A healthier business: Anatomical Worldwide saves 30 HOURS a month on order processing and accounting

A healthy business

Illinois-based Anatomical Worldwide is one of the most respected healthcare education companies out there. Their online store supplies almost every educational supply you can think of to medical professionals and students, like human anatomy models, charts, healthcare simulation products, CPR mannequins, doctor’s office props, and more. Today, the company’s medical and educational products are sold all over the globe.

Founded in 2005, Anatomical Worldwide’s goal has always been to provide students and educators with the tools they need to deliver world-class education and healthcare. While they have a B2B division, they’re mostly a B2C-focused company whose primary customers include universities, medical institutions, physicians, university students, and high school science and anatomy classes.

A proper diagnosis

Up until a few years ago, Anatomical Worldwide used a homegrown order management system with a Magento extension to sell their products online. The team spent a significant amount of time, effort, and money customizing this solution so it was able to drop ship and send orders to 3PL and their warehouse.

But, when Magento 2 was released, Anatomical Worldwide realized that they couldn’t keep putting such a huge amount of effort into customization and development. Plus, they knew that Magento would likely be making upgrades every few years, so custom development would continue to be an issue for every new rollout. It was time to start looking for a new digital operations platform that could meet their growing needs.

“We already had a house of cards and decided we didn’t want to rebuild another house of cards,” says  Adam Cordell, President of Anatomical Worldwide. “We were looking for software that could help us scale and that could offer additional tools and reporting to help with what we were struggling with.”

The perfect prescription

After checking out several solutions on the market, Anatomical Worldwide decided that Brightpearl was the best fit for their needs. With Brightpearl, the team could be successful with their existing resources and not have to hire a developer to manage the new system and its integrations.

“Our trajectory lined up better with Brightpearl’s growth plans, and we felt like our voice would be heard more,” Adam continues. “We just felt like Brightpearl was a better partner.”

A stronger order management system

Once Anatomical Worldwide got set up with Brightpearl, they wanted to find ways to reduce the amount of time employees spent dealing with orders. Enter the world of automation. Their first step was to compare the company’s existing processes to their ideal order lifecycle flow.

Mike Duda, Operations Specialist at Anatomical Worldwide, and Liz Huff, Director of Operations, came up with unique, descriptive Order Statuses in Brightpearl. Then, they used the software’s automation capabilities to send orders through these statuses to indicate movement through every stage of the buying cycle. This was already a huge improvement from their old, cumbersome process rules, which were just typed out on spreadsheets and written on sticky notes all around the office.

Because of Brightpearl’s automation capabilities, Anatomical Worldwide can now customize exactly what they need and streamline many of their daily processes – and all without hiring any extra team members to set this up!

Today, Anatomical Worldwide saves about 20 hours a month on order processing alone. . Brightpearl has also helped the firm automate their accounting processes, which saves the team a further  10+ hours a month.

“Brightpearl helps us deliver a much smoother online shopping experience. Automation means fewer mistakes, resulting in happier customers who are leaving glowing reviews that both helps to attract new buyers and keeps existing customers returning again and again”, adds Adam.