To meet the standards of innovation in the healthcare industry, Zuellig Pharma has implemented SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (SAP iRPA) solution to help pioneer the deployment of digital bots across its operations.
RPA has been a key enabler in driving productivity and efficiency in many businesses even before the COVID-19 pandemic caused disruptions to major industries. Developed to automate time-consuming tasks that require significant manpower, RPA provides an opportunity for the workforce to focus on more complex problems that require human judgment. With recent enhancements to SAP Intelligent RPA solution, the German software giant strengthens its commitment to helping companies empower employees of all skill levels to speed up automation — allowing them to scale delivery while lowering costs.
New features in the solution enable citizen developers to create bots based on insights gathered through the new SAP Process Insights offering, which will be available in the third quarter of 2021 as part of the SAP Business Process Intelligence Portfolio. Furthermore, SAP is enhancing the citizen developer experience with these latest updates, allowing customers to grow the number of people who can assist their organisations in achieving higher productivity, agility, and resilience.
In a SAPPHIRE NOW 2021 session titled Zuellig Pharma: Transforming Healthcare with Best-in-Class Technology, Daniel Laverick, Head of SAP and IT Solutions at Zuellig Pharma, expounded on how digital assistance and intelligent automation across its operations drove operational efficiency for the organisation. He shared:
“Even before the pandemic, we saw the importance of driving efficiencies so that we could grow, operate and support larger scale and more complex healthcare supply chains. With this in mind, we embarked on a digital transformation journey with SAP and were able to quickly activate our technologies to address the spike in customer orders from countries like Thailand when the pandemic hit.”
Successful Implementation of SAP iRPA Across the Enterprise
As one of the largest healthcare service providers in Asia, Zuellig Pharma chose to implement SAP Intelligent RPA and SAP Conversational AI services to limit the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the company, it was able to fulfill customer orders significantly faster by utilising SAP’s solutions. Laverick further explained:
“This agility and speed of our sales order processing accounted for an increase of approximately 100,000 sales orders processed daily which helped us to continue our mission of making healthcare more accessible.”
Through its successful implementation of SAP iRPA, Zuellig Pharma was able to achieve the following value-driven results:
- Digitalisation and automation of error-prone and time-consuming manual tasks of receiving orders.
- Continuous order processing without lag and disruption.
- Enablement of employees to execute more value-added activities across its operations.
- Utilisation of a dependable, preapproved, and repeatable ordering process to support compliance with industry regulations.
- Increased trust in the company’s products and assisted in the fight against the distribution of counterfeit drugs in the region.
- Clearing out a backlog of over 10,000 IT-related cases that needed auditing — a task that would have taken three full-time staff to complete.
Zuellig Pharma Recognised for Innovation Using SAP Technology
In the recently concluded SAP Best Run Awards 2021 for Southeast Asia (SEA), Zuellig Pharma won the Most Promising Next Generation Leaders – The Trailblazer (Individual) Award for its use of SAP Intelligent RPA across the enterprise. Deploying more than 60 automations across various business units and countries, the inaugural event recognises Zuellig Pharma’s successful adoption of SAP technology to enhance its most critical processes.
Last March, the pharmaceutical giant also unveiled eZVax, an end-to-end vaccine management solution that provides governments and health authorities with a holistic view of their vaccine rollouts, from manufacturing to distribution and administration.
Moreover, the solution features Zuellig Pharma’s eZTracker platform, which leverages SAP Blockchain Technology, to address concerns on the distribution of counterfeit drugs around the region. Through the application, consumers’ mobile devices become a verification tool that can trace barcodes on medication to its manufacturer and country of origin instantly.
