Success story
AmerisourceBergen
Industry• Pharmaceutical distribution

Solution• OpenTextTM Exstream

Services• OpenText Professional Services*also available as the solution ‘SAP® Document Presentment
by OpenText™’ with SAP specific functionality

Leading pharmaceutical distributor
scales to meet high-volume demand
AmerisourceBergen fulfills document requirements ofrecord-breaking Walgreens partnership with OpenText Exstream
TMResults
Re-architecture and upgrade of
document delivery solution to meetbusiness demand
Reliable, up-to-the-minutedistribution of more than 250,000
documents per day
Cost savings in millions per yearrelated to operational efficiencies
Sales increase related to additional
marketing communications“We have the power and performance needed to create,
render and distribute a quarter million documents into
customers’ hands by the next morning.”
Scott Marshall

Director of Applications Development
AmerisourceBergenTMLeading pharmaceutical distributor scales to meet high-volume demand

One agreement, triple the business: in the largest distribution deal ofits kind, the partnership between AmerisourceBergen and Walgreensincreased processing volume for the pharmaceutical distributor
by three times. Fortunately, OpenText Customer Communications
Management (CCM) solutions enabled AmerisourceBergen to meetthe challenge with trusted technology.

New opportunity, high demand

While AmerisourceBergen is accustomed to large numbers—employing
13,000, achieving 100 billion in annual revenue, and handling close to 20
percent of pharmaceutical distribution within the United States alone—its partnership with Walgreens delivered a high-volume jolt to its
supply machine.

As the largest drug retailing chain in the U.S., Walgreens operates morethan 8,000 stores in all 50 states, interacting with more than 8 million
customers each day. In 2013, AmerisourceBergen became the primary
supplier of brand pharmaceutical products across all Walgreens locations,an opportunity that significantly increased daily volume requirements forthe distributor, including:• 80-90 percent electronic document delivery• 275,000 printed documents• 100,000 emails

OpenText delivery evolution

AmerisourceBergen manages and delivers the steady stream of pricestickers, shelf labels, recall notices, invoices and other documents using
OpenTextTM Exstream (formerly OpenTextTM StreamServeTM). In 2005, thedistributor replaced manual, labor-intensive operations with automated,streamlined document delivery—reducing manpower to a couple associates.

“We realized a huge labor cost reduction and prevented human error,”says Hiren Patel, application architect with AmerisourceBergen.
In 2010, the company migrated to SAP® and launched a new version ofExstream; achieving a fluid transition. “OpenText Exstream (formerlyStreamServe) is so easy to integrate with different interfaces; it
made it a lot easier for us to switch over to a new ERP system andcontinue providing the output needed,” explains Scott Marshall,
Director of Applications Development. To address requirements
specific to SAP customers, OpenText also provides additional SAP
functionality as part of the SAP® Document Presentment by OpenText™
solution, which is also available from SAP.

Walgreens challenges and opportunities

Patel, Marshall, and other AmerisourceBergen IT professionals readpotential challenges and opportunities with the Walgreens partnershipannouncement. “We knew the Walgreens processing volume would
push our existing system to its limit in terms of ability to handle volumeand keep acceptable service level agreements,” Marshall explains.

Timing to meet service-level agreements (SLAs) can be a ‘ship or die’matter in the pharmaceutical industry, for a distributor and its customers.
“Our highly competitive market and the AmerisourceBergen businessmodel demands that we deliver products and documents in a very
timely manner, in most cases overnight to get the needed products toour customers,” explains Marshall. Furthermore, those products carryspecific handling requirements from temperature to expiration deadlines,
many with exceptionally low profit margins.
Handling the higher volume of drugs and documentation also presented opportunity for AmerisourceBergen to refine and update itsdelivery system.

