Global pharma firm leverages AI first offers to drive savings and shorten cycle time
Procurement plays a pivotal roll in delivering the equipment and raw materials necessary to efficiently deliver on the critical goals of pharma industry. For one multinational biopharmaceutical company, AI-powered intelligent first offers with Arkestro make overcoming bottlenecks quick and simple.
Overview
Pharmaceutical companies are tasked with delivering life-saving treatments and therapeutics to people around the world. Shortcomings with our customer’s legacy ERP system made procurement seem more like a bottleneck than a value-added partner to the business.
“The problem with our former tool was that it wasn’t intuitive or at all easy to use, which made onboarding difficult and prevented collaboration altogether,” explained the Sourcing Manager at this global pharmaceutical organization.
Without the ability to work together in the platform amidst an unyielding need to move quickly and efficiently, suppliers struggled to effectively submit bids and stakeholders resorted to using email as their primary mode of communication.
They knew it was time to make a serious change. Comprehensive data and ease of access are now associated with the entire bid process. But digital transformation, especially in procurement, is easier said than done. What they needed was a platform that was not only going to streamline processes, but also chance the company culture itself.
Approach
The introduction of Arkestro established a new, more intelligent and collaborative way of managing RFPs within their procurement department. With a user-friendly platform and all communications centralized in one place, there was no longer a need to go back and forth over email, while a data-driven approach made it easy to create and track supplier iterations on their bids.
“The platform is extremely user-friendly. You have all the communications in one place with a vendor, and the ability right from the start to set up target savings. It’s great because you can just let the AI do the job and provide you with the end result.”
Using intelligent first offers, their buyers can quickly request more accurate quotes from qualified suppliers and rapidly reach best value award decisions.
Result
With a boost in productivity, the procurement team is now able to focus on more strategic projects and have a bigger impact on the organization overall. Arkestro took the entire supplier communication process out of email chains, creating a secure audit trail for business requirements and keeping stakeholders and suppliers engaged throughout the process. The result is a delightful stakeholder experience that drives measurable improvements in their procurement process.
In addition to the positive domino effect this pharmaceutical procurement team has seen using the platform, they’ve also been provided with an essential layer of control and visibility.
A significant 13.68% savings over baseline on their final award outcome, combined with the increase in operational efficiency, put them on a path to be even more data-driven in the future.
Conclusion
Today, Arkestro has enabled the culture shift they had hoped for: procurement is seen as a strategic consultant for stakeholders.
With Arkestro, they can understand how to price an offer and what makes a supplier tick, allowing them to avoid suboptimal business decisions. With this new level of insight powered by Arkestro AI, they have put themselves in the driver’s seat of their strategic sourcing, delivering positive outcomes each and every time.