SAP Intelligent Automation Success Story for a Global Pharmaceutical Leader
Discover how a global pharmaceutical leader improved efficiency, operational visibility and business performance through SAP Intelligent Automation.
Business Outcomes On Glance
About the Company
Headquartered in London, the company sells across nearly 100 countries and runs a direct commercial operation in multiple geographies, spanning Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia. Its portfolio spans some of medicine’s most demanding therapeutic areas, including hepatology, gastroenterology, critical care, anti-infectives, endocrinology, and oncology, alongside a broadening rare disease pipeline.
The organisation has thrived on a dynamic culture and continuous innovation. It has progressed through acquisition and consolidation, absorbed therapy areas, expanded portfolios and built an agile, partner-driven operating model that depends on contract manufacturers and distribution partners.
While that model is commercially efficient, it is also, by design, complex to run. With growth, that complexity was starting to show up in the back office.
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Geographies | Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia |
| Workforce | 500+ employees |
| Industry | Pharmaceutical Manufacturing |
| Engagement | SAP Carve-Out Implementation & Intelligent Automation |
| Solution | SAP, Salesforce, Veeva Artworks, Excel, GPT-4.0-powered automation |
The Business Challenges
The company needed a reliable partner to take a closer look at its business operations. A handful of processes, unremarkable in isolation, were together consuming a disproportionate share of the organisation’s operational capacity:
- Depot reconciliation and Salesforce-related data processes demanded repetitive, manual work stitched together across SAP, Excel, Salesforce, and other systems, with no single thread connecting them.
- Frequent, high-volume reporting cycles, quarterly and monthly, put pressure on teams to move fast while carrying a persistent risk of human error.
- CRM and supply chain workflows tied up multiple full-time employees on relatively low-value tasks, hours that could otherwise have been spent more strategically.
- The company’s appetite for growth through mergers and acquisitions kept outrunning the systems meant to support it, with every new entity adding another layer of complexity.
- Procurement scenarios had grown complex, needing a multi-level workflow that spreadsheets and email chains could not handle.
- Sentiment analysis, a task with direct implications for how the company reads patient and stakeholder perception, was still manual, risking accuracy and compliance.
- Scaling systems to keep pace with frequent M&A activity had become a recurring, resource-intensive exercise.
Why This Mattered
For a highly regulated pharmaceutical business, the factors described above have significant implications. For instance, the depot reconciliation determines whether stock records match physical reality. Quarterly reporting feeds directly into compliance and commercial decisions. Inconsistent sentiment analysis is an audit risk.
The company needed a subject matter expert who could transform its processes for operational efficiency and regulatory compliance.
The Solution: SAP as the Core, Automation as the Multiplier
Percipere delivered a two-layered transformation: a carve-out SAP implementation to give the business a clean, standalone digital core. It was paired with a targeted intelligent automation programme built to make key business processes efficient.
On the SAP side, we executed a full carve-out implementation, establishing an independent core system. On the automation side, we did the following:
- Veeva Workflow Automation. Veeva Artworks governs how regulated product artwork and labelling content move through approval. We automated the workflow, cutting processing time from 10 hours to 4, a 60% reduction.
- Salesforce Automation for Quarterly Data Uploads. A process that used to take 200 hours now takes 120 minutes, a reduction of more than 99%.
- Invoice Split Automation. We automated the extraction of essential invoice data, turning a recurring manual burden into a one-time configured task.
- Daily Sentiment Analysis. Using GPT-4.0-powered automation, we brought consistency to a compliance-sensitive task.
- Stakeholder Communications. Automated bulk email dispatch to stakeholders, triggered against defined criteria, with the notification tracker updated automatically.
- Document Management. Download and upload of the latest product documents to SharePoint, following a predefined folder structure.
Why The Customer Chose Percipere
The organisation needed a partner with a deep understanding of SAP implementation and intelligent automation, and one that could handle both within the compliance and regulatory demands of the life science industry. Percipere brought:
- Deep expertise in implementing SAP and intelligent automation across supply chain, CRM, and compliance functions, with the technical range to seamlessly integrate automation into diverse enterprise tools.
- The ability to tailor automation to the task at hand, from straightforward data extraction and reconciliation to sensitive work like sentiment analysis and stakeholder communications.
- A proven track record of automation that delivers measurable operational efficiency, in hours saved, across the processes it touches.
- Solutions built to flex: scalable enough for enterprise-wide processes, precise enough for narrow, high-stakes tasks.
- A consistent focus on quality and compliance in every automation built is the baseline requirement for any technology partner working inside a regulated pharmaceutical business.
Key Business Objectives Met
- 99% reduction in time for Salesforce quarterly data upload
- Daily sentiment analysis, previously manual and inconsistent, now runs on a defined 15-minute process every day.
- The SAP carve-out implementation went live on schedule with zero impact on business as usual.
- Veeva Artworks workflows, invoice processing, and SharePoint document governance have been aligned with the regulatory framework.
- The systems and automations were designed around the company’s M&A-driven growth model and built to simplify onboarding new entities.
Business Benefits Delivered
- A standalone, carve-out SAP core built for continuous innovation.
- 800+ hours saved annually on the Salesforce quarterly upload process.
- Consistent, compliant handling of sensitive tasks like sentiment analysis, removing a standing risk to accuracy and regulatory posture.
- FTE capacity released from repetitive, low-value work and available for higher-value activity.
- A robust and scalable technology foundation designed for fast growth.
The Way Ahead
Our customer’s growth pattern is likely to stay consistent: more markets, more acquisitions, more regulatory requirements layered onto an already complex operating footprint. The systems delivered in this engagement were built to support that approach. The carve-out SAP core runs on a continuous innovation model, and the automation layer was built to extend flexibly to new processes and workflows.
Two figures summarise what changed. A quarterly reporting cycle that once consumed roughly five working weeks now takes two hours. A compliance-sensitive task that once carried a standing accuracy risk now runs on a fixed 15-minute schedule, daily, with consistent outputs.
For life sciences organisations facing the same combination of problems, these numbers are a concrete reference point for what changes once those problems are addressed.
About Percipere
Percipere is a business transformation consultancy delivering SAP implementations, intelligent automation, and process intelligence for mid-market and enterprise organisations.
The firm works across the full transformation lifecycle – from design through to go-live and operational change – with a focus on delivering outcomes that hold.www.percipere.com
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