“OpenText Exstream(formerly StreamServe)
is so easy to integratewith different interfaces;
it made it a lot easierfor us to switch over toa new ERP system andcontinue providing theoutput needed”
Scott Marshall

Director of Applications Development
AmerisourceBergenLeading pharmaceutical distributor scales to meet high-volume demand

New scalability, same reliability

AmerisourceBergen centralized and boosted Exstream throughput toadeptly handle ‘new and improved’ distribution demands, now exceeding
hundreds of millions of documents per year. The solution even affords
delivery of more than only required files, adding timely marketing communication customized to customer preferences and needs.
AmerisourceBergen worked closely with OpenText Professional
Services to re-design and update its CCM installation. For close to 30
distribution centers, all data is now maintained within Exstream and in
one centralized location. “That was the biggest gain,” Patel notes. “Nomatter the channel, documents can be printed and bundled together.”More than 220 employees use an Enterprise Output Management
Console integrated with Exstream to control output. All files arestaged electronically, then automatically printed and sorted by route,stop, and customer into Driver Ready Packs, averaging 60 to 80 pages
each. Following the Walgreens partnership, AmerisourceBergenproduces an average of 20,000 Driver Ready Packs every day, consisting of more than 250,000 documents, usually within a three to four
hour window. Via the portal and the OpenText™ Output Manager, users
can change documents in packs, as needed, or reprint documents allwithin the short timeframe just before drivers run their routes.
In addition to printed document management, AmerisourceBergenrelies on OpenText to fulfill communication preferences as defined byits customers. “It’s nice to have a system that enables us to follow
customers’ preferences without a lot of re-work and changes,”
Marshall says. To establish the scalable system, he and other IT teammembers reached out to OpenText Professional Services.

“We were planning more than a standard upgrade, but a re-architecture of our solution,” Patel explains. “OpenText Professional Services
team members were hands-on; we worked together to plan and implement a design that worked and helped us achieve our goals.”Competitive advantage, revenue generation

With Exstream, AmerisourceBergen meets and exceeds distribution requirements for all business, including high volumes dedicated to Walgreens. “We have the power and performance needed to create,
render and distribute a quarter million documents into customers’
hands by the next morning,” Marshall says. “That is where our mostrecent deployment of OpenText Exstream has been great for us.”
Such efficiency is a valued result in the low-margin, time-sensitive
pharmaceutical distribution market. “When you talk about distribution,it’s all about efficiency,” Patel notes. Both Patel and Marshall consider
Exstream to be a competitive advantage for AmerisourceBergen—technology that enables the distributor to get more from doing less, particularly as it relates to enterprise communication management. For
example, since implementing Exstream, AmerisourceBergen achieved:• Enhanced customer service with a vast reduction in documentrelated service calls and elimination of delivery errors• Reduction of printers and related costs• Improvement in document accuracy, timeliness and legibility• Annual cost-savings in the millions due toimproved operational efficiencies“OpenText Professional
Services team members
were hands-on; weworked together to planand implement a designthat worked and helped
us achieve our goals.”
Hiren Patel

Application Architect
AmerisourceBergenLeading pharmaceutical distributor scales to meet high-volume demand

User-friendly aspects, such as the Enterprise Output Management
Console, relate a more professional image to customers, according toPatel, and—together with other efficiencies, replace manual work andreallocate staff members to other critical operations. Still, improvements
wouldn’t matter if the results stayed only within AmerisourceBergenitself: the distributor is focused on passing efficiencies along to its
customers who then supply life-sustaining products to people whoneed them.
AmerisourceBergen’s upgrade and re-design of Exstream now
serves as a foundation for business growth, according to Marshall.
For instance, the distributor’s marketing team is maximizing opportunities to enhance service and increase business through targetedcommunication with customers.

“OpenText Exstream lets us leverage an existing touch point with acustomer and turn it into something bigger and better than we started
with,” Marshall says, referring to cross-selling flyers tied to customer buying
patterns along with other material that promotes the company brand or
customer care notifications. “Our manufacturers and suppliers definitely
see rebound customers and volume rates increasing,” Patel reports.
“They love the revenue-generating aspect of OpenText Exstream.”
Next up for AmerisourceBergen are plans to upgrade and integrate all
departments using earlier Exstream versions and to expand use of thesolution globally.

About OpenText

OpenText, The Information Company™,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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