Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Allied

A Unique Business Environment

Epicor understands that some industries face more regulation than others. Most countries around the world have similar regulatory regimes in place that mandate a very high level of control for Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Allied industries. Whether you are a provider of raw materials, run a manufacturing plant, warehouse or wholesale the products, you know that you face the combined challenges of increased global competition and compliance costs. You need to ensure your organization is equipped with the tools and partners to help you respond quickly to change. Choosing a long-term partner who understands your unique business needs and will deliver solutions to propel your capabilities to the next level is critical.

Business processes also continue to evolve as integrations within the supply chain increase, driving demand-driven, forward planning activity towards ever faster development cycles. The cost of researching and developing products is definitely not getting cheaper and yet your customers expect and demand better products and want to pay less for them. Epicor understands your industry and has been actively developing innovative software solutions to help you address your challenges since the early 1990s.

Focusing on Your Customers

Who your customers are depends where you are in your supply chain. If you supply raw materials or bulk chemicals then your customers are the manufacturers. If you make product then your customers may be packaging plants, large retailers, governments, hospitals or large pharmaceutical chains. If you are further down the supply chain you may be supplying the end distributers, like retail outlets. One thing remains constant;: you need to know who you are talking to, engage with them throughout the sales cycle, be aware of what you have sold them and be able to respond to questions about product, availability, price and quality quickly. Epicor's integrated solution for pharmaceutical, chemical and allied industries includes a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that exposes the detail you need from the warehouse, manufacturing and quality control data, so that your sales staff can interact with customers, providing the most up-to-date and accurate information possible.

Lean Business Practices Across Your Entire Infrastructure

More than many other industries, the pharmaceutical, chemical, and allied industries are highly integrated. Long lead times, short shelf lives and different label and testing requirements for different regions make it imperative that you produce what your customers want and source the right raw materials, in the shortest possible time.

Wasteful activity, be it time, unnecessary processing or anything else, is often the difference between profit and loss or more critically, between winning and losing repeat business. By investing in an Epicor solution you can be sure that you have the tools to evolve as your business does, with efficient best-practice processes and simplified integration both internally and with your trading partners. From marketing and sales, through production and planning, sourcing and procurement, quality and delivery, and finally financial recognition, Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical, and Allied Industries has the integrated solutions to assist in your initiatives to grow your business profitably while improving operational visibility and efficiency.

Regulatory Compliance

Regulations come from many sources and include FDA rules (including 21 CFR Part 11 for electronic records), REACH in Europe, GMP/GAMP, HACCP, etc. and can include a combination of prescribed practices and general concepts. Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Allied Industries offers a robust framework in support of certification and audit, including comprehensive change logs with time and date stamp, business process management that can deliver approval criteria for key processes, as well as request password validation for system-wide electronic signature capabilities. Additional business benefit is delivered via Epicor Service Connect, an orchestration tool used to automate processes, reducing time to delivery by eliminating human intervention.

Product Traceability and Quality Control

In all regulated sectors, the need for quality control and traceability is critical and figures heavily in Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) requirements. Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical, and Allied Industries includes integrated quality control options and lot tracking that was designed in collaboration with the Epicor Pharmaceutical User Group to meet your industry's traceability demands. Quality can be defined according to your specific needs, along with details of how to measure and test quality, and the results of such tests. Traceability starts with the raw material and flows through manufacturing, warehouse movements, finished goods, and into the final disposition of the items.

Designed for the business needs of the future and leading edge warehousing today, Epicor delivers full radio frequency (RF) capability on the plant floor to track products in process alongside inventory and finished goods, including product labelling, to assist in the battle with counterfeit products. Complete traceability throughout provides relief in the event of audit or recall.

Meeting Strict Guidelines for Product Data Management

Product-specific and program-specific data management for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries is especially stringent due to governmental and industry standards for recording products at the design, production, sourcing, and delivery stages. Regimes such as REACH impose their own rules that include stringent product traceability, product documentation, revision change control, and in the case of the FDA's 21 CFR Part 11, electronic signature. These strict guidelines can all be supported by Epicor solutions. Additionally, Epicor’s robust Product Lifecycle Management

(PLM) is a complete end-to-end solution developed to manage all aspects of a product’s lifecycle, as well as enabling enterprises to control the enormous amount of electronic documentation that they produce. From R&D to production, and from service to finance, complete product history and visibility is available.

Supporting Extended and Global Operations

Competitive pressures are driving many manufacturers to expand globally. This, coupled with the recent trend in plant consolidations, leaves many manufacturers today both large and small, suddenly managing multiple sites disparately.

Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Allied Industries offers comprehensive multi-site capabilities coupled with global presence to meet your company’s requirements for local support. Competing globally and domestically—bridging geographic and strategic diversity and eliminating supply chain inefficiencies—can be accomplished with technology, as it enables companies to streamline intra- and inter-company processes and communicate quickly and accurately.

Synchronization of complex relationships which determine supply, demand, and fulfilment is the means to reaching new, industry-leading levels of business performance. Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical, and Allied Industries can help you achieve maximum efficiency across your globally extended enterprise.

Validation Services

Companies regulated by the FDA and other Marketing Authorities are required to validate their business systems both as part of the initial configuration and also to demonstrate on going compliance with every changing regulation. Validation focuses on the business processes deployed by your company and any systems that you rely on. Epicor understands this and has the services to assist your company in complying with validation requirements for your Epicor installation, including business processes as they fit within your business framework.

Robust Technology Framework

Epicor is uniquely positioned with a complete suite of applications based on leading-edge Web services technology, protecting your investment in software and services well into the future. Why are Web services so important to manufacturers, particularly in pharmaceutical, chemical, and allied industries? Outside of all the reasons organizations look to Web services for deployment—speed, stability, reusability, and more—for midsize manufacturers who supply top manufacturers, the incentive is evident; to drive electronic collaboration more firmly into their supply chain. Web services collaboration is fast becoming a necessity to doing business.

Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical, and Allied Industries is uniquely positioned on this technology today and comes with a suite of Web services tools such as Epicor Service Connect that make internal and external service collaboration a reality. Supporting your business strategies with applications built on service-oriented architecture (SOA) keeps the door open for pharmaceutical, chemical and allied industries businesses by meeting both the immediate requirement for scalability while supporting an open philosophy in the event your business strategy changes.

Industry Leading Service and Support

Epicor has over 20 years of experience delivering industry focused, world-class solutions, and on going customer care and service to over 20,000 customer installations. It is a true global solutions partner with support offices all over the world. The key vehicle that transforms Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical, and Allied Industries into a successful business solution is its Signature Implementation methodology. Signature allows Epicor to provide consistent, customer-focused implementations that deliver added value because it provides a controlled environment. It is a highly structured, proven implementation methodology that successfully guides you and your company through a six step process, from an in-depth analysis of your business requirements all the way to the hand over, enabling your company to quickly begin using Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical and Allied Industries in day-to-day operations. Signature and Epicor for Pharmaceutical, Chemical, and Allied Industries saves your company time and money by providing broad functionality at a lower total cost of ownership.