In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has seen tremendous growth in research and development. However, the pharmaceutical industry faces numerous challenges regarding non-coherent distribution, lack of a proper set-up and network, increasing operational cost, increased statutory governance, and strict regulatory framework affecting the supply and distribution. With the advent of the Covid-19 situation, the scenario has drastically changed. SAP S/4 HANA, specifically designed for the pharmaceutical industry, fills these gaps.
A connected and well-oiled ecosystem that integrates end-to-end operations is now possible with the help of SAP solutions. This allows the stakeholders to understand and analyze individual processes and their effect on each other, thus ensuring product quality and increase in productivity. This is the digital transformation of the pharmaceutical industry. Digitization also allows establishing predictive maintenance SOPs rather than reactive processes, thus reducing downtime.
Many modules support end-to-end operations, the core being SAP S/4 HANA—maintaining GMP compliances, forecasting demand, predicting uncertainty, and improving efficiencies, which are crucial for every drug product.
The pharmaceutical industry is the backbone of producing medicines for saving patients’ lives. So, a lot of processes, regulatory frameworks, and efficiencies have to be taken care of to maintain standards. SAP software provides a bespoke solution for the pharmaceutical industry to automate related processes. The economic management of pharmaceutical processes can effectively be done through this integrated software. Functions like finance, accounting, sales, and inventory management are taken care of through a single software structure. Medicines are procured in line with government regulations. SAP gives a window to effective production planning, considering government regulations.
In modern-day management of any organization, business processes, analytics, and effective management policies are critical for growth. To manage their day-to-day business effectively, many enterprises are shifting to ERP software. Due to highly competitive and tight government protocols, the pharmaceutical industry is unique and poses challenges in terms of management. Maintaining the highest quality standards and dealing with a highly informed customer are some of the other challenges that this industry faces. The entry of a lot of multi-national pharma brands has fuelled the need for businesses to be more organized and enable quicker turn-arounds with regulatory compliances.
As the market dynamics are changing, it calls for many processes and workflows to be automated. This can be achieved via the adoption of a robust ERP tool. SAP S4/HANA works seamlessly with the pharmaceutical industry and integrates manufacturing processes across multiple locations and oversees compliance, expiry, formulations, costs, and quality, which are sensitive to the unit’s performance.
It becomes tough to take care of supervision and quality control of the finished products since the medicines are often produced on a large scale. Thus, in the current times, there is a growing demand for ERP software that takes care of the operational efficiencies by overseeing the following:
1. Quality Analysis
Quality control becomes an essential aspect of the pharmaceutical industry as the finished products are ready for direct consumption. ERP tool ensures quality control measures, including labelling, storage adherence, and other related standards. As pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated, SAP S/4 HANA Cloud takes care of regulatory compliance requirements and processes for project validation following GMP. SAP S/4 HANA Cloud helps with batch processing from raw materials to the end product. It also takes care of quality control during supply chain.
2. Storage Facility
All medicinal formulations require extra care concerning packaging and storage. An ERP software tool like SAP S/4HANA Cloud considers these requirements and helps fine-tune the storage requirement in specific cells critical for each formulation.
3. Billing info
Receipt records of materials and goods are smoothly managed by an ERP software tool. SAP S/4HANA Cloud also helps record keeping, thus maintaining a check on cash/credit flows in the organization.
4. Sterilization and Tracing
An ERP software tool manages the plants’ and containers’ sterilization, which is critical in the pharmaceutical industry. As discussed earlier, SAP S/4HANA Cloud helps keep records of produced and traded goods, thus enabling ready information to be available anytime a need arises.
5. Smoothening in Operations
The software takes over all the laborious manual tasks, thus enabling organizations to focus on other critical strategic tasks. Therefore, a positive work environment allows smooth functioning across all job functions. SAP S4/ HANA Cloud helps in streamlining the processes into new workflows and makes the organisation see value.
6. Cost control
Since an ERP software can look into many aspects of the functioning of the manufacturing and management aspects of the organization, it ultimately helps reduce costs by bringing efficiencies in operation & reducing wastage. By deploying SAP S/4 HANA Cloud solution, complex customizations become standard and the overall implementation time is brought down.
7. Real-time Monitoring
An ERP software helps in real-time data visualization of various production and management functions; the managers can make timely decisions on vital organizational processes, including succession planning, on-site operations, risk mitigation, etc. SAP S/4HANA Cloudreduces the need for a full-fledged data warehouse and provides real-time operational reporting.
Conclusion
By adopting SAP best practices, better quality control measures can be implemented by applying real-time monitoring. This ensures that the medicinal formulation remains standard throughout. Risk assessment is also simplified and documentation is seamless. Production volume and judicious reallocation of resources are possible by tracking supply chain and demand forecast on a real-time basis. To know more about SAP S/4HANA Cloud benefits, write to us at sales@vestrics.in or call us at +91 99510 53333.
