Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
Pharmaceutical supply chain and portfolio planning
Pharma and Life Sciences developers face unprecedented challenges: rising R&D investments, elusive returns, perilous late-stage approval efforts, and impending patent expirations. The terrain is no less rocky for manufacturers and distributors. Pharma supply chains are as complex, volatile, and risk-prone as any in modern industry. The growth of emerging markets, contract manufacturing, and new medicines and ingredients only drives uncertainty higher.
Whether for manufacturing, supply chain, or R&D and portfolio planning, Vanguard Predictive Planning™ for Pharma delivers powerful analytics in a collaborative cloud platform to help you and your teams plan the future — together.
Supply chain planning
Health disasters happen. What if hospitals stock out of life-saving antidotes because of an active ingredient shortage, a sourcing contamination, or a production failure? These real challenges make supply chain IT critical, especially in an industry already marked by high supplier variability, strict fulfillment requirements, and tight expiration constraints.
Vanguard Predictive Planning for Pharma starts your process with exceptionally accurate baseline forecasts. From there, powerful analytics derive optimal order quantities, production schedules, safety stock levels, and multi-echelon warehouse assignments. Additional capabilities, whether for demand planning, inventory optimization, or supply chain integration, are designed to help mitigate the effects of supply-demand volatility and ensure the safest and most profitable delivery of critical products.
Over the past two decades, Vanguard Software has developed state-of-the-art modeling and simulation capabilities that are now available on a collaborative cloud platform. Our system is designed to synthesize massive and complex product-development data into the best possible investment decisions and outcomes.
R&D pipeline and portfolio planning
R&D decision managers must commit huge sums to projects with untold development timelines (Case Study), extreme technical and regulatory uncertainty, and vastly diverse stages of development. While it’s impossible to know which projects will bear fruit, the pressure to replenish future revenues is relentless, turning the development pipeline into a massive risk-reward portfolio — difficult management requirements and high stakes.
Advanced analytics, including Monte Carlo simulation, enable unlimited what-if testing, exceptional scenario planning, and automation of routine decisions. Matched with easy-to-use workflow and collaboration features, diverse user sets can share and refine prognostications to better navigate:
- New and changing regulatory environments
- Patent expirations
- Shortfalls of new or imminent approvals
- Long-range investment in drug pipelines and future revenues
- Uncertainty over insurance coverage, new product adoption
Full-suite capability, best-in-market usability
Leverage Vanguard Software for part, or all, of your S&OP, IBP, or portfolio management process: from sales forecasting to supply planning to financial forecasting and budgeting.
Vanguard can integrate all of these diverse applications on a single platform designed to unify management estimates, exceptions, and data. The system’s UI integrates seamlessly with your business processes, enabling diverse teams and users to communicate and collaborate. Plus, all changes and updates are dynamic, system-wide. Change your demand plan, and see that change reflect instantly in your inventory order schedule – and on the same screen.
Client Results
“Billions [of dollars] in operating margin and trillions in market capitalization separate supply chain winners from losers,” according to AMR Research. With Vanguard Predictive Planning™, best-in-class planners see:
%
Reduction in inventory
%
Increase in perfect-order fulfillment (complete, accurate, and on time)
%
Shorter cash-to-cash cycle times
%
Fewer stock-outs than competitors
Featured resources
Case study
Aurobindo saw a 99% increase in inventory utilization
Case study
Industry sheet
Demand planning for pharmaceutical companies
Case study
Case study
What our clients have to say
- Demand forecasting
- Product mix/portfolio analysis
- Sales and operations planning (S&OP)
- Supply chain planning
- Information sharing
- Operational efficiency
- Equipment diagnostics
- Surveys and research
- Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization (MEIO)
- Artificially Intelligent forecast method recommendation
- POS Demand Sensing
- New Product Forecasting
- Promotional Forecasting
- Sell-to and sell-through forecasting
- Bill of Materials (BOM) Support
- Predict demand for final products and raw materials, even when historical data is scarce.
- Optimize product portfolios, pricing, and promotions. Product development: Estimate life-cycle costs and forecast adoption across all channels.
- Enable real-time collaboration between Marketing & Sales and Operations to ensure production capacity can profitably support customer demand (and vice versa).
- Optimize your supply chain network, inventory levels, distribution plans, and more.
- Involve suppliers and customers in planning processes. Dynamically receive their latest demand and material availability estimates.
- Conduct process improvement/Six Sigma projects to reduce costs, cycle times, and waste.
- Expertly guide operators, technicians, and support agents through complex troubleshooting processes using automated question-and-answer sessions.
- Know your market and understand your customers’ needs, wishes, and opinions using online surveys.
- Increase service levels; reduce safety stock; improve turns and profitability.
- Automate the selection of the best-possible forecast methods and parameters.
- Spot and respond to demand trends and signals in real time; improve downstream replenishment.
- Optimize product transitions; identify cannibalization effects; respond automatically to seasonality and trends.
- Optimize inventory levels and production scheduling.
- Improve demand sensing and demand-supply planning.
- Streamline production; eliminate errors, delays, and compliance failures.
Meet a few of our clients

Subscribe to our blog
Never miss industry news, technical information, or thought leadership articles.
SALES
919.859.4101 (P)
919.851.9457 (F)
SUPPORT
919.859.4101 (P)
support@vanguardsw.com
CAREERS
opportunities@vanguardsw.com
© 2021 Vanguard Software Corporation. All Rights Reserved. | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy