Our experience at the LogiPharma event

Bluecrux attended LogiPharma, the largest global event bringing together supply chain professionals from top pharma companies. We were amazed by the open, honest and constructive atmosphere that ran through all the sessions there. In light of that openness, we wanted to share the two takeaways that resonated most with our interlocutors.

With topics covering “digitalization,” “E2E visibility,” “serialization” and “strengthening customer service and distribution,” LogiPharma strongly matched our current project portfolio. From Bluecrux, both Koen Jaspers, founding partner and CEO, and Anouk Schoenmakers, managing partner, were asked to join a round table discussion.

1. Integrated Business Planning (IBP): How do the industry’s most prominent pharma organizations—like Novartis, GSK and UCB—respond?

Jaspers, moderator of the round table: “Most of the participants had heard of IBP or had just started the road to IBP. Only a few were about to finish their IBP project. Some of the questions we went into were: What is the outcome? What are the pitfalls? What is the difference between S&OP and IBP? How to get strong engagement with the commercial and finance partners? And can we really get to ‘one version of the truth’? IBP can be supported by a tool, but, in essence, it’s a process that requires strong management involvement. It’s a cross-departmental effort. So, in order to introduce IBP successfully, the key success factor is change management to trigger buy-in from the management teams.”

2. How to deal with your customer service organization.

Schoenmakers: “The discussion evolved around topics like: Which activities can be best positioned in the front office, which activities are more appropriate to be handled by a strong back-office team? Is language really key to providing your customers with the agreed service levels? The main trend is to move toward a centralized and geographically optimal organization. In order to serve customers with a holistic answer, the resource pool shifts from a specialist pool toward a department of generalists, which have an end-to-end view of the supply chain. By using the right technology, this no longer contradicts the use of customer SPOCs.”