Helping a global life sciences giant’s radiology department transform its supply chain management

The organization is a major Life Sciences player – with its core competencies being in pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare, agro-chemicals, seeds, and biotechnology products. The company’s supply chains are enmeshed across the globe and need constant monitoring to ensure that they operate with precision.

The business’ radiology department was facing significant hurdles in its monthly SCM reporting process, which involved:

• Manual extraction of data from SAP into Excel
• Collecting information from multiple departments in diverse formats
• Presenting data in an amorphous format, which was lacking proper structure and was filled with reporting errors.

Also, the data collected had to be individually validated. While the insights from each department were entered into the master file as and when they were provided, the extensive number of human touchpoints brought ineffective reporting – with manual errors and outdated data leading to reactive actions. The lack of real-time insights meant that the company could not institute an alert mechanism for any disruption – or instantly identify root cause of problems. Additionally, there was no means to determine cycle time or monitor the entire process flow.

Designing new, healthier ways of reporting with ADMnext solutions

Utilizing ADMnext solutions, the Capgemini team embarked on developing an automated, near real-time KPI dashboard designed to streamline the entire reporting process. KPIs were implemented to monitor SCM performance, including metrics such as On-Time In-Full (OTIF), inventory levels, days of supply, and VAN replenishment.

Furthermore, KPIs were introduced to track waste throughout the supply chain, which encompassed blocked stock, write-offs, and more. Additionally, the Business Process Flow (BPF) team introduced Process Mining capabilities for enhanced visibility that enabled swift identification of bottlenecks and processing delays.

Moving from a reactive to a proactive model

Built using Power BI and seamlessly linking to SAP, the solution established a centralized data source, and facilitated real-time data display. The implementation of configurable alerts delivered timely notifications when specific thresholds were breached – enabling management to proactively address issues.

The inclusion of filters empowered users to conduct in-depth analysis of KPIs, while auto-generated insights significantly reduced manual effort in reporting. The multi-channel capabilities of the dashboard ensured easy access through various devices, including phones, tablets, and collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams.

“Digitalization is one of the key elements in the future success of our firm. With this new Global Radiology KPI Dashboard, based on the latest Power BI technology, we can slice and dice data directly in a comprehensive dashboard without needing to download the data into Excel and then do our data crunching exercises. The collaboration with Capgemini has been great!”

C-Suite Executive

Thanks to Capgemini, the company’s radiology department witnessed a transformative shift in its SCM reporting process. The automated dashboard not only provided deep insights and data visualization, but it also enabled agile decision-making and the implementation of checks and balances for reducing waste in the pipeline (blocked stock and write-offs, for example).

With real-time visibility into key metrics and the ability to identify bottlenecks promptly, the department was empowered to optimize the entire supply chain, reduce waste, and drive operational efficiency. Overall, the Capgemini team was able to deliver the following benefits:

• Real-time supply chain management data insights thanks to comprehensive dashboards
• Moving to near real-time KPI tracking from reactive month-end reporting
• Reduced negative business impacts thanks to Fix before Fail dashboards
• Cost savings of approximately 50 FTE days annually.

Bringing healthy results to other business units

Moving forward, the company is looking to expand upon this success with Capgemini. Together with the Capgemini team, the organization is analyzing the supply chains of its other business units and seeking to reap the same results.