The Genesis of Innovit

What began in January 2000 as a system to manage enterprise-wide catalog content for a market-leading parts distributor, is now a global organisation with offices in San Francisco, London, Sydney and Auckland.

In 1998, Innovit’s founders were working for JD Edwards (JDE) and implementing a new global ERP system to replace four legacy business systems for a medical device manufacturer.  The project team, which was based in United Kingdom and Sweden, had to cleanse and merge multiple item master files with over 55,000 products that were maintained in 17 languages.  Cleansing this master data was a prerequisite for both the JDE project go-live and to enable real-time e-commerce via EDI ordering – for just-in-time (JIT) delivery of radioactive imaging products to anywhere in the world!

Not surprisingly, the cost of this data cleansing effort exceeded £3,000,000 and consumed 50,000+ hours in labor.  As the project neared completion, it became evident to the client that their ‘cleansed’ product master data was already becoming out-of-date. The Innovit founders knew there had to be a better way to solve these two problems simultaneously.  That is, to cleanse product data cost-effectively, while maintaining master data quality ~ whether it’s for enabling JIT e‑commerce, ERP system replacement, or the publication of e-catalogs.

Since our inception, Innovit has solved problems in master data management and master data exchange for global organisations, with a strong emphasis on the Life Science and Consumer Products industries.  We recognised that medical device manufacturers were overwhelmed with the complexities of managing high volumes of product data and electronic catalogs.  As regulatory and customer compliance mandates exploded, so too did the need for a cost-effective and scalable solution to deliver ‘trusted’ master data to regulatory authorities and healthcare providers.  It was from this realisation about the criticality of product data and its pivotal role across the Healthcare supply chain, that in 2014, we expanded our solution capabilities to provide master data management systems for Healthcare Providers.

Today, we have a single-minded vision to change the way medical products manufacturers, distributors, GPOs and hospitals manage their product master data.  To ensure and improve patient safety, both hospitals and medical products suppliers need to get their master data right ~ not just once, but continuously, as a sustained mission-critical process for every organisation across the Healthcare supply chain!