Situation

CANTEST, recognized as one of Canada's 50 best managed companies is a full service laboratory providing professional analysis and consultation in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, environmental, industrial hygiene and food safety related fields. The company operates Canadian offices in BC, Manitoba and Ontario with affiliates in the United States and Southeast Asia. CANTEST has a strategic goal to double revenues and number of employees within the next two years. 

Business Challenge

Cantest Management identified that current business processes, technology and lack of integration between systems would not support their expansion plans or service improvement strategies. Key business challenges included lack of integration between client information, test and financial data. Information was being stored in disparate systems which in turn made it difficult to access information, did not support business intelligence or customer self service, and imposed inefficient / redundant processes which heightened the potential for error.

Solution

CANTEST embarked upon the Connector Program - a suite of projects focused around a .NET Portal development integrated with a CRM, ERP/financial system, and Laboratory Information Systems (LIM's). The first stage was to transcribe the initial "straw model" of high-level requirements for all three systems into a set of detailed functional requirements for accurate scope and budget development. KLR provided Program Management expertise by assuming the overall coordination of the requirements gathering workshops, stakeholder management, vendor management, project, scope, quality, and risk and budget management across all three projects.  

Results

The Requirements Phase culminated in three SOW's with recommendations on the scope of effort to build a Portal solution (for the entire Quoting, Sample Receiving, Invoicing, and Customer Self-Service), and deploy Microsofts's CRM 3.0 and GP Dynamics systems. Addressing the key business challenges was paramount when pursuing the Portal Design Project Recommendations. This was successfully accomplished within a dynamic and changing business environment in which CANTEST acquired two companies during the project.

KLR played a key role in the Requirements and planning phases of our Project. KLR provided the right mix of business analysis, project and vendor management, program management and people skills to successfully guide us through these early stages. As formal project management was a relatively new discipline at Cantest, KLR provided us with expert advice, additional tools, processes and templates, and left that legacy as part of their assignment.

Gavin Gormley, IS Manager

CANTEST Ltd.

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