Customer Case Study

Flexible and Scalable PLM & QMS

About

Yukon Medical has been a leading developer of innovative pharmaceutical preparation and drug delivery devices since 2008. Yukon’s focus is on the advancement of product designs to simplify medication delivery, increase healthcare worker safety, and address the complex challenges associated with current reconstitution devices. Yukon Medical’s goal is to reduce steps to deliver medication and improve safety for patients and caregivers.

Power of PLM and QMS in One Solution

Propel's truly closed loop solution seamlessly manages the product lifecycle from concept to customer.

Security of the Salesforce Platform

Product changes & training records are easily shared across internal and external teams.

Collaboration with Global Partners

Effectively communicate and share key product specifications with select partners.

Today, Yukon Medical is thriving more than ever and growing at a rapid rate. Unfortunately, their legacy product and quality systems were not built to keep up with the rate at which they needed. Their legacy solutions were not scalable and they had issues that made training very difficult. Yukon needed a more seamless and integrated Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and an improved Quality Management System (QMS) that allowed them to stay more consistent and ensure employees were getting proper training for new Yukon products.

“We’re growing so fast that we need to get new employees up to speed quickly. It’s critical to our business to ensure our employees understand everything. We need to gauge if someone needs extra help. Propel made it so much easier than our previous solution,”said Jonathan Brice, Quality Engineer at Yukon Medical.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE BETTER

Prior to adopting Propel, Yukon Medical was using a more cumbersome quality management platform, and it wasn’t performing the way they needed it to. “We were looking for consistency,” said Brice, “It was not easy to learn or train with our previous tool.”

Robyn Schwartzman, Quality Engineer at Yukon Medical came in six weeks before Yukon’s switch to Propel. She found that their legacy solution was confusing for her to learn and just like the rest of the company, she had to constantly turn to others for questions on how to do anything in the platform. But once Yukon switched over to Propel, it was a whole different story. “I came in blind, and it was not hard to figure out Propel,” Schwartzman said. “It’s a lot easier to find where you need to go in the Propel platform.

”For many Yukon Medical employees, Propel had an easier layout for them to take in. “With Propel after a new product launch employee questions died down after a few weeks, With our previous solution, questions were never-ending.”

“Our previous software tool was not going to grow with us,” said Brice.

Brian Beach, a Project Engineer at Yukon Medical, has also found Propel to be a huge time saver when working with clients and keeping up with complaints. “I can quickly answer questions just by looking at my setup in Propel, while they’re digging through their big spreadsheets. That wasn’t the case before."

Propel also offered the full product portfolio and customization features that their previous system did not, at least without spending for custom programming with an unknown price tag.

“We wanted to expand our features in our old solution but the business model of having to pay X amount was unknown. It didn’t make business sense for us. I really like the more friendly business model of Propel. We’re paying our licenses and getting the whole portfolio of the product. That was a huge factor for us,” said Brice.

“Propel offered more customizability than our old system,” said Beach on getting everyone to buy-in on Propel. “I showed them the global search and they were sold."

GROWING IN THE MODERN AGE

Yukon Medical partners with companies around the world to manufacture their medical devices. In order to be successful, Yukon needs to be able to effectively communicate with their partners and share key specifications about products. Yukon Medical needed an integrated PLM and QMS system that makes communicating product and quality information as easy as possible.

Most companies suffer when it comes to communicating changes and updates to their partners. Yukon is no longer one of those companies. They are taking advantage of the supplier portal feature in Propel and are now better at communicating all updates with their partners. “We don’t want to jump on a phone call and explain our new products every single time. Especially as our product portfolio grows,” said Brice. “Before, it was hard since our last solution was not friendly to our partners. Now with Propel, we can customize the fields and layouts. We can share custom read-only access to our partners.

”An integrated PLM and QMS system in today’s medical device landscape allows Yukon to see everything from concept to customer, including design specs, quality tests, customer feedback and more. It allows them to close the loop on engineering, making it easier to streamline processes going forward.

“We have our design controls, procedures, products coming in as novel ideas but we need to follow regulations and compliance. We needed to streamline the process,” said Brice of Yukon’s dilemma in their previous solution.

FOCUSING ON THE CUSTOMER

Like any other right-minded medical device company, Yukon Medical was very concerned about their end-user. They needed a better way to manage any complaints they were receiving and all the moving parts involved with that. “We needed to be able to understand quickly what the feedback is about, handle corrective action associated with the resulting feedback and keep customers informed of the actions taken,” said Beach.

Propel helps Yukon ensure compliance with a pre-built customer complaint process. They can manage customer cases and integrate feedback back into their product lifecycle through Propel’s integrated PLM and QMS system. Instead of writing things down and keyboarding them into another system, the Yukon team can file a case and keep up-to-date on all customer issues seamlessly within one single system.

LEVERAGING THE SALESFORCE PLATFORM

Since Propel is completely built on Salesforce, the Yukon Medical team can easily take advantage of the Salesforce ecosystem. “Our CEO is excited about the integrations and what you can bring in with Salesforce and other apps,” said Schwartzman.

Thanks to the open but very secure nature of the Salesforce platform, it’s easy for everyone on the Yukon team to keep up to date on the latest product changes and training records. Propel is built with Salesforce features like Chatter and Communities, making it easier for developers, outsourced designers, manufacturers, sales, marketing, and other channels to share the latest product updates.

By using Propel for PLM and QMS, Yukon has a true closed loop that can help them seamlessly manage the product lifecycle from start to finish.

LOOKING AHEAD

“There’s a lot of excitement here to grow the capabilities of Propel,” said Brice. “The collaborative parts of Propel are going to help us a lot. The fact that we can easily turn things into tasks is going to make us more efficient as a company.”

Yukon Medical is already reaping the benefits of Propel in big ways. “Being able to customize the data you see on the screen is huge for us. Our previous solution exported everything whereas Propel lets you customize it to what you want to see, not every last thing that doesn’t apply,” said Beach.

Exporting specific types of reports is an important issue for most companies, especially when you need to export data for high-level meetings, third-party vendors or suppliers. It’s unnecessary and very cumbersome to include every piece of data available. Being able to export only what is needed on a per channel basis is key to staying efficient and maintaining company security.

Since switching to Propel, Yukon can now easily train and onboard new employees, update product changes, manage design controls, standardize procedures, file and close customer cases, communicate with their partners and whatever else they might need going forward – all within the intuitive and securely built Propel platform.

“You can do just about anything in Propel. It is very quick and very snappy. ” gleamed Beach. “We’re very happy with the switch to Propel.”