CASE STUDY
Pharma Pharmaceutical Industries
(Pharma) is a group of companies
based in the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia (KSA) that brings together business
leaders, seasoned healthcare professionals,
marketing and sales specialists, pharmacists
and other industry veterans. Between
them, Pharma’s companies leverage their
rich spectrum of expertise to provide
a wide range of services to the Saudi
pharmaceutical industry. Services offered
by Pharma include: branding, marketing
and sales; warehousing and logistics;
facilities management; and regulatory
compliance consultancy.
Lack of linkage and trackability
restricted plans for growth
Pharma has already established itself as
the partner of choice for pharmaceutical
companies, both international and within
its native Saudi Arabia. Recognising that
its clients – and the healthcare system
they serve – are now enmeshed in a digital
world, Pharma resolved to address the gaps
in its ICT infrastructure. It was decided that
Digital Transformation would provide the
optimal path to growth.
However, as the company plotted its next
growth cycle, it realised that the absence
of an effective ERP platform would be the
main obstacle to such plans. Tariq Kayyali
is Quality Unit Director and ERP Project
Manager for Pharma. With his team of
stakeholders, he focused on linking and
integrating department transactions and
reducing the time to locate vital archived
data, from days to seconds.
“We didn’t have any ERP in place and
relied on a paper system to manage each
department’s activity. This resulted in
inconsistencies across manually prepared
documents and reports, and meant several
wasted man-hours spent archiving and
locating historical data,” Kayyali said.
In addition to finding an ERP solution
that could mitigate these challenges,
Pharma needed to control purchasing
cycles and streamline incoming
inventory management.
“We required a system that would allow us
to minimise the effort and cost of affixing
labels – sometimes four different labels need
to be on each incoming part container,” said
Kayyali. He added that errors in the starting
material and resulting mix-ups and delays
in order deliveries, were also risks faced by
Pharma’s employees, prior to digitisation.
Fit, support and ease – the
deciding factors
Over a 12 to 15-month period, Kayyali’s
team assessed many globally recognised
vendors. Epicor partner, Full Insight
Technology Solutions (FITS), introduced
the best solution for Pharma’s growth
ambitions – Epicor ERP – a platform that
was easy to install, easy to use and with
functionality that had a tight fit with the
group’s requirements.
A key element of Epicor ERP that impressed
Pharma’s procurement team was the
audit trail. Each critical transaction could
be traceable, detailing the name of the
user, the date and time of action and its
impact on the business. Pharma’s labelling
problem was also addressed by the Epicor
solution, adding more control for purchased
and manufactured parts. “The new system
requires a single label containing a 2D
barcode, which saves and reflects the
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