LabMagic conquers China

LabMagic, the dental laboratory management software system developed in Melbourne, has just been installed in Alcadent dental laboratory in China.

"We were first contacted by representatives of Alcadent in China last October," said LabMagic Managing Director Greg Jaggers. "They were evaluating Dental Laboratory software from many different developers. LabMagic won the contract because of its features that have evolved from installing the system into many types of lab in four countries."

Mr Jaggard said that ease of use was an important deciding factor for the Chinese workforce, plus support being based in Melbourne, only a 3-hour time difference to China, was an asset.

"We had one immediate deficiency in that we had only one currency," Mr Jaggard said. "So we added multiple currencies and multiple pricelists to LabMagic and even allowed customers to pay in a third currency if they wished. This meant that products could be chosen in Chinese, a German invoice generated and the customer could pay, for example, in Hong Kong dollars."

Mr Jaggard said that a big difference between Alcadent and other labs in China is that they are German owned and run. Other big labs are typically Taiwanese or Hong Kong owned or managed.

"The very strict German regulations and the fact that Alcadent have German Master Technicians performing Quality Control at each stage of production meant that this is a quality lab. Their clients are in Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Scandinavia."

After winning the contract, Mr Jaggard arrived in Shenzhen to perform the installation in March.

"Shenzhen was not what I expected," he said. "It's very modern but traffic was a nightmare and it was an experience seeing the large number of Mercedes, Porsches and BMWs weaving between the people pushing hand carts on the major roads.

"I arrived at the Lab and was immediately taken by the sheer size of it, something we do not see in Australia. The management were very professional and I was impressed at how easily the technicians switched between speaking German, English and Mandarin. The majority of the workers come from other parts of China and Alcadent provide dormitories and meals for the 300 staff.

"Installation of LabMagic posed a few problems with trying to work with a Chinese version of Windows but we prevailed. The first day we went live with LabMagic went quite smoothly. Hundreds of cases arrived in the Lab and were firstly translated onto a Chinese worksheet which was then entered into LabMagic."

For more information on LabMagic, call (03) 9827-0389, email info@labmagic.com.au or see www.labmagic.com.au.