Winning the Race to Market with Syniti

Project Background

A global leader in the pharmaceutical industry, embarked on a large-scale Master Data Management (MDM) rollout to extend the MDM solution used for the US and Europe to APAC. The initiative aimed to streamline new product introduction, standardize the material master data setup and status reporting, and ensure consistency in data across multiple markets. Given the complexity of managing data across different countries, regulatory environments, and business units, the company sought to expand the existing Syniti MDM solution using the scalable and robust features to apply the global concepts to a new ERP and markets.

Challenges

Addressing Regional Data Challenges

The faster a company can get a new product through the introduction pipeline, the more competitive they’ll be in the market, especially in pharmaceuticals where the regulatory and planning motions are intense. When it comes to pharma, it’s a race to market and the speed with which a company can move a material through the process can determine who will win.

Yet the existing go-to-market process was rudimentary in APAC, as it had been in EMEA before Syniti MDM was introduced. With teams sending out Excel docs to be manually updated, there was no reliable insight into how long it would (or should) take to get a material completed, where it was in the process, or even what the order of operations ideally should be. There was no accountability for approvals and no visibility into what (or who) the bottlenecks were.

•  Diverse regulatory frameworks across APAC were significantly different from the other regions/implementations. In particular, Chinese regulations are every different than other regions, with a lot of rules on how to treat data and what kind of documentation is needed.
• Local language translations were also needed within the system to display languages like Mandarin or Indian. The APAC region has multiple manufacturing sites and markets that work very differently from one another. For example, India and Japan are very different culturally, both in how the business is run, their regulations, and how they take a product to market. When dealing with multiple markets and sites, it’s important to parallelize business processes so everything can be merged back together in a timely manner. But as a global design, this concept physically manifests in each system very differently. For example, bill of material, custom data, even regional regulations must be taken into account and deployed differently for each system.
•  With as many as 16 different markets going to market at the same time, a lot of change management work was needed to keep all markets on the same page with how business processes should be run and how the market units fit into that process

Implementation Highlights

Implementing a Unified Data Solution

Implementation teams were split by US, Europe, and APAC regions to support all four roll-outs, with APAC being the last ECC system to be addressed. By taking the learnings from previous implementation, the APAC team was able to apply fixes and get the business on board quickly to get the results they wanted. Value props included breaking the process into five stage gates that allowed downstream processes, like demand and supply planning, to be triggered as soon as possible.

Setting Firm Boundaries Within the Business
The Syniti team set a very specific timeline for design, requiring a minimum amount of things closed before development could be started. Whereas previous implementations left things more open-ended, setting firmer boundaries helped the implementation team better plan their build, avoid rework, and deliver on those promises crisply and repeatedly. As a result, the business had more confidence that Syniti knew what they were doing in regards to implementing a solution.

Robust Change Management
Following the US and Europe implementations, the company realized they had previously underestimated just how challenging yet vital the change management process could be. Without the business onboard to a new business process change, it wouldn’t matter how well the system was designed, how well the validations worked, or even the tool itself, if the business wouldn’t adopt it.

Stage Gate Deployment
Specific to pharmaceuticals, only the material number and description are needed to initiate FDA paperwork, so only a small amount of data needs to be created within SAP to make that material happen. This allowed the team to introduce only pieces of data along the way to help roll out the system in phases, mitigating risks and allowing for iterative improvements. While this makes for a more complex business process, it reduces the lead time on subsequent processes to be performed and can create parallelization.

Results & Benefits

Achieving Operational Excellence

Syniti’s implementation team was able to demonstrate repeated success to stakeholders, allowing them to make a number of program adjustments that the company continues to benefit from.

Structured Processes and Reporting
With more structure and reporting in the new process, the company now has more visibility into each step in the process, making it easier to map out how long it takes a material to move through the process.

Predictable Launches Across Large Regions
Prior to implementation, every country was responsible for taking their own product to market, with each market managing their go-to-market process independently. This process was manual and unpredictable. Now, everything operates under one “launch group”, centrally facilitating smooth rollouts to various markets and creating predictable launch plans.

Faster Go-to-Market
Not only is new process both measurable and traceable, the phased deployment has increased the speed at which a material can move through the system. As a result, products move faster to market, making the company more competitive in their industry.

Future Outlook & Scalability

By leveraging a centralized and standardized data management system, Syniti’s implementation team was able to enhance the visibility and reliability of the go-to-market process. The accelerated process moves material through the system and gets it to market faster, a differentiator for the company that ensures they stay competitive. Finally, it brings all Pharma markets under a standardized material introduction process.

The company plans to further optimize the MDM system by incorporating enhancements over time and improving visualizations to give more clarity on the process and lead times to the business.