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 TakeawaysThe 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 TakeawaysInsurance 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 TakeawaysIf 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 TakeawaysThe 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 TakeawaysIt’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.

The best decision makers often seek to limit their own options for dealing with problematic situations that arise—and this same technique can go a long way toward helping you ensure greater supply chain agility and responsiveness, according to Harshad Kanvinde, Global Supply Chain Practice Leader at Slalom. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Kanvinde shares several best practices designed to help you boost supply chain agility across your organization. He also shares his thoughts on the implications of The Agile Supply Chain Credo.Key TakeawaysSupply chain agility is about building an integrative capability across people, processes, technology, and leadership that enables you to quickly sense and analyze potential disruption and variations from plans.It’s important to approach supply chain agility dynamically across every part of your organization because different products, segments, and business units have response expectations that vary.The most effective supply chain leaders codify best practices, create limited-flexibility options for different situations, and understand their processes extremely well. This enables them to make quick decisions and rapidly identify the root causes of problems that arise.

Your supply chain organization can purchase the most cutting-edge tools and technologies, but if it fails to create a competency framework that also includes people, processes, data, and change management, those investments will likely prove ineffective, according to HFS Research's Phil Fersht and Saurabh Gupta. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Gupta and Fersht discuss the implications of The Agile Supply Chain Credo and explain what their extensive research tells us about how to carry out a successful supply chain transformation.Key TakeawaysOne of the key principles of The Agile Supply Chain Credo is patient-centricity, and that’s all about moving away from using inventory as an insurance policy and focusing on patients’ needs and dispenser-level data to get an accurate picture of demand.Some of the biggest challenges facing life sciences companies today include ensuring global supply chain visibility, increasing speed to market, and adapting to new ways of working in the age of COVID-19.To be a successful supply chain leader in the COVID-19 era and beyond, you must embrace digital transformation and become a true proponent of change. You need to be someone who is willing to move fast and get things done.

Supply chain consultant and analyst Bob Ferrari, Managing Director of The Ferrari Consulting and Research Group, provides actionable advice on how to make the transformation from a linear supply chain to a highly responsive and collaborative multi-enterprise network. He also shares his thoughts on the evolution of agility.Key TakeawaysSupply chain professionals need to stop thinking in terms of rigid, linear supply chains and instead focus on the idea of highly coordinated, collaborative, and agile multi-enterprise response networks.A growing number of industries are embracing outside-in, demand-driven supply chain strategies, which originated in the consumer goods and high-tech sectors.Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems once served as the technology cornerstone for achieving agility. But the idea of “agility” has come to encompass much more than just technology—it also depends on people, processes, and leadership.

What can the clinical trials supply chain teach us about getting products to patients on time and in full (OTIF)? A great deal, according to David Northrup, Head of Supply Chain at Theravance Biopharma. In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Northrup shares the important supply chain lessons he learned while working in the clinical trials supply chain, as well as some sage advice on how to increase patient-centricity and improve OTIF in your organization.Key TakeawaysThe clinical trials supply chain has always been highly focused on the patient; therefore, it can serve as a model for patient-centricity in the commercial pharmaceutical supply chain.Building closer relationships with downstream partners can help you gain a better understanding of the drivers behind patient demand.Looking beyond the walls of the supply chain team and sharing data with other areas of the business can help you significantly improve demand forecast accuracy.

IDC’s Bob Parker and Simon Ellis share groundbreaking research on how ongoing supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19 are impacting the pharmaceutical industry. They also offer expert tips on how to adopt a holistic view of the end-to-end supply chain, achieve greater agility, and boost supply chain resiliency.Key TakeawaysGaining end-to-end supply chain visibility alone is not enough. You also need the ability to rapidly intervene and adapt to new conditions when supply chain disruptions are spotted.Pharma supply chain companies should consider creating a decision environment that serves as a “process twin,” enabling them to quickly identify root causes and rectify adverse events in the supply chain.Companies should stop deploying local or siloed solutions to fix problems. It’s time to do away with the “metaphorical Band-aids” and start thinking holistically about how to achieve supply chain resiliency.The Agile-Supply Chain Credo is a set of guiding principles for transforming your supply chain and achieving real patient-centricity.

Pharma companies that want to make agile and patient-driven supply chains a reality need to look beyond their four walls and collaborate more closely with partners across the end-to-end supply chain, according to McKinsey & Company supply chain specialists Danny Kalmar and John Chartier. In this episode of our video podcast, Roddy Martin talks with Kalmar and Chartier about what it takes to make this transition while increasing supply chain resiliency and speeding up the “metabolic rate” of decision making.Key TakeawaysOver 80% of pharma company executives believe COVID-19 is prompting a fundamental shift toward making patient-driven supply chains a reality—and one of their top concerns is “the need for speed.”Analyzing demand from multiple points of view, rapidly identifying the implications of changes in patient demand, dynamic monitoring of demand forecasts, and advanced statistical forecasting are all becoming table stakes as pharma companies seek to build more agile, responsive, and resilient supply chains.Companies that invested in agile supply chain capabilities before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted have been better positioned to react, respond, and recover compared to companies that did not.

