In an interview with Fierce Biotech Publisher Rebecca Willumson, SAP’s Kevin Brophy and Michael Greene of Answerthink explained how small and emerging biopharmaceutical companies can transition from spreadsheets and outdated systems to a centralized, scalable enterprise platform. They emphasized that SAP’s life sciences-specific tools, combined with Answerthink’s implementation expertise, help early-stage and zero-revenue firms prepare for growth and commercialization without requiring large IT teams. Real-time analytics, embedded AI and compliance-ready cloud services are designed to support companies from clinical trials through global supply chain management.
Brophy and Greene also highlighted SAP’s integration suite, which includes more than 3,000 prebuilt APIs that connect easily with third-party systems such as banks and manufacturing platforms. By adopting a phased “crawl, walk, run” implementation model, companies can scale capabilities at their own pace — gaining visibility across complex supply chains and ensuring compliance from day one. Watch the full interview for a closer look at how SAP and Answerthink are helping the next generation of life sciences innovators succeed.
Rebecca Willumson:
Hi there. My name's Rebecca Willumson. I'm the publisher of Fierce Biotech and I'm here today with Kevin Brophy, Life Sciences Industry Executive Advisor at SAP, and Michael Greene, Principal and SAP Business Applications Practice Lead at Answerthink. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me.
Michael Greene:
Thank you.
Kevin Brophy:
Glad to be here.
Rebecca Willumson:
So to kick things off, tell me how is SAP and Answerthink helping innovative zero-revenue biopharmaceutical and early biopharmaceutical commercial customers move from manual spreadsheet systems, QuickBooks and inferior ERP systems to a centralized platform which the business can grow from clinical through commercial to global supply chain?
Kevin Brophy:
One of the big myths that SAP is just for big companies. We actually have 80% of our customers with below a billion in revenue. 75% of them are below 500 million in revenue, with many zero-revenue customers. And the reason is for 30 years we've had business applications and out of the box best business practices for life sciences. Where other ERPs are trying to fit into a life science company, we have the life science functionality out of the box.
Today, with the technology we can provide the analytics in real time, which is even more advantageous to a small company. You don't need a business warehouse, the data's right there for you. And we're incorporating AI, so that you don't have to go and build your own, et cetera. The boards and the C-levels want to know how we're doing more with less with AI, and that's what we're providing out of the box AI. And then the other piece of the formula are trusted, tried and true partners like Answerthink who have done hundreds and hundreds of these implementations.
Michael Greene:
Yeah, I think it's critical to understand that, as Kevin alluded to, that the myth really is a myth. We are an integrated system platform that allows these small, pre-commercial or early commercial organizations to implement what they need, when they need it, as they grow.
So many organizations who are pre-commercial, we can start off with core financials and just procurement. And as they begin to evolve nearing commercialization, we can start getting them ready with inventory management, with sales order management, with the ability to handle manufacturing, whether that be internal or external, leveraging contract manufacturers. So really SAP is an organization and a platform that will support all of our sized clients.
Rebecca Willumson:
Now, many mid-sized life sciences companies operate with lean IT teams. Tell me, how does SAP Business Suite help organizations adopt enterprise-grade capabilities without that enterprise-level overhead?
Kevin Brophy:
It's exactly SAP's goal, providing a SaaS model, an operating model for our customers. They don't have the resources to run a system, so we run it for them. And we incorporate everything we need from the GXP standpoint, so we take care of all the IQ for a customer. We also can set it up where, and Mike can speak to it a little bit too, we've had customers who I don't need to validate for a year and a half before I go commercial, but we do the IQ now and then they come back later and validate.
We can absolutely validate the processes as we implement, but sometimes I don't need to for two or three years. That's okay. It's a nice staged method. And Mike, maybe you want to speak to some of those and how you've helped those customers in the past.
Michael Greene:
I think you've alluded to it again, that again, we start with out-of-the-box best practices, leveraging the SaaS solution that really is a cloud delivery model that really helps those lean IT organizations be able to lean on SAP and their partners for the overall support that are completely aligned, both from an IQ perspective and an OQPQ perspective, from a 21 CFR Part 11.
And really as Kevin was alluded to, when you have these pre-commercial organizations who are starting with only what they need in a core back office function with finance and procurement, predominantly procurement being indirect procurement, there is no real need for them to go into a validation from a business process standpoint at that juncture.
However, when they get to a point where they're starting to get ready for commercialization, or getting into their clinical manufacturing, and they need to start putting in those operational business processes, that is when we would make sure that we're bringing in the validation and compliance from an operational perspective around the OQ and PQ, so we can align with whatever a particular customer's needs are.
Rebecca Willumson:
Tell me, what does the implementation journey look like for a midsize company, and how do you reduce complexity and shorten time to value?
Kevin Brophy:
That goes right back to what we talked about, best business practices, out-of-the-box, tried and true. There's no need to customize a system. The system is fully integrated and you just adopt those practices and that's what Answerthink does.
Michael Greene:
Correct. And really like anything else, in terms of what the implementation journey timeline looks right, it's like anything else, it depends upon the overall scope of the organization. That could be the legal entity structure scope, the business process scope, and the technical integration scope of an individual implementation.
