5 Ways Pharma ERP Improves Quality Control and Reduces Risk
The pharmaceutical industry is a very lucrative one, undoubtedly, but it carries a great deal of risk too. The products directly impact human life and health, and therefore, both manufacturers and traders have to take the utmost care in handling the medicinal products and disbursing them to customers. The pharma industry is also subject to intense scrutiny, and industry and government regulations, both domestic and international. Failure to adhere to mandatory compliance requirements could prove to be very expensive in the form of punitive fines, legal action, loss of business and reputation.
So how can you, as a pharma trader, ensure that you maintain quality and reduce the risk of non-compliance without spending an inordinate amount of time in paperwork? This is where pharma ERP comes to the rescue.
What is ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning is a comprehensive business solution that automates workflows, streamlines business operations, and centralizes information. It eliminates disparate systems and information silos, ensuring that every department is on the same page. ERP systems help to improve communication between departments and facilitates greater collaboration. This leads to increased efficiency and productivity across your firm. All these factors in combination, help businesses like yours to tap into new markets, gain more customers, retain existing ones, and increase revenues.
Today, pharma trading business software is used by an increasing number of retail pharma outlets, whether single trading firms or pharmacy chains. They have realized that these solutions offer a number of benefits. There are several modules in an ERP system, to handle the functions of all the departments in your business. What’s more, modules can be added or deleted, and functionality tweaked to align with your unique business requirements and goals. That is one of the biggest advantages of best pharma ERP solutions.
Consistent and Centralized Data
When you implement a pharma business solution, you can be sure that human errors will be eliminated or minimized across your firm. All your data will be in a central place, and it will be consistent and complete, have integrity, eliminate redundancy, etc. When your data is perfect, you will know the status of each product, and ensure you have the right details including ingredients, contraindications, side effects, expiry, and other information. The ERP solution also generates reports in real time which can be customized according to your needs. It can also help you take the right decisions that help you maintain compliance with regulations.
In this article, we will take a look at the different ways in which a comprehensive business solution like ERP can help to improve quality control and reduce risk:
1. Efficient Inventory Management
While inventory management is important for any business that sells products, it is critical in the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical ERP software facilitates optimization of stock levels, reduction of wastage, and prevents both overstocking and stock-outs. In addition, the solution provides real time data on inventory levels, expiry dates, supplier lead times, and so on.
This helps pharmacies ensure that distribution is smooth and that there is no shortage of medicines. It also helps you to make accurate demand forecasts, and configure automatic replenishment of stocks. You can also configure the system to send automated orders of a pre-decided quantity to a specific vendor or vendors.
2. Batch Tracking
Batch tracking and serialization are of utmost importance in the pharma business. An efficient pharma retail ERP software solution will help you track each batch of products as they come into your warehouse or store shelves. It is important that medicines are easily traceable, so that in case there is any issue and they need to be recalled, you can know exactly where they are. The inventory management module of a pharmaceutical business solution will display the exact location down to the shelf, bin, sub-shelf, and so on. Distinct serial numbers can be assigned to each unit so that spurious medicines can be easily detected and customers can be protected. To preserve the efficacy of certain medications, you may need to refrigerate them. An ERP system can accurately track the location of such medications.
The batch and expiry dates of all products are meticulously entered into the system. You can also set alerts to be triggered when products near their expiry date, so that you can come up with strategies to push their sales and avoid dead or obsolete stock.
3. Documentation
Pharma ERP systems help you maintain extensive documentation on all medicines and products so that you have all the information about a product down to the finest details. Ingredients, indications, contraindications, dosage, type (external application or internal), body system, frequency, side-effects, and any other essential information can be stored in detail.
This helps you to serve customers better; the more information they have about medications and medical equipment, they better equipped they are to take decisions about purchasing them. In most countries, providing accurate information is also mandated by law, which means it will help you maintain compliance with regulations. This seriously brings down your risk of facing legal action and paying fines. Automated record keeping and creation of audit trails also helps to maintain compliance. You have all data in one place when you need it at the time of inspections and external audits. This again helps you when it comes to regulatory compliance.
4. Supply Chain Management
A comprehensive pharmaceutical business solution can help you manage your supply chain efficiently. Supply chains are complex mechanisms; in the pharma sector, even more so. Disruptions in the supply chain can have severe and far-reaching consequences on patient health, trust, business performance, and subsequently, profitability.
A reliable pharma ERP will help you maintain robust relationships with vendors, and procure the best quality products in time, at the best prices, ensuring that you don’t experience acute shortages. Not having essential medicines when patients request them can have damaging consequences on your reputation. Reducing lead times is an important function of supply chain management. The most common supply chain issues are transportation challenges, natural disasters, political unrest, war, pandemics, material shortages, and others. A comprehensive business solution can help you gain visibility into your supply chain, and form strategies to procure products in such situations.
Your supply chain also involves your distribution or shipping process. This is when you get online orders and need to ship products to customers. The ERP software will enable you to track the shipment from the time it leaves your warehouse till it is delivered to your customer, and ensure that there are no delays. This increases your reliability and reputation, and help you cut costs.
5. Security
A pharmaceutical business solution like Innsof Pharma has stringent security mechanisms in place to ensure that sensitive information is not accessed by unauthorized individuals. Strong passwords, multifactor authentication, data encryption, robust firewalls, and other security measures are implemented to ensure that information does not fall into the wrong hands. Employees will only be able to access that information that is required for them to execute their tasks. These features also help your retail pharma trading business to ensure that you adhere to domestic and global compliance requirements.
To Wrap Up
Technology has permeated nearly every aspect of our lives and every industry. It has made life simpler and more convenient. Enterprise resource planning software is just one more example of this phenomenon.
At Innsof, we understand the unique problems and challenges of the pharmaceutical industry. Our years of experience in the industry have enabled us to study the impacts of various factors external and internal on a retail pharma business. We took the time to design the ideal business software that would be capable of resolving all your pain points.
Innsof Pharma will radically transform the way you operate your pharmacy or chain of pharmacies. Specially crafted for the pharmaceutical sector, our software will make business simpler and better for you.
Innsof Pharma is an affordable, customizable, and scalable solution; with zero compromise on quality. It is capable of handling the extra workload as your business grows, and can be tweaked to include all the functionality that your business specifically requires. We are sure that once you see what it is capable of doing, you will want to implement it for your business
Contact us today for a free demo, and tell us your requirements. Get ready to revolutionize your pharmacy business today!