Episode 11: Maeve Magner on the Unique Supply Chain Complexities of Emerging Markets

The best procurement teams focus on more than price alone when making purchasing decisions—because some things are more important than discounts. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Nico Bac, a P&G veteran and the founder of consulting firm Digital Procurement Now, and Pierre Mitchell, Chief Research Officer and Managing Director of Azul Partners, discuss the latest thinking on strategic sourcing and procurement and supply chain information management. Key Takeaways The best suppliers want to work with pharma companies who embrace digital tools and techniques that can make them even better. When you are doing strategic sourcing and bringing on new suppliers, you are effectively doing extended network design. Therefore, it’s important to think carefully about what kind of network you are creating.

Greater collaboration between pharma companies and their end-to-end supply chain partners can lead to improved patient outcomes, greater resiliency, as well as significant business opportunities. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Greg Cathcart, founder and CEO of Excellis Health Solutions, explains that if we collaborate better, “we can do better.” Key Takeaways Insurance companies are increasingly requesting supply chain and dispenser-level business improvements designed to ensure the safety and authenticity of medicines given to their insured patients. The “walls” that have traditionally prevented closer collaboration between end-to-end supply chain partners are slowly beginning to come down.

What could your supply chain team accomplish through tighter collaboration with your company’s finance team? In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Bob Belshaw, Director of Business Development at Falcon Group, explains how this type of tight-knit collaboration can lead to benefits like greater supply chain responsiveness to changes in demand; more cost-effective and strategic inventory decisions; and greater agility when disruptions arise. Key Takeaways If your view of the finance department’s function and capabilities is too rigid, you may be limiting options that can increase your agility in the face of supply chain disruptions. Best-in-class companies set up cross-functional teams that include the CFO, finance team members, and supply chain and procurement team members. The goal is to work together to weigh the ramifications of business decisions and boost supply chain efficiency and resilience. Finance leaders may need to set new types of goals that support the need for supply chain responsiveness.

Pharma companies are increasingly taking an end-to-end view of the supply chain so they can ultimately deliver the right patient outcomes. Data is a critical component that enables you to achieve this goal by enabling you to manage the product on its journey to the patient, according to Timur Kabadayı, Managing Director of Conval Group, an information technology consulting firm that specializes in the life sciences industry. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Kabadayı explains how the right approach to data management can help pharma companies and supply chain teams improve product safety and quality. Key Takeaways The most important aspect of The Agile Supply Chain Credo is its focus on patient safety and meeting patient demand right time, first time, every time. Companies across the end-to-end pharma supply chain produce and deliver medicines—but they also create data that can be shared to improve demand forecasts and boost supply chain agility. The global pharma industry could potentially save billions of dollars through digital supply chain enhancements—money which could then be reinvested in research and development.

It takes more than enterprise resource planning systems and buzzword-friendly technologies like “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” to create an agile supply chain, according to Klaus Imping, CEO of mSE Solutions, a global management consulting firm. While these enabling layers are important, you also need to focus on how to change processes and integrate roles and responsibilities into a faster-reacting model. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Imping shares practical advice on how to achieve greater agility and outside-in patient-centricity in your supply chain organization. Key Takeaways It’s important to avoid the trap believing that having an agile supply chain means having freedom to do anything and everything. Agility requires a great deal of structure in the form of stable and standardized processes. Patient-centricity starts with thinking in a demand-driven manner. Many companies believe that if they simply standardize their ERP, they have checked the box for agility. But the process of creating a truly agile and patient-centric supply chain is far more complex and requires sophisticated decision support.