President, Iptor Americas
“With more than 30 years of working with pharma businesses, Iptor has developed an ERP solution that’s pre-configured to address the critical needs of pharma distributors.”
Digital business is reshaping industries, and this has only been boosted by the pandemic, as the real and digital worlds combined. E-commerce is heightening consumer expectations and forcing businesses to adapt their models. The ‘new normal’ is also changing workplace dynamics and if there’s one thing the businesses around the world have learned, it’s that the pace of digital transformation is only accelerating. More than ever, organizations are having to adapt to working 24/7, and with remote working becoming the new normal for employees, customers and suppliers, businesses that don’t adapt their technology to cater for this are certain to fall behind.
Iptor has a rich heritage in providing distribution focused ERP and supply chain management solutions. The company has been investing heavily in cloud, digital and mobile technology, culminating in the recent launch of Iptor. com, its leading cloud-based ERP software solution for the distribution, publishing and pharma industries. Iptor.com is 100% focused on helping their customers grow to their full potential and comes with flexible deployment options to suit their customers’ current and future states.
For those businesses still using legacy “on-premise” software, Iptor provides a fast track migration path to the cloud along with an embedded connectivity and integration platform, and leading, highly secure cloud services.
Additionally, they can securely connect every part of the business with new mobility services and pre-packed mobile web applications.
Iptor has developed a significant presence in the US pharma industry, primarily serving the needs of small to mid-sized distributors. One of the main challenges these customers face is having to keep up and comply with a complicated, ever changing multitude of regulatory requirements. These would challenge the operational and logistics resources of any company, but for smaller businesses with razor thin margins to protect, this challenge is more acute and puts them at a disadvantage to their larger competitors.
This has become a particularly significant issue with the on-going implementation of the DSCSA (the Drug Supply Chain Security Act). The DSCSA outlines steps to build an electronic, interoperable system to identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed in the United States, with the aim of enhancing the FDA’s ability to help protect consumers from exposure to drugs that may be counterfeit, stolen, contaminated, or otherwise harmful. While there is no doubt that this legislation is needed and important, it places a heavy administrative burden on small to mid-sized pharma distributors, for example in terms of security, handling requirements, recalls and general supply chain management.
However, Iptor has worked closely with these companies, leveraging their collective experience, to develop a solution around their flagship ERP product that’s pre-configured to address the critical needs of pharma distributors. This has included the launch of an entry level, multi-tenant, pre-configured package aimed squarely at the smaller companies that have the same challenges to comply with all the regulations as established, bigger companies. The result is a true vertical offering, that is ready to use out of the box and that can grow with the customers’ needs.
One of Iptor’s pharmaceutical customers (a distributor) provides more than 40,000 products from over 1,000 suppliers to thousands of hospitals, pharmacies, drug stores, and doctors. It is not uncommon for one these distributor’s customers to place up to 6 orders on any given day, meaning the distributor may need to process 200,000 order lines daily, and sometimes as many as 70,000 per hour. With these extremely high transaction volumes, it is essential to eliminate as many order processing errors as possible.
Thanks to their implementation of Iptor’s pharmaceutical software, this distributor consolidated 11 distribution centers into 3 and reduced stock levels by 25 percent while increasing stock turnover from 12 up to 22 for specialty Pharma products – without influencing availability.
Outside of pharma in the US, one of the growth verticals Iptor is actively pursuing is the Timber industry in the Nordic region, where it has a significant customer base. The company recently acquired TimberTec, a leading supplier of ERP technology solutions to the timber industry, and will be rolling out this market-leading proposition not only in Europe but also in the US via the Iptor footprint.
