Success story
iNova Pharmaceuticals breaks free from the constraints of spreadsheet-based planning.
Logility helped pharmaceutical company iNova consolidate knowledge and processes across geographies and systems, improve productivity through automation and support rapid growth.
50% 
Improved forecast accuracy
-40%
Reduced manual PO creation through automation
Significant improvements
Safety stock modeling
50%
Improved forecast accuracy
-40%
Reduced manual PO creation through automation
Significant improvements
Safety stock modeling
Challenges
iNova Pharmaceuticals develops, markets and sells a wide range of prescription medicines and non-prescription consumer health products to over 20 countries and distributors across Asia, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Its 500+ employees deliver a product portfolio spanning weight management, cough, cold and flu, pain management, health supplements, dermatology, sun care and female health products. Since 2017, under new ownership iNova has focused on expanding its product offerings.
iNova knew that achieving its growth goals meant unifying and synchronizing its approach to supply and demand planning, sales and operations planning, and inventory management. Excel-based planning created a planning process which differs across each geography, with compromised sustainability.
“Our business is complex. In addition to accounting for widely dispersed geographies, our planning processes have to reflect and synthesize different market dynamics. For example, consumer products are promotion-sensitive and, where ranged in pharmacy, products are also driven by ranging and grading. The prescription product portfolio relies heavily on statistical forecasting – a limitation for us in the Excel environment. The different planning processes hosted in Excel was a real impediment to growth, and that problem would only have grown worse. Planning in Excel is not sustainable due to the personalized nature of the tools used,” says Rowan Seccombe, iNova’s Sales & Operations Planning Manager.
Implementing Logility’s digital supply chain platform in 2019 was an important component of the company’s growth strategy, providing a future-proof and flexible technology to underpin its expansion plans.
Problems using Excel for demand and supply planning
The company is exposed should owners of key spreadsheets depart. Inconsistent use of spreadsheets across the team inhibited adoption of best practice.
Different processes
iNova’s planning process differed based on region-specific data. No ‘one source of truth’ across planning process/systems.
Inefficient data management
Time was wasted on loading data into, and analyzing information from, disconnected solutions that existed only to compensate for functional gaps in spreadsheets.
Cumbersome safety stock management
Safety stock scenario planning was cumbersome, difficult to implement and only able to change periodically (2x per annum), leaving the business exposed to stock-outs or over-supply. Aged inventory presented challenges in terms of visibility across supply planning, also presenting risk of a stock-out.
Solutions
Before implementing the Logility platform, iNova relied on spreadsheets, integrated ERP and data warehousing, and a third-party analytics tool to plan and measure its business. All patchwork solutions are inefficient to manage, but iNova’s situation was particularly challenging given its large geographical footprint, multiple business units and rapid growth.
iNova implemented Logility’s integrated solutions for data management, demand and supply planning, replenishment planning and analytics. What was once a very fragmented and time-consuming operating framework became greatly streamlined, with cohesive planning across the business and process automation that saves planners time. Allowing the statistical forecast to operate greatly freed resource to concentrate on high-volume and volatile A-class SKUs.
“We benefited from the industry expertise at Logility, and their local partner Demand Management Systems, as well as the platform. Our implementation consultants constantly challenged us to justify and reconsider current processes, and that was healthy in the end. The implementation went quickly and wasn’t without some challenges, but we’re committed to a journey of incremental improvement and are well supported by Logility to do so,” remarks Seccombe.
Demand Planning and Optimization
Supply Planning and Optimization
Data Management
