A US$45 Billion Global Biopharmaceutical Enterprise Removes Over 200,000 Manual Hours and More Than $10M in COGS with a Central Business Platform

The client, a US$45 billion global biopharmaceutical enterprise founded in 1781, has a presence in around 80 countries, with 40 new clinical stage assets, 70 brands, over 25 manufacturing sites and 200+ partnerships that help bring innovation to patients. The entire enterprise was run in stand-alone silos with manual processes and fragmented data, and a multi-year effort to modernize the digital core had not improved business process efficiency or produced better insights.

Altimetrik digitized enterprise processes around a Central Business Platform and built the Agile Operating System (AOS) for tiered, visual communication from the shop floor to leadership. The result: over 200,000 hours of manual effort removed, more than $10 million in COGS reduction through AI-driven planning and material usage, and permanent digital methodologies and mindsets.

The entire enterprise ran in stand-alone silos with manual processes and fragmented data. The lack of digitization across enterprise processes hindered the client’s ability to evolve into a modern, data-driven, autonomous enterprise, to equip Global Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Quality operations with predictive insights, and to monitor enterprise-wide process metrics.

It also limited the use of real-time connected insights, collaboration across teams and partners, cost savings and the speed with which the organization could deliver solutions to problems.

To address the challenges, the client needed to digitize a range of processes and functions around a Central Business Platform. The processes and functions that had to be transformed included:

• The ability to view and monitor end-to-end manufacturing processes
• Material lookup, to evaluate usage of banned materials
• Disposition of production materials and ingredients and finished products
• Enterprise Risk Management, to identify potential risks across the organization
• Using visual aids to manage tier meetings and follow-up action
• Platform features and capabilities, to frame applications for access control, notifications, CI/CD and more

Key objectives of the Central Business Platform

• Enhanced Visibility: enterprise-wide visibility into key processes and metrics
• Process Digitization: better collaboration, enhanced visibility and cost savings
• Operations Optimization: automation, operational performance, quality of service and sustainable growth
• Leading Edge Capabilities: more fitting, dependable and faster solutions to new and old problems

The Central Business Platform digitized and addressed five areas of the enterprise.

The existing communication model was complicated further by custom solutions across groups, which did not provide a consistent view across tiers. Manual systems were slow, operated in an unstructured hierarchy and often resulted in inconsistent interpretation of the charts. One of the products built under the platform umbrella, the Agile Operating System (AOS), enabled tiered communication and accountability from the shop floor to the GMSGQ leadership team using a visual system, providing access to real-time data aggregated across functions and shifts so leadership and teams across five tiers could pursue priorities and solve problems collaboratively.

The Central Business Platform and the AOS together delivered an end-to-end digital solution that promoted cross-functional collaboration between the client’s product teams, Biologics, OESSM and Plasma, and Supply Chain, Quality, SBE and DD&T.

The client is now a modern, agile, self-driven digital enterprise, with permanent digital methodologies and mindsets created along the way.