Supply Chain in Life Sciences

Key findings

• Key players in the industry are yet to fully take advantage of the potential offered by Big Data and / or Cloud Computing - 85% of respondents had no plan in place.
• Nearly 60% of respondents are still developing processes to ensure full compliance with the EU’s directive on global serialization requirements.
• The Asia Pacific region is viewed as having the greatest potential for enhanced influence in terms of market access. 
• Only 17% of respondents expect direct to hospital / pharmacy distribution to be significantly more common in the next 10 years.
• Risk-assessing and adapting transportation routes is seen as the most crucial investment priority to meet GDP guidelines.

The view from Deloitte

The survey shows that pharmaceutical supply chain executives are focused on the day-to-day challenge of balancing cost and customer service while, at the same time, laying the foundations to support new areas of market growth. Progress towards integrated end-to-end planning, however, appears not to be keeping pace and the slow adoption of cloud computing is perhaps a missed opportunity.

Whilst supply chain has a key role to play in creating competitive advantage in a safe, efficient and scalable manner, the leaders will be those that adopt an outside-in business operating model. A model that is able to configure the supply chain to meet very different patient needs across an increasingly complex product portfolio.