What are the 5 Stages of Supply Chain Transformation—and what challenges can you expect on the way? TraceLink’s Kate Hare joins The Agile Supply Chain Podcast to interview our host, Roddy Martin, about the groundbreaking work he did on this 5-stage maturity model when he was an analyst at AMR Research.Key TakeawaysThe 5 Stages of Supply Chain Transformation is a model for supply chain maturity developed by Roddy Martin and AMR Research about ten years ago. Most pharma companies remain at stage one—the reactive stage—in the journey to supply chain transformation. The most difficult part of the journey to transformation is transitioning from an ERP-centric view to an end-to-end view of supply chain processes.

In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, McKinsey & Company Senior Expert Robert Cantow explains why optimizing patient outcomes requires much more than just an ERP system. He also explains why it’s important to develop a technology road map and what you can do to avoid the dangers of “pilot purgatory.”Key TakeawaysThe pharma supply chain is getting more complex and, as a result, it now takes more than enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to deliver the supply chain capabilities patients require. It’s important to build agility into your strategic thinking and to create a roadmap for incorporating new technologies into your supply chain operations. A good first step toward achieving agility is developing the ability to rapidly sense and respond to supply chain disruptions.

TraceLink’s Roddy Martin talks about the science of continuous and integrative improvement with Dino Petrarolo, Senior Vice President of global consulting firm Competitive Capabilities International.Key TakeawaysMany companies standardize and digitalize core business processes, but you can also benefit from codifying the business improvement journey itself. One road to continuous improvement begins with a focus on the errors made in business processes. You shouldn’t wait until the end of a business process to catch errors—it’s important to detect and correct errors as business processes are running.

How can analytics and cross-silo thinking help you achieve agility and resiliency in your supply chain organization? In this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast, Radhika Subramanian, Supply Chain Practice Leader at Slalom, a business and technology consulting firm, offers a step-by-step path to agility. She also explains why you don’t necessarily need to rip and replace your legacy systems to get there.Key TakeawaysMany supply chain executives say end-to-end visibility is the number one requirement for a smart and responsive supply chain. To become more agile, you first need to bring your organization’s division leaders together and get them adopt a cross-silo mentality. You can use technology that exists today to augment legacy systems and create an agile, responsive, and intelligent supply chain.

TraceLink's Roddy Martin talks about The Agile Supply Chain Credo with Accenture's Life Sciences and Supply Chain Operations Team in this special episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast.Key TakeawaysThe Agile Supply Chain Credo is a new approach to the life sciences supply chain that places a greater emphasis on people and their ability to achieve the ultimate objective: serving patients. One of the key principles of The Agile Supply Chain Credo is a commitment to delivering safe products and medicines on time and in full to customers and patients. Another key principle is a commitment to exercising resiliency and ongoing responsiveness to patient and customer demand.

upply chain thought leader Dr. John Gattorna discusses the fundamental principles of outside-in, demand-driven segmentation for the pharmaceutical supply chain in this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast.Key TakeawaysA one-size-fits-all approach to supply chain fails to account for different buying behaviors and different expectations. Four or five dominant behavioral segments normally account for 80% of a given market, which can help companies plan their outside-in strategy. Demand-driven segmentation is fundamental to understanding the critical criteria you need to deliver medicine to patients on time, in full, especially for specialty products.

Stuart Whiting, Senior Vice President of Logistics and Planning at Schneider Electric, discusses how logistics can be a key differentiator in your agile supply chain in this episode of The Agile Supply Chain Podcast.Key TakeawaysProducts aren’t necessarily the differentiator in a competitive marketplace, but the manner in which you deliver that product can be. Customer-driven logistics hinge on understanding the specific needs and behaviors of the customer, and a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer viable. Data is the bloodstream of your supply chain, and the health of that data is fundamental to achieving agility, resilience, and reliability.

Professor Omera Khan underscores the vital importance of supply chain risk management and the sometimes surprising upside of risk, this week on The Agile Supply Chain Podcast with Roddy Martin.Key TakeawaysSupply chain management needs to evolve to incorporate a risk management mindset. Resilience in a post-pandemic landscape is about absorbing and being energized by disruptions. Truly great supply chain companies don't just sense demand, they translate it.

Global health expert Maeve Magner joins TraceLink’s Roddy Martin on The Agile Supply Chain Podcast to discuss how large-scale disruptions like COVID-19 can create complex challenges—and opportunities—for emerging markets across the world.Key TakeawaysDespite a high burden of disease, limited supply, and a complex financial model, emerging markets are often early adopters of supply chain technology.Lessons learned from Ebola have provided a framework for COVID-19 response in African markets, including restricting travel and contact-tracing capabilities, but challenges persist.Emerging markets are making progress toward patient-centric models, but in many cases have different drivers than in industrialized markets.