Advocate Selects Lawson for Supply Chain, Procurement Processes

Lawson Software (Minneapolis, MN, and London) announced it has signed a $1.2 million contract with Advocate Health Care to implement the Lawson Insight Healthcare Business Management System. Specifically, Advocate purchased the Lawson Insight Materials Management module to automate and streamline procurement and supply chain processes at its more than 200 facilities, including eight hospitals. Advocate is a $1.9 billion integrated delivery network (IDN) with more than 3,000 beds in the Chicago area.

The Advocate contract, according to Lawson, gives Lawson healthcare market presence at half of the nation's 10 largest IDNs. Lawson systems are now installed at nearly 300 healthcare customers.

As a customer of both Lawson Software and Shared Medical Systems Corp. (SMS; Malvern, PA), Advocate Health Care officials cited the benefits of the two companies' business partnership in reaching their contract decision. Advocate officials say Lawson's relationship with SMS further validates their selection of Lawson, and believe that ongoing integration of selected Lawson and SMS software products will add value to the solutions of both companies.

Both Lawson and SMS can sell, install, and support the Lawson Insight line of financial, human resources, and procurement applications. Lawson applications complement the SMS clinical and management system applications for healthcare.

The Lawson Insight Healthcare Business Management System is a Web-deployable enterprise solution made up of integrated process suites for managing financials, human resources, materials management, and Lawson Insight Performance Indicators for executive decision support and enterprise performance management. It also integrates features such as case carts and par inventory designed to meet the specific needs of the healthcare industry.

The Lawson Insight installation at Advocate will run on an IBM RS/6000 server, a UNIX platform and an Oracle database.