Supply chain management “How PharmaNET helped a leading Clinical Research Organization”

Client profile

The client, one of the top five global CROs, provides clinical development, laboratory and research services to leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and healthcare organizations across the world. Led by a management team of highly qualified & experienced industry leaders, it apply innovative technologies, therapeutic expertise and a commitment to quality in order to help clients develop products safely, effectively and quickly.

Business Challenges

The clinical development phase is the longest and most expensive part of bringing a new drug or medical device to market. This journey of molecule to drug require effective supply chain management system.

Smooth inventory flow is a critical task as there are various departments, teams, projects, materials require for various projects, so to manage inventory and
materials management effectively was a big task especially in the absence of any system.

Managing such a large no. of requisition requests, identify the key suppliers and ensuring quality supply was a very complex task for the procurement department especially when they were managing these manually.

Challenges overview

Paper based ad-hoc process was time and cost consuming

Struggling to manage large number of requisition requests from various departments, different teams, different projects and different materials needed in clinical trial with different specifications

Poor Inventory Control which leads to increase inventory overheads

Unable to take better decisions like selecting the right vendor due to the lack of visibility to real-time & accurate information and integration of all data into a common framework

Unable to deliver projects on budget

To solve these above mentioned challenges our client decided to implement PharmaNET, which comes with several different business applications all are integrated within the system as a whole, but each functions to manage specific areas of organization. The following information highlights how PharmaNET benefited our client to solve its business challenges.

Purchase management

As clinical research organization (CRO) engaged in clinical trials for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries. CRO included different departments with different teams working on different projects hence required different materials needed in clinical trial so all the departments send their requisition requests to purchase department, to manage these different requisition request PharmaNET provided various benefits to the purchase team like :

It helps in complete automation of Purchases

Track requisitions, approvals, purchase orders and expenses live, save time and money

Produce up-to-the-minute reports effortlessly

Access data from anywhere – embrace the cloud

Procurement team can examine purchase requisitions and club them with other similar requirements to get the benefit of clubbed purchases

Helped in budget management and fraud prevention

Management of vendor development

The most complex task of the procurement or purchase department is vendor search, negotiation, getting statements of work(SOW), educate them about the quality that’s need to be deliver and managing the supply chain.

PharmaNET allowed our client to manage the whole vendor development process smoothly with its flexibility to align with any business process and added lots of value additions like:

Get all project activity and financial details in a single view

Enable quicker decision-making based on real-time project measurements and data

Collect, organize, and evaluate supplier information to create a pool of competent suppliers

Reduce risk and enforce compliance by writing SOWs on your terms

Ensure quality and cost effective project deliverables due to competitive sourcing

Improve control through simple and efficient templates and workflows

Inventory control

When managing inventory, it’s critical to find a balance between having too much or too little. Maintaining adequate quantities of the right inventory ensures smooth fulfillment of inter departmental requirements hence resulted into speedy completation of projects. PharmaNET inventory management application rendered different benefits to our clients like:

Receiving materials(GRN) into a warehouse or other location

Tracking inventory as it is transported within organization(STN)

Cutting down on material obsolescence and spoilage

Complete visibility of materials allocation and consumption department , team, project and material wise and availability of remaining

Project tracking

Earlier our client required to go through multiple systems for getting relevant data which was time consuming process and a chance of data inaccuracy was always there .Having a central hub to share documents is important for quality control and internal communications. PharmaNET helped decision makers to easily access all the relevant data, needed for effective decision making like:

Easily track and manage all supplier engagements across all project types

Track and control the onboarding and off boarding of project resources

Clear and accurate view of time worked and expenses incurred on various projects

Decrease budget proposal writing time

In clinical research, writing a budget proposal for a client can be a tedious and time consuming activity which can involve many team members. The sales team needs a budget proposal with input from the project manager and financial officer in a short time frame. PharmaNET allowed our client to pull all the information into one standard document reduced budget proposal writing time.

Advantages at a glance

It reduces operational costs and saves time

Centralized and real-time control of all purchase activity

Increases awareness of purchasing policy through the organization and ensures its compliance

Delegates the administration/responsibility to those making the purchase while retaining control by management

Eliminates wasteful purchasing

Easily identify potential suppliers

Supplier’s quotation evaluation

Accelerate and improve accuracy of billing and payment

Easily update the inventory and finally a quick effective and efficient decision making

Department/Team/Project/Material wise inventory requisition and consumptions

Project budgeting and expense in terms of project cost