But we do follow a very structured methodology. We follow SAP Activate. We start off with fit to standard approach, which is really, to Kevin's point, leveraging SAP best practices. We'll go through those fit to standards demonstrating what standard SAP functionality for life sciences looks like, and we'll do a show and tell, and we'll ask organizations.
What that really helps us do is to get them focused on understanding how SAP works from a best practices standpoint, and identifying the deltas, only when a true delta is something that's going to drive some level of uniqueness or meet a particular business need for that particular customer. And by staying focused on best practices and only doing some level of personalization and customization when it's absolutely required, we can stay effective and efficient, and make sure that those timelines are aligned with what is anticipated for a small mid-market organization.
Rebecca Willumson:
So, tell me, how does SAP and Answerthink help customers integrate legacy systems and non-SAP applications into a single data environment without causing any disruption?
Kevin Brophy:
Yeah, a couple things, right? So, we talked about the best business practices, full integrated. I mentioned earlier the analytics built into this in-memory platform. So, I don't need to push data out to a business warehouse, I have the data at my fingertips. And probably one of the most important pieces is our integration suite, which is part of our SAP Business Technology Platform. We have over 3000 standard interfaces out of the box.
Those interfaces, for example, a third-party application. We have built our side of the interface at SAP, so the customer doesn't have to build that, and then they just connect it into their system, and you now have that integration. So it cuts the cost, the time. And it's funny because Mike, you and I talk about we see many companies when they start, they've got a third party integration tool, and then eventually they figure out it's more cost-effective to use what's out of the box. And I'll let Mike comment, because they've done many implementations now just in the manner we saw Mike, right? People starting with something else and then realizing the value of the out of the box SAP Business Technology Platform integration suite.
Michael Greene:
Correct, right. There isn't an organization today that doesn't have some type of third party applications that we need to interface to, whether that be back office, and we're just talking about banks and extended financial systems capabilities, or whether we're on the operation side and we're talking about integrating to LIM systems, quality management systems, MES, PLM, et cetera.
And really what we're trying to do, whether an organization is on a small middleware platform or something larger like a MuleSoft or Boomi, really as we bring the holistic solution, leveraging the business technology platform from SAP, we can have a hub and spoke mentality where we can integrate all these applications with a single hub, where we can monitor them, we can ensure the real time data synchronization and leveraging, as Kevin alluded to, as part of our integration suite, the number of 3000 plus white listed APIs that we can leverage out of the box.
We can handle those integrations with just about any third party system that you can think of, within the confines of the established implementation timeframe, without providing any additional risk or causing a critical path component to the implementation timeline.
Rebecca Willumson:
Now today many small and mid-sized companies are improving patient outcomes with new science and technology-based therapies. These companies often struggle with visibility across their supply chains. Tell me, how does SAP Business Suite help improve transparency, especially when you're working with contract manufacturers and bulk suppliers?
Kevin Brophy:
Yeah. And it is very, very different, some of the new technologies, cell gene therapy, personalized medicines. Those folks have to take care of chain of identity, chain of custody, kind of regulatory from patient one. So, instead of your normal, I don't need to really be fully validated until I'm late phase three and going commercial. That's one in which I need to do today. And then just the model today are small companies, they don't have manufacturing. They use third parties to do the manufacturing.
When they commercialize, they use a 3PL. They may never touch anything. But at the same time, you need the information, you need the visibility, you need to understand your inventory, especially when someone commercializes and they go global. Because now that whole network of contract manufacturers gets even more complex from the bulk and the packaging and the locality of where they are. And that's what we've done with some of our functionality and the concept of networks.
So with us, the concept of a network is digitizing a process, and that's what we do with our supply chain collaboration. Digitize a process and connect with those third party CMOs and provide the forecast inventory visibility, sending the PO and do that whole process, but more important, get the quality data uploaded and sent back so I can do that usage decision and approval. Because at the end of the day, it is that company, even though I'm not manufacturing it's still my responsibility from that quality standpoint to release that product.
So, these are some of the areas. In addition, where we're pre-commercial with our clinical trial supply management solution, we have the ability to connect directly with the IVRs and share the demand and forecast information. So, that gives a pure closed loop planning just in the study, demand planning for the study, and knowing what I need to have back from them.
Michael Greene:
Yeah. And I think that when we talk about the implementation of these capabilities from a small mid-market, or early pre-commercial, or early commercial organizations, there's always a crawl, walk, run method to our approach.
If we're talking about a single product as you're going commercial, obviously there are ways that we can handle that through some type of manual or semi-automated capabilities and some type of sneaker nets. But as Kevin is alluding to, as organizations begin to mature, as products begin to extend beyond your current sales capacity out into other regions of the world, the ability to connect real-time visibility with suppliers, with customers, with your contract manufacturers, with your 3PL providers, making sure that we have the appropriate compliance and serialization tracking in place for business needs, the ability for SAP to be able to provide that path of crawl, walk, and run, through the capabilities of fully automating that through the business networks is just invaluable for the customers that we work with today.
Rebecca Willumson:
That feels like the perfect place to close out. Kevin and Michael, thank you so much for joining me today, I appreciate it.
Kevin Brophy:
Thank you.
Michael Greene:
Thank you very much.