Supply Chain Agility Unlocked with Agile Process Teams

In the pharmaceutical supply chain, turning raw materials into life-saving medicines requires precise coordination between a complex set of stakeholders from both inside and outside the organization.

For supplier managers, every day brings the potential for new challenges.

Production delays… material shortages… quality incidents… or even “good problems,” like a new product launch can generate hundreds, if not thousands of issues, every day.

But with no systems for collaborating on issues with suppliers other than email, spreadsheets, and phone calls, nearly half of pharma companies say it takes them more than 40 days to resolve issues with upstream trading partners, resulting in lost revenue, dissatisfied customers, higher operating costs, and most importantly, patients not receiving the critical medicines they need, on time, in full.

You need a better way to work collaboratively with your suppliers.

Meet Kate. Kate is responsible for supplier management at Reading Pharmaceuticals.

Kate just learned that orders have doubled for her company’s most profitable product, but that a key supplier can only ship 60% of the active ingredient.

In the past, this would mean a frustrating cycle of disjointed emails, phone calls, and shared spreadsheets, all because Kate lacks a system to work together with suppliers in a structured and efficient way … until now.

Today, Kate has Agile Process Teams: the multi-enterprise work management application from TraceLink.

The Agile Process Teams application creates a digital network that enables stakeholders from inside and outside Kate’s organization to work together on a shared business process like material shortages for better visibility, greater agility and better end-to-end supply chain resilience.

By bringing external and internal teams together in a shared workspace with a single source of data, Kate has the ability to see and manage every incident across all of her suppliers in real time.

With Agile Process Teams, Kate manages the material shortage by adding a new incident and ensures that all of the information is captured in a structured, collaborative environment.

She invites from her API supplier, Supplier, Incorporated, to collaborate on the material shortage along with other key team members like Oliver from Kate's Quality Team and Sofia from the planning team to add comments, share documents, receive customizable notifications when key events happen, and track progress and dates as they work toward resolving the incident.

By working together in the same digital work management system they all see the same information at the same time so they can resolve the incident faster. And, because Agile Process Teams manages all incidents in one place Kate’s executive team gets the visibility they need across all incidents and teams.

For Kate, Agile Process Teams gives her the ability to tap into the expertise of her co-workers and supply chain partners to get her work done faster and more completely than ever before

Real-time workflows and structured collaboration ensure that everyone is working with the same data and knows who has the next step in the process.

So everyone can work together to improve supplier performance, eliminate chronic disruptions, and build a more resilient supply chain. 

And with 280,000 companies on the TraceLink digital supply network, many of Kate’s suppliers are already verified and can quickly start collaborating with her.

The results?

Shorter order cycle times, higher inventory turns, better on-time, in-full performance, and lower cost of goods sold.

Creating the foundation for an agile supply chain that can respond quickly to the next challenge, whatever it may be.

Today, Kate has a whole new way to build stronger relationships with her suppliers and unlock the potential for proven results…

Like a 97% reduction in manufacturing disruptions, a 27% improvement in incident responsiveness, a 50% reduction in repeat disruptions, an 82% improvement in delivery performance, and more than $100 million in annual cost avoidance...

And the most important result? Delivering medicines to the patients who need them, on time, in full.

Agile Process Teams, the multi-enterprise work management application that enables supply chain partners to execute shared business processes with speed, agility, and intelligence.

Only from TraceLink.