The most trail-blazing Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations (CDMOs) are at the forefront of digital transformation, leveraging it to offer unparalleled customer service through operational streamlining and insights provision.
These aspects are crucial for ensuring the timely and precise delivery of therapeutics as per their client’s unique requirements. Enterprises adopting advanced digital methodologies, practices, and technologies can not only solidify their leadership roles but also bolster their global competitiveness. However, a pressing question remains: is the entire industry prepared to fully embrace digital transformation, fostering agility, data-centricity, and future-readiness across its spectrum?
Digital transformation became a key differentiation for PCI as part of its business strategy in 2019 with the goal of creating new digital customer experiences, while achieving more collaboration and efficiency across its global organization.
Laying the Groundwork
Thorough research preceded significant investments, ensuring a well-informed trajectory in their digital transformation journey. This comprehensive exploration encompassed the identification of pivotal trends poised to exert a substantial influence on the entire pharmaceutical supply chain, spanning from drug development and manufacturing to commercial packaging.
Foremost among these trends was the recognition of the value and potential applications of digital technologies to elevate the customer experience. Elevating customer interactions necessitated not only the integration of digital capabilities but also a profound mastery of their utilization. The second prominent trend revolved around the importance of real-time supply chain information. Customer expectations demanded instantaneous access to project updates, rendering the conventional manual approach inadequate.
Harnessing and catalyzing a diverse array of digital components, PCI introduced pci | bridge™ in September 2020, marking a milestone in the delivery of real-time supply chain insights to their clientele. This innovative endeavor aimed to establish an unprecedented level of customer service, aligning with the ethos of pristine client satisfaction.
Delivering Pristine Customer Experience
To create a truly advantageous digital tool for our clients, PCI embarked on a journey of collaboration and innovation. Inspired by the insights of four key customers, PCI harnessed their feedback throughout the development process. These clients were integral participants in full-day workshops that unveiled their desire for more effective interactions with PCI. From these sessions, key requisites emerged, notably enhanced supply chain visibility and reduction in time devoted to manual activities, all underscored by the undeniable necessity of automation.
Armed with these invaluable client insights, PCI established a partnership with a digital product development firm. This union was driven by the shared goal of transforming the collective vision into a tangible reality. The endeavor encompassed many design concepts, meticulously refined to encapsulate the desired functionalities and user experiences. Crucially, the clients remained deeply engaged in this transformative process. Their input played a pivotal role in refining the tool’s evolution, spanning feedback-rich evaluations of capabilities, demonstrations, and wireframes. The primary aim was to ensure not only the tool’s reliability and functionality for the participating clients but also its applicability and productivity across PCI’s broader customer base.
Through this iterative process of feedback and co-creation, the envisioned digital tool transitioned from a concept to a tangible reality. The collaboration between PCI, the client ambassadors, and the development team epitomizes the power of client-centric innovation, as they collectively forged a tool poised to revolutionize interactions and efficiencies within the realm of PCI’s offerings.
Empowering Clients with Real-Time Data Insights
The innovative pci | bridge™ platform revolutionizes the clinical trial landscape by offering comprehensive tools for managing the trial journey. Unlike systems that update data once daily, the standout feature of pci | bridge™ lies in its capacity to aggregate real-time information across three pivotal operational domains: inventory, production, and distribution across the organizations global footprint. Notably, this platform distinguishes itself by providing immediate access to production data, a dimension often absent in other systems that solely focus on inventory management. Users can effortlessly procure real-time data and generate reports encompassing these three critical operations, catering to diverse data analysis requirements across projects.
Distinguished by elevated automation, pci | bridge™ empowers users with instant data and invaluable insights, facilitating informed decision-making through continuous visibility into their clinical and commercial supply chains. This dynamic capability also includes document sharing, KPI visibility, and integrations with other services for electronic signature and project timeline management.
Achieving Optimal Connectivity
Integrating PCI’s systems enables customers to oversee their diverse portfolio of projects within the PCI network. Due to continuous research and development, an innovative avenue emerged: the provision of integrations with customers’ data via an Application Interface Program (API). This anticipated feature release unlocks a spectrum of business prospects for clients, spanning from managing purchase order submissions, shipment notifications & requests, to demand forecasting, bulk shipment notification, and bulk lot allocations for manufacturing.
Previous feature releases included integrations with prominent digital tools such as DocuSign and Smartsheet, amplifying the capabilities of pci | bridge™. The integration with DocuSign, for instance, serves to notify users about pending documents that require signatures, ensuring projects stay on course. Furthermore, it identifies individuals who may have inadvertently overlooked the need to review and approve critical documentation, hindering project progression.
Integration with Smartsheet allows users to track progress on open project timelines related to their products in the same place that they can view their production, inventory, distribution, and invoice data. pci | bridge™ can also notify users about past due milestones as an added avenue for project timeline management.
A Year of Achievements
Supported by a dedicated Customer Success team, the platform has seen tremendous growth over the last year and the value it provides is made evident in the data. Our team has conducted over 250 user enablement trainings resulting in a 42.3% increase in platform adoption. Agile development methods are employed to ensure new capabilities are released often – as demonstrated by over 24 release events in the last 12 months. The platform supports over 4600+ clinical trials and commercial products.
As we anticipate further growth in 2024, we have strategically expanded the team to offer the same level of support and continued improvement and enhancement.
The Foreseeable [Digital] Future
Introducing groundbreaking therapies to the market and sustaining the availability of existing novel medications has become a formidable task. The intricacies inherent in the pharmaceutical supply chain, coupled with the growing demand for enhanced customer experiences, are placing new demands on pharmaceutical enterprises and their research and development-centric counterparts to fully embrace digital transformation. In this landscape, partnering with a suitable CDMO becomes imperative, as it provides the necessary guidance and support to avoid project delays.
The digital transformation journey is continuous as we progress toward becoming a smart CDMO enterprise. While most CDMO’s are still operating with manual processes in place, PCI has taken an aggressive approach to digitization with pci | bridge™ as evidence of our commitment.
With over three years of platform refinement already underway, pci | bridge™ will continue to evolve with new features and enhancements based on feedback from its users and as innovative technologies emerge.
We provide a complete range of pharma supply chain management services, and we are committed to supporting clients at every stage of the clinical cycle, delivering best-in-class services efficiently and effectively.
Find out more about PCI | bridge here