The challenge
DCL is an in vitro diagnostics company operating in several West African countries. In Ghana, as in Nigeria, it supplies medical and laboratory equipment, reagents and consumables to hospitals, laboratories and clinics, and installs, trains on and maintains the equipment. Without a shared design, each country builds its own spreadsheets and the numbers stop being comparable. A second country needs:
Own legal and tax setting
Ghana's currency, tax rules and reporting: its own books, not a copy.
Local stock and customers
Purchasing, receiving, sales and collections in-country.
Consistency across countries
Familiar items, processes and reports to compare, and for staff moving between them.
Batch and expiry control
Reagents and consumables, plus records of equipment supplied to each customer.
What we implemented
Promatics deployed Prometheus, our ERP built on the open-source ERPNext platform, as the business system for DCL in Ghana. It unites accounting, sales, purchasing, inventory, CRM, administration and human resource management, and for distribution includes:
- Inventory across warehouses and stores
- Batch-managed items, returns, credit notes
- Landed cost vouchers, taxes and charges
- Multi-currency accounting
- Automated replenishment, reorder levels, material requests
ERPNext supports multiple companies, currencies and tax settings, so one platform can serve several countries with separate books. This summary records the deployment at the level we can confirm publicly; it does not list every module configured.
Results
Completed as a Prometheus deployment for DCL Laboratory Products in Ghana, alongside DCL in Nigeria. We have not published measured outcomes for this project, and we do not add figures after the fact.
What this means for your organisation
Many Nigerian businesses span more than one jurisdiction; the lessons apply directly:
- Design onceAgree the shared item catalogue, processes and reports.
- Configure per entityEach company, currency and tax setting separately.
- Separate booksOwn ledger per entity; management reports share one structure.
- Local requirements earlyTax documents, print formats, customer forms vary: easier built in than added.
Where this applies
- A head office in Lagos or Abuja with a subsidiary in Ghana or another ECOWAS country.
- Branches in several states, each with their own levies.
- A regional operation trading in more than one currency.
Adding a second entity, state or country? See Prometheus ERP, ERP implementation and supply chain systems that support growth, or contact us.