How a pharmaceutical
manufacturer remedied their IT infrastructure
SCA Pharma prepare custom, sterile pharmaceuticals for hospital pharmacies and healthcare facilities in the USA, taking medications in large quantities and transforming them into individual patient doses, in a clean room environment.
The company had one successful manufacturing site in Arkansas and were ready to expand their business,adding another manufacturing facility in Connecticut. But they needed a reliable business management system before they could become a multi-site, multi-manufacturing company
Key outcomes
- A scalable solution to support rapid growth into a second manufacturing site
- A purpose-built, ecommerce platform for a better customer experience
- Empowered employees who understand Sage and can use it to improve processes
- Multi-location collaboration in a cloud environment
- Flexible working from any device, anywhere, with Sage X3 native browser functionality
The challenge
SCA Pharma’s only manufacturing site was at maximum capacity, they needed to expand to a new location and for that site to be operational within just eight months, a major undertaking for any company, and almost impossible with SCA Pharma’s existing infrastructure.
At the time, SCA Pharma relied on an on-premise system that was unreliable, plagued with downtime and difficult to access. They needed a more agile approach to support their growth.
Matthew Collins, Vice President of Information Technology at SCA Pharma sums-up the situation:
“When I started at SCA the challenges were related to the reliability of the existing system … Up-time as well as access. We had no infrastructure, we had no ERP system to speak of, and we needed to manufacture in a second facility starting within eight months.”
Matthew Collins, Vice President of Information Technology, SCA Pharma:
“We had multiple different requirements, we needed to have scalability, flexibility, reliability. We also knew that we were going to be in a rapid growth mode. In order to sustain that rapid growth and multi-site capability we needed cloud capability.”
The solution
Despite their short-deadline, SCA Pharma had a long list of requirements. They needed a solution that provided flexibility, scalability and support for rapid growth in a cloud environment.
SCA Pharma were quick to realize the benefits, enhancing their customer experience, as Matthew Collins explains:
“Sage X3 allowed us to build our own front-end ecommerce platform, defining the customer experience well for us and integrating through the API to the X3 platform very easily and accessibly.”
But perhaps the most significant gain was the ability to grow their manufacturing capabilities:
“Opening up on time and doubling our manufacturing capability almost overnight was the first benefit of Sage X3 … the ability to re-engineer our processes and take us from a smaller company to a mid-size company, that was all driven by capabilities within the Sage ERP.”
Eric Frank, CEO, NexTec Group
“We’ve traditionally focused on regulated industries that can span manufacturing and distribution. There’s a particular emphasis on process … it’s an area where the product Sage X3 really does very well.”
The bottom line
Ultimately, Sage X3 has transformed internal processes at SCA Pharma and empowered employees to seek more ways to improve existing processes:
“It’s actually transformed our IT experience, and for me personally, moved me out of the role of traditional IT manager and put me into the role of process re-engineer, change manager … I think
that’s both empowering for me and my career, but also really empowering for the company”
And Sage X3 has given SCA Pharma the tools to react to important business challenges with efficiency, so they can continue to improve their processes:
“Sage X3 brings SCA the capability of implementing rapid solutions to pressing technology or process issues within our organization and provides visibility at the right time to the right folks in the organisation. So we’re able to implement change rapidly … and maintain a continuous improvement model.”
The future
Sage X3 provides SCA Pharma with a stable foundation to grow their company, so they can make changes to operations, while maintaining quality and consistency in their output.
They’re now positioned to support their growing company and excited about what they can achieve in the future with Sage.
And it’s not just IT and technical teams planning future projects with Sage. Business unit managers are beginning to understand Sage and are just starting to uncover the possibilities that it can offer, in terms of future enhancements and improvements to their processes:
“We could run everything, and it would be solid on the financial side and solid on the manufacturing side. [And we have the] ability to add in any module or functionality that we would need in the future. Sage X3 is the right tool for us, it’s going to be the platform for us for the future.”
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