Customer Story Gelderse Vallei Hospital

When Gelderse Vallei Hospital intensified its collaboration with MCX, it immediately led to significant improvements in the performance and continuity of the Oracle E-Business Suite. As a result, the hospital's warehouse, purchasing, and finance departments benefit from a system that virtually never fails and is always fast. Vincent te Koppele, Head of ICT, and Rien Neijenhuis, Senior Finance Officer at the hospital in Ede, speak about the collaboration with MCX.

Long-standing collaboration

“Our Oracle history goes back as far as 2005,” says te Koppele. “In that year, we purchased Oracle E-Business Suite. One of our requirements at the time was that the system had to be able to run on Windows, because we had more than enough in-house knowledge of that operating system. The supplier at the time said that this would not be a problem at all. Although everything ran on our own servers, we were already in regular contact with MCX for specialized Oracle knowledge. That is how we came to know them as true specialists.”

Not a happy marriage Oracle & Windows

Ultimately, the combination of Oracle E-Business Suite and Windows proved not to be a happy marriage. The hospital regularly struggled with problems regarding continuity and performance. “The system often had to be restarted, was slow, or did not work at all.” In 2012, Gelderse Vallei Hospital had to switch to a new version of Oracle E-Business Suite. That was the direct reason to outsource technical management to a third party. Ultimately, the hospital chose MCX. “The main reason was the fact that they offered their services in combination with Bridging Solutions, which was acquired by KPMG in 2013. The combination of MCX and Bridging Solutions (now part of KPMG) appealed to the application administrators and IT professionals involved. And that remains an important prerequisite for such a choice: buy-in.”

Technical management and hosting of Oracle applications

When MCX was given responsibility for the technical management of the Oracle systems, one of the first recommendations was to replace the Windows operating system with Linux. Te Koppele: “In the department, we often had discussions about whether or not we should switch to Linux. When MCX took over technical management, that was no longer a point of discussion. That brought peace of mind.” He continues his story enthusiastically: “Bridging and MCX organized the upgrade and the migration to a new operating system simultaneously. That process took about a year in total, although it must be said that most of the time was spent on the functional transition. You can imagine that we had to test endlessly to see if all the data remained intact after the changes. It involves financial figures, so everything has to be accurate down to many decimal places. The technical side – MCX’s responsibility – was arranged much faster.”

A piece of cake

Because the migration went so smoothly, partly thanks to MCX, it almost seems like a trivial matter. It appears much easier than it actually is. However, such a transition requires highly specialized knowledge to ensure it proceeds so smoothly. We must not forget to reflect on this.

Various departments benefit from improved performance and continuity

The results are impressive. Employees in the warehouse, finance, and purchasing departments, as well as the more than 300 orderers across the department, are experiencing hardly any disruption anymore. “You could say, so to speak, that all the problems we used to have in one week are now spread out over two years. In other words, end users are losing fewer hours, can work more efficiently, and frustrations have naturally decreased. We are very pleased with these positive results,” states te Koppele.

Happily married

As bad as the marriage between Oracle eBS and Windows was, the marriage between MCX and Ziekenhuis Gelderse Vallei is just as good. Vincent te Koppele and Rien Neijenhuis say about this: “We are very pleased with the collaboration with MCX. Unlike the big players in this industry, we have a lot of direct contact. That works very well. In particular, the short lines of communication and the non-bureaucratic attitude of MCX appeal to us greatly. This is also reflected in the way MCX collaborates with KPMG. All three of us give each other mutual feedback and are open to it. Not only does this work well, but it also benefits the ultimate quality of the Oracle E-Business Suite and our services.”

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