Pharma Manager Challenge in Field:

Pharma managers are responsible for overseeing the sales and marketing activities of pharmaceutical products in a specific territory or region. They face various challenges in their field, such as:

• Human error resulting in misinformation being entered into an organization’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This can lead to inaccurate inventory management, order fulfillment, and forecasting.

• Improper or incorrect storage of finished goods or raw materials. This can affect the quality, safety, and efficacy of the products, as well as cause regulatory compliance issues and customer dissatisfaction.

• Waste and/or shrinkage (i.e., theft) resulting in incorrect inventory counts and undocumented loss of revenue. This can reduce the profitability and performance of the pharma company, as well as create supply chain disruptions and shortages.

• Demand forecasting challenges due to the rapidly changing market conditions, customer preferences, and product innovations.This can make it difficult to plan production, distribution, and pricing strategies, as well as optimize inventory levels and avoid stock-outs or overstocking.

• Price fluctuation assessment challenges due to the increasing competition, regulatory pressures, and cost inflation. This can affect the profitability and sustainability of the pharma company, as well as its ability to invest in research and development and innovation.

• New modalities and technologies that require different manufacturing processes, supply chains, and product life cycles. This can increase the complexity and risk of operations, as well as require new skills, capabilities, and partnerships.

To overcome these challenges, pharma managers need to track various metrics and indicators that can help them monitor and improve their operations. Some of these metrics are:

• Sales volume and revenue by product, customer, region, channel, etc. This can help measure the market demand, customer satisfaction, and profitability of the products.

• Inventory turnover and days of inventory by product, location, stage, etc. This can help measure the efficiency and effectiveness of inventory management, as well as identify potential issues or opportunities for optimization.

• Fill rate and order cycle time by product, customer, channel, etc. This can help measure the responsiveness and reliability of order fulfillment, as well as customer service levels.

• Quality indicators such as defect rate, recall rate, customer complaints, etc. by product, batch, location, etc. This can help measure the quality and safety of the products, as well as compliance with regulatory standards.

• Cost indicators such as cost of goods sold (COGS), operating expenses (OPEX), gross margin, etc. by product, location, activity, etc. This can help measure the cost efficiency and effectiveness of operations, as well as identify potential areas for improvement or savings.

To track these metrics effectively, pharma managers need to leverage advanced analytics tools and solutions that can provide them with real-time data visibility, insights, and recommendations. Some of these tools are:

• ERP systems that can integrate data from various sources and functions across the organization, such as production, distribution, sales, finance, etc. This can provide a single source of truth for operations data and enable better decision making.

• Business intelligence (BI) platforms that can analyze data from ERP systems and other sources using various methods such as descriptive analytics (what happened), diagnostic analytics (why it happened), predictive analytics (what will happen), and prescriptive analytics (what should happen). This can provide actionable insights and recommendations for operations improvement.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that can augment data analysis with machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), etc. This can provide more advanced capabilities such as anomaly detection (identifying unusual patterns or events), sentiment analysis (understanding customer feedback or reviews), image recognition (verifying product quality or authenticity), etc.

By using these tools effectively, pharma managers can overcome their field challenges and achieve operational excellence. They can also deliver more value to their organizations by enhancing customer satisfaction, increasing profitability, reducing risk, and driving innovation.