Mutual Drug selects Epicor Trading Partner Document Exchange

Epicor Software Corporation, the business software solutions provider for manufacturing, distribution, retail and services organisations, has announced that North Carolina Mutual Wholesale Drug Company has selected Epicor Trading Partner Document Exchange (TDX) as its Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) application. The new 3-year agreement with Epicor is expected to cut costs by over 90% and save the company at least 20% in labour services when compared to the previous vendor.

North Carolina Mutual Wholesale Drug Company, also known as Mutual Drug, is based in Durham, North Carolina and is a distinguished wholesaler for independent pharmacies in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Formed as a cooperative, Mutual Drug is owned and managed by its member stores and only sells to independent pharmacies.

Mutual Drug has an extensive selection of brands and products -- over 25,000 items. Because of its broad-spectrum of products, Mutual Drug was searching for a robust application that could maintain their database of products and improve the company's auditing workflow process. "Our selection process took approximately four months," said Unique Hullett, EDI Analyst for North Carolina Mutual Wholesale Drug Company. "We dug deep into the solution offerings of five service providers. We chose Epicor because in the end they were substantially more affordable than our previous vendor and the other four vendors we were considering. Epicor also had the flexibility to add more features, they were more accessible when we had questions, and were consistently quick to reply."

"Month after month we were unable to predict what our bill was going to be," commented Hullett on what led to the change of their service provider. "The primary business issues we were experiencing were that we were paying extremely high overage charges and the bill only continued to increase. Additionally, we needed to improve data auditing and provide self-service capabilities for business users. The switch to Epicor was easy -- we needed something more affordable that could provide the data usage we needed for continued e-commerce growth while also filling functional process gaps through a robust web auditing tool. Epicor was able to fulfil those requirements."

Many vendors offer proprietary transmission of data, such as purchase orders, price updates, and new item additions. Epicor TDX ensures compatibility with these data exchange services -- data transmission defines standards for how two computers exchange data. Epicor provides fully tested TDX and EDI relationships, ensuring seamless exchange with supplier and partner systems.

"We are very excited about this newly signed agreement with Mutual Drug," said Steve Bieszczat, senior vice president of marketing, retail distribution solutions for Epicor. "Epicor TDX is an open solution that has the capability and robustness to expand and work with a variety of business systems. Mutual Drug will be saving an enormous amount of time and the transfer of invoices and information via Epicor TDX will be much more accurate and efficient."

For more information regarding Epicor Trading Partner Document Exchange and Epicor Electronic Data Interchange, contact Dirk Heartman, eCommerce product manager for Epicor at 800-999-1809, DHeartman@epicor.com or contact your Epicor representative.