Alcon (Novartis)

About the Client

In 1945, Robert Alexander and William Conner opened a small pharmacy in Fort Worth, Texas, combining the first parts of their last names to form “Alcon”. The two filled prescriptions during the day, and prepared sterile, inject-able vitamins and oral products at night. In 1947, Alcon Laboratories, Inc. was incorporated with William Conner as the president. As the company expanded over the years, Alcon was acquired by Nestlé of Switzerland in 1977, and subsequently purchased by Novartis in 2011. Today, Alcon has grown to be the world leader in eye care as well as the second-largest division of Novartis with 25,000 associates in 75 countries. With headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, the company develops and manufactures innovative medicines and devices for eye care, offering a broad spectrum of surgical, pharmaceutical and vision care products to treat many eye diseases and conditions.

Challenges the Client Faced

After having concerns with the performance of their existing managed services provider, Alcon decided to issue an RFP to help identify a new partner that could provide a high level of service, quality and security for their JD Edwards ERP system. The partner would also need to be able to assist them with upgrades, package builds and deployments, installation of ESU’s, etc. The key considerations in their decision process would include reputation, experience, skillset, responsiveness and price. The recommendations of their peers in the industry would also be a major factor in the decision.

GSI's Solution

After taking a few months to evaluate several vendors, Alcon selected GSI, Inc. to provide JD Edwards managed services for their JD Edwards ERP system. “We selected GSI AppCare managed services based on industry recommendations, their reputation, as well as our prior experience working with GSI. They had previously done a flawless Vertex upgrade in less than 3 months.” stated Neil Norman, ERP CoE, Application Manager. “We are very pleased with the results we have achieved with GSI. After establishing a baseline, GSI provided innovative suggestions based on their experience and industry best practices to improve our processes. Their extensive resources are very responsive, have a broad knowledge base of experience and are extremely cost effective. It would have been cost prohibitive to hire a similar team of resources in-house. GSI recently helped us with a successful Tools Release upgrade.” Neil went on to say.