For your pharmaceutical company to thrive in the current unstable market, you need to adopt new and advanced technologies that will streamline your daily operations. One of the latest technologies that you should have in your pharmaceutical company is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. But what are the main reasons for pharma companies to implement ERP systems? This article discusses ERP implementation in the pharmaceutical industry.
What Is a Pharma Company?
A pharma company is a business that specializes in the discovery, creation, and production of pharmaceutical products, including medicines. The core activity of a pharma business is the production of chemicals that are used as medicine for human beings and animals. The pharmaceutical industry is quite universal, involving many dimensions like research, regulation, participation, and development of chemicals.
This industry involves various multifaceted components that create a lot of complexities, especially when you want to determine the buying behavior of your customers. So, you have to work with regulatory bodies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure that all your products are compliant.
Why You Need a Pharma ERP System
A pharmaceutical ERP system is specifically designed to streamline all the processes involved in the research, development, and distribution of pharmaceutical products. By implementing this system in your business, you’ll be strengthening your everyday processes so that you can continue to meet all demands from customers.
With the different elements of a pharma ERP system, you’ll streamline every critical task in your business thus reducing the pressure that comes with this type of business. Here are the main reasons why your pharmaceutical business needs an ERP system.
Record Management
Every day, your business will generate or obtain essential data that needs to be kept safe for reference and as evidence of compliance. A pharmaceutical ERP system will help you to record this information and keep it safe and readily accessible.
With the right ERP system from a provider like NBS, you’ll access your company’s old records with the click of a button; this is an ideal SAP pharma solution for your business. It’ll allow you to track products, bills, payments, pending payments, inventory, and more from a single platform.
Managing and Controlling Documents
Managing the huge bundles of documents that your pharmaceutical business handles every day can be a challenge if you don’t have the right system. Fortunately, most pharma ERP systems offer basic document management and control functions to help you organize your documents for more productivity.
Because your pharmaceutical business involves complex processes like research, product development, testing, manufacturing, and distribution, you need an advanced ERP system to help you record and manage the information obtained from these processes for future audits and analysis. For instance, your ERP platform will record and allow you to access lab information from a central point.
Compliance
The pharmaceutical industry is very complex with multifaceted components that have to meet specific standards. So, you have to periodically provide the regulating authorities like FDA with proof of compliance.
Putting this evidence together on short notice can be a real challenge, especially if you’re using outdated systems–but with a reliable ERP system that offers quality assurance capabilities, you can easily track your company’s compliance. This system integrates seamlessly with the existing systems and tools to help you meet all the rules and guidelines. It’ll ensure that your business follows strictly the regulations set by the government and other regulatory bodies to avoid penalties.
Managing Raw Materials and Final Products
Your ERP system will prevent the wastage of raw materials by allowing you to monitor your company’s usage of materials so that you can easily know when you need to order a new batch. Once the products have been produced and packaged ready for shipment, your ERP system will allow you to see the ones that are close to their expiration date and the ones that were manufactured recently.
Managing Recipes and Ingredients
Because your core activity is manufacturing medicine, you need to manage your ingredients and recipes for continuous quality assurance. This information should be readily available for checking and auditing.
