The importance of RPA in reshaping Biopharma.
Biopharma is another industry that needs to adjust their current business models to constant regulations, while making sure Research and Development (R&D) investments become increasingly successful, and failures cost less and less. All this in a complex market, in which it’s necessary to redefine the relationships between health care systems, opinion leaders, individual physicians, provider networks and customers who expect more and better products.
Biopharmaceuticals have understood these market needs, and often argue they’ve made the necessary investments and automation through their ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) and CRM (Customer Resources Management) systems. But a report by EY Consulting about the biopharmaceutical sector indicates that it hasn’t been enough: “The reality is that most still suffer from a patchwork of processes and applications that don’t communicate, don’t simplify the workload and can’t easily generate meaningful insights. This results in increased costs, unreasonably high process cycle times, unreliable quality and diminished agility, and outsourcing activities to lower-cost countries is not an answer. The cost arbitrage associated with outsourcing doesn’t hold a competitive edge anymore. In such an environment, RPA is quickly emerging as one of the best solutions to address all of the above challenges. Rather than replacing existing technology, RPA links existing IT assets together to simplify processes, accelerate efficiency and provide flexibility.”
Let’s take a look at the case of sales force: EY reports that 71% of sales reps complain about the excessive time they spend entering data into Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. This is because vendors have to consult and reconcile information from diverse sources to manage customers’ activity, from tracking records and inventory, to reviewing customer feedback, and managing expenses. This administrative work limits the time that sales reps can spend on interacting with doctors or hospital groups. In fact, EY estimates suggest that biopharma salespeople currently spend only 22% of their workweek interacting with potential buyers.
Regarding this, EY describes an RPA success story of a leading medical device company that needed a way to improve its customer service to hospitals and automate regional inventory reporting (done manually). The company built RPA robots to download current inventory data from the company’s SAP system, imported it into a back-end data table, updating queries and notified support staff of inventories by region. The company extended use to more than 50 processes, gaining annual cost savings of $240,000 from implementing RPA robots.
Conciliac is an RPA solution that can be integrated with SAP with a single click. Since it’s SAP Certified, the Conciliac ERP Connector efficiently interacts with the SAP ERP Business Suite, completely integrating with ERP data. Conciliac easily reconciles ERP elements such as: GL Accounts, vendors, customers open items reconciliation, Material Data, and Fixed Asset.
According to EY, clients who implement RPA solutions like Conciliac’s reach a Return on Investment (ROI) that involves 4 business aspects:
- Time: Conciliac automations reduce process cycle time, with end-to-end processing that can be executed 24/7.
- Quality: Automations with Conciliac are safe and controlled, they enhance compliance, and automate processes without the need for radical transformations.
- Cost: Reduces the number of full-time employees (FTE) necessary to carry out repetitive processes. A robot costs a third of one
- Value: Conciliac’s solutions provide data-based insights. To automate repetitive tasks, the staff can concentrate on more complex tasks.
Contact one of our consultants to find out how you can raise your ROI by implementing RPA with Conciliac’s solutions.
Author: Conciliac team.
References:
“How robotics is reshaping the biopharma value chain”, 2018, EYGM Limited.
https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-how-robotics-is-reshaping-the-biopharma-value-chain/%24FILE/ey-how-robotics-is-reshaping-the-biopharma-value-chain.pdf