Meta Ghana

Global ERP integrated business solutions are becoming a frequent occurrence on the multinationalcorporate landscape. It’s becoming increasingly common for systems to integrate within aninternational business organization, drawing multiple branches and corporate offices onto the samestandardized global ERP platform. While global ERP infrastructures are available and their bottom linevalue to multinational corporations increases with the growing feasibility of global ERP architectures andremote software service provision, it’s distinctly more common to see strong movement in the oppositedirection, as smaller and smaller businesses take advantage of integrated systems and modules with global ERP capability.
With current product suites for accounting that offer global reporting templates, international erp tax and regulatory assistance, and multi-national currency and language translation features, globalERP software has become more accessible than ever to small and mid-sized business enterprisesand startups. There are several converging factors that can help explain this trend, and those whounderstand these events in a broader context—clients, providers and consultants—will be better poised to stay on top of and make the most of shifting market landscape.
The right enterprise resource planning modules, as well as customer relationship management, payrolland human resource modules, can help small business find the cost cutting measures and competitiveedge they need to stay afloat and ahead during even the most challenging and fast paced businessclimates. But if you own or manage technology for a small or mid-sized operation, especially in processor product manufacturing fields like pharmaceuticals, food and beverage or apparel, you’ll want to do athorough diagnostic evaluation of your current system before you begin your research. Only after you’veexamined your current workflows and gathered reports from your employees on system strengths andweaknesses can you fully understand how to navigate a widening field of ERP options. Then you canmove forward by researching product reviews and viewing online product and service demonstrationsto the find the system best suited to meet your company’s specific needs.
The very first early ERP systems were introduced in the manufacturing sector in the late 1980s inresponse to specific demand from operations managers who were trying to control complex activitieson factory shop floors. Many of these activities like scheduling and ordering and assembly requiredthe input of multiple departments, but at that point, most businesses were running each of theirdepartments and business teams on separate software systems. This prevented separate teams from sharing standardized applications and it also prevented employees from accessing databases and otherdocuments that could have been used to control overlapping functions. But with system integration, thisquickly changed. As soon as new ERP systems were implemented, all employees across the companycould run standardized applications from a central server infrastructure that could also be used to housedatabases and other documents that could be accessed by anyone and updated in real time. Thesesystems were very popular among high budget firms, but only when market saturation set in and highbudget demand began to cool did providers begin turning their attention downstream and alteringproducts and services to appeal to smaller clients.

MeTA stands for the medicines transparency alliance which is a multi-stakeholder alliance working to improve access and affordability of medicines to all those who are unable to access basic and essential medicines due to high cost or local unavailability.

The availability of good quality, affordable medicines is affected by several factors. The appropriate medicines have to be selected from the thousands available; then they have to be procured after involving the relevant regulatory authorities and agencies in their registration, importation or local manufacture.

When they arrive in the country or at the factory gates, these medicines have to be distributed to public and private facilities including hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and licensed chemical sellers’ shops nationwide. They then have to be priced and supplied by licensed professionals in licensed premises. Clearly, this whole process is an extremely complex process and a weakness in any one of the various areas mentioned could have a huge impact on the price and/or availability of the medicine to the consumer.

• How then do we ensure that all the players in the medicines field are playing according to the rules and working had to ensure that the patient gets the best possible deal?
• How do we ensure that the poor old lady in the village obtains all the essential medicines she needs at prices which are fair?
• How do we ensure that the quality of these medicines is good and that her hard-earned money is used most cost-effectively?

In the main, this relies on the availability of credible information to all players so that we each watch over each other.

MeTA therefore brings together several stakeholders to collect, analyse, disclose and apply data influencing medicine procurement, promotion and supply. The main partners in MeTA are the Public Sector, the Private Sector and Civil Society including patients’ representatives, communities, NGOs, faith-based organisations and the media.

The importance of good quality medicines to the attainment of excellent health is not in doubt. In creating wealth through health in our beloved Ghana, it is clearly important that we ensure that all medicines in the country are of the best possible quality, are easily available from registered premises, are prescribed and dispensed properly and are used rationally.This calls for an alliance of all those who use medicines and those whose lives are affected in any way by medicines. This alliance should be willing to disclose and share information and to use that information to improve the availability, affordability and use of medicines. This is what MeTA stands for and this is the cause to which we are kindly, gently and passionately enlisting your support and involvement