice to create personalized dashboards and view reports in different formats, like kanban, maps, and calendar, has helped them gain better understanding of their customer data and make better-informed decisions.

Benefits and ROI

The Order Management System (OMS) built on Creator, the ERP built on Odoo, and a combination of multiple platforms makes the whole process a seamless affair for FDMC.

Integration with Xontel (PBX)

• Once a call is received on their PBX, Zoho Creator can open a URL and push the caller's number as a parameter in the URL.
• Gerges has designed a Zoho Creator Page where the customer record is displayed, filtered by the customer phone number as a variable.
• This ensure that the customer database will appear in front of the agent who received the call.

ERP integration with Odoo

• When an order is placed, the OMS checks the quantity of the items on their ERP.
• Once the inventory is checked, their sales team selects the quantity and the store based on the stock, chooses the pharmacy closest to the particular order's address, and dispatches it.
• The respective pharmacy is able to see the relevant details on Zoho Creator.

Sound notification on the web with middleware software

• Whenever an order is submitted, middleware software integrated with a separate Page on Creator sends a sound notification to the pharmacy.
• This is to inform the pharmacy that there is an incoming order that they need to execute.

Delivery tracking with Tookan

• Once they process the order, they assign it to a driver using a third-party application called Tookan.
• On Tookan, a task will get created and assigned to the driver, and the driver will see it on his Tookan mobile application.
• They will be able to see which pharmacy has created this order and pick up the order from there.
• Updates like starting and ending the trip, delivery success and failure, adding notes, taking proof of delivery, and any other action the driver performs on their Tookan mobile app will reflect on Zoho Creator.

Payments with Myfatoorah

• Once the order is placed, customers are prompted to choose their preferred mode of payment.
• For online payments, there's an integration with a local payment gateway called Myfatoorah.
• Zoho Creator automatically sends a request to the Myfatoorah payment gateway.
• Afterwards, a link is triggered to the customer via SMS.
• Myfatoorah also updates the OMS with the status of the payment as soon as it is completed.

SMS configuration with local provider

• For SMS, there's another third-party integration with a local company.
• Whenever a customer has placed an order, they receive a confirmation SMS with a link to track their order.
• The customer can see the live status of the order on a custom dashboard on Zoho Creator.

Key Benefits

• Faster delivery time - Earlier, the delivery time of their orders was 2.4 hours. But now, using Zoho Creator, it has decreased to 1.4 hours.
• Complete traceability - They now have 100% traceability of who has done what, when, how, and why across every department.
• Real-time tracking - By integrating their OMS with dedicated delivery tracking software, all the stakeholders involved can view the status of their order in real time.

Apart from the Order Management System (OMS), they have four other applications built. From finance and commerce teams to HR and operations, various departments across 8 branches are using these applications:

• Invoice management system - IMS is used for monthly invoicing processes, including subscriptions, supplier documents, and invoice verification.
• SilverPadel Administration - The SilverPadel Administration System (SPAS) is a booking/reservation application that's being used for their Padel tennis business. It covers court and training bookings, trainer scheduling, training packages, and acts as a point of sale for merchandise.
• All-In-One - All-In-One is a prototype module that will soon handle the awarded tenders for supplying medical devices by multiple suppliers, tracking the tender, orders, and deliveries status.
• DevCare - DevCare is a module to track medical device installations, maintenance, and engineers schedules. It will also ease the process for the engineers, who can scan the serial number of the devices to find its maintenance history.