Massimo Crudeli
ERP Systems for Life Sciences: How to Choose the Right One
Life sciences organizations need ERP systems with industry-specific capabilities to ensure regulatory compliance and automate business processes. This blog explains the best way to get what you need.
A patchwork of legacy systems, exacerbated by extensive merger and acquisition activities over the years, has exposed pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and medical device manufacturers to greater risk of regulatory consequences and increased operating costs.
Investing in a single, integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system can help resolve these issues, deliver cost savings that can be strategically redeployed within the organization, and increase agility and scalability for greater competitive advantage in an industry that’s increasingly reliant on technological innovation for market success.
It’s time to embrace technology
While life sciences organizations have been at the forefront of scientific innovation, they’re notoriously far behind when it comes to technological innovation. This can change when pharma makes integration and process optimization across the enterprise a top priority.
Accomplishing these goals requires a modern ERP system, preferably one that’s hosted in the cloud and managed by a premier provider like Microsoft, Oracle, or SAP. All of these companies have extensive experience working with—and earning the trust of—complex, multi-national organizations.
Using one of these partners to replace multiple legacy systems is a great way to unify your operations across divisions and locations, creating a single source of truth for your entire enterprise. While the transition can be daunting on many levels, businesses that take the leap soon realize tremendous efficiencies and find that the solutions quickly pay for themselves many times over.
An extra frustration for Life Sciences organizations: ERP customizations
While the advantages of a top-tier ERP system can’t be disputed, these systems don’t make things easy for life sciences organizations. The best ERP systems are designed for general businesses, not high-regulated ones like life sciences.
One of the reasons why pharmaceutical companies, biotech businesses, and medical device manufacturers cling to outdated legacy environments is because an expensive ERP system isn’t going to fully meet their needs. It might be fine for financial information and general operations, but that’s just not good enough for the life sciences industry.
Companies that do attempt to unify operations through an out-of-the-box ERP must face the additional work of customizing the solution to meet specific needs. This is a complex, invasive procedure that involves writing new code for the software to meet specific requirements. Customization work is expensive and time-consuming, adds risk to the organization, and generally needs to be repeated every time the ERP software is upgraded—as many as eight times per year!
Configuration is the ERP answer for Life Sciences
A better alternative to dealing with the frustrations of customization is to find a configurable ERP solution that’s designed to meet the specific needs of life sciences organizations.
STAEDEAN provides the only such solution in the marketplace. It’s built on the robust foundation of Microsoft Dynamics 365, one of the most powerful and easy-to-use ERP solutions available today.
With a comprehensive solution, we help life sciences organizations manage processes across all key functional areas.
You can rely on STAEDEAN to deliver just the right ERP solution for your life sciences organization. No one else can deliver the ERP capabilities you need with expertise in the specific regulations and compliance issues that impact pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and medical device manufacturers.
Discover how our solution tackles life sciences challenges
Massimo Crudeli