Staying on top of consumer demand alongside stringent quality control laws can set you up for any combination of ERP crises. In an industry where profit margins can be brutally thin, healing from these kinds of losses can be such an arduous process that investing in preventive measures is definitely one of the best strategic moves to make. Fortunately, ERP AI and software are constantly evolving, and the answer to support for decision making processes could lie in simply updating your ERP software.
So, how do you pick the right ERP software for your pharma company? We’ve completed a list of the top features a pharma ERP software must have:
- Quality control
- Process tracking
- Inventory management
- Business intelligence & financial analytics
- Automated admin tasks
- Security
Quality Control
Stability Testing is the first thing that comes to mind when we think ‘quality control’. It ensures quality of inventory and product potency continuously, so not one bad batch slips through the cracks.
Flexibility is another key feature within quality control. From the amount of product to test, testing items from a specific vendor, to changing policies, you need to have control over your, well, quality control.
A final huge and messy part of QC that we’ll cover in this section is the electronic signature process. It’s vital to provide an electronic audit trail every step of the process to ensure quality control.
Process Tracking
Process tracking and quality control go hand-in-hand. By tracing the life cycle of a product for QC purposes, it’s progress in the receipe is also monitored. The communication between these two areas allows for ingredient traceability, and therefore visibility when problems do occur and a recall is in order.
An example of this is bill of materials (BOM) implosions and explosions. These allow companies to track the raw materials of a recipe at every level. This kinds of transparency makes room for recalling items efficiency, recalling only affected lots. Making recalls is a hard choice, but quality control and BOM implosions and explosions can mean the difference in lawsuits, or even life and death.
Since batch tickets govern the production process, it’s vital that an ERP solution’s production tracking features include individual batch tickets capabilities. Batch tickets should have sign off and QC fields, and have a comprehensive archieve system in the case of an FDA audit.
Making sure you hit deadlines is yet another capability you want your ERP solution to have. While juggling orders and leaving margins for error (among other things), built-in features as simple as a calendar can do wonders to help you build a reputation as a trustworthy partner.
Process tracking also should include the capacity for storage and amendments of receipes, and records on who’s had access to and changed it.
Inventory Management
‘First Expiring, First Out’ (FEFO) is a must-have approach to inventory management in your software. It ensures that items don’t lose efficacy to aging, and don’t sit around and expire in storage either.
Warehouse management system(WMS) use bar-code technology for greater speed and flexibility in inventory management. Should your pharma ERP solution include native barcode WMS capabilities? Yes!Yes! A thousand times Yes! It provides you with instant tracking, decreases the chance of warehouse errors to almost zero, and improves productivity. You can rely on WMS to reduce operating costs and improve process control.
Knowing when and how much to order and deliver are calls that can be aided through statistics, business insights, and AI – all capabilities that are rapid amd implicit within ERP softwares.
Business Intelligence & Financial Analytics
Since inventory management is such a prominent piece of your prospective ERP software, you might be interested in the option for native business intelligence tools. A massive benefit of an automated ecosystem of the different modules of your business (e.g. inventory, recipes, client deadlines, progress management, human resources, etc.) is that creating beautiful business dashboards is almost like a by-product of its data processing.
Business dashboards allow you to analyze trends, KPIs, and the overall health of your company, so you can take advantage of opportunities and receive greater support in making business decisions. A healthy and attractive dashboard is also a sure-fire way to make an impression in investor and client meetings.
Automated Admin Tasks
Software can automate admin tasks such as report and invoice writing for you, so why not have it as a module in your ERP software?
Regulatory report writing modules should be flexible to handle a range of requirement and documents. Automating these office tasks saves everybody time and cuts out the chance of mistakes.
Security
The final feature the dream custom ERP solution for your pharma company must include is all-around security.
Conclusion
The list of features a pharmaceutical ERP software could have is endless. We recommend that you first come up with a list of features that benefit the unique niches of your pharma company the most, and go hunting from there.
If you feel that the next step for you is a consultation, or you’d just like to have a conversation about what to expect, send us a message. We have over a decade of experience in helping companies build custom digital solutions, and even specialized in developing pharma and healthcare tools for a while. We’d be happy to help.
Hopefully this information was helpful to you in developing what’s out there in terms of pharma ERP software features.
