SAP’s technology reaches almost every corner of our economy and society, the company providing vital software that helps countless companies and organizations from a huge array of sectors to function on a daily basis.
This includes life sciences. With more than 3,800 customers in the industry, 80% of which being startups, should read – 80 percent of SAP Life Science customer’s are below 500 million in revenue – many – zero revenue startup companies. SAP has been at every stage of the biopharma business journey.
In this episode, we have not one but two experts from SAP joining us. Aparna Seksaria is the company’s Life Sciences Global Strategy Lead, while Kevin Brophy serves as Industry Executive Advisor.
Speaking to Rebecca Williamson at the Fierce Biotech Summit, the duo outline the importance of supporting life sciences firms of all shapes and sizes.
“We've had many go from zero revenue to multi-billion-dollar companies,” Kevin tells us. “It's what we do, supporting new and growing Life Science companies with their growth from an overall business process.”
In recent years, a key focus area for SAP has been in the development of a software solution for clinical trial supply management. Having worked with some of its larger clients to build the foundations, the company is now receiving enquiries from smaller customers with only a handful of trials on their books, offering a standardization solution that is accessible not just to the larger players.
To hear more from Aparna and Kevin on this, and how their views on the role of AI, tune in to the full discussion.
Rebecca Willumson:
Hi, I'm Rebecca Willumson. I'm the publisher of Fierce Biotech, and I'm here today with Aparna Sekasaria, Life Sciences Global Strategy Lead at SAP, and Kevin Brophy, Industry Executive Advisor at SAP. Thank you both for joining me today.
Kevin Brophy:
Thank you.
Rebecca Willumson:
To start us off, why don't we talk about why is SAP at the Fierce Biotech Summit?
Kevin Brophy:
When you take a look at industries we support, life sciences is one of the biggest ones. We have over 3,800 customers, and specifically 80% of our customers are actually startup small biopharmas. We've had many go from zero revenue to multi-billion-dollar companies. It's what we do, supporting them with their growth from an overall business process. We looked at it as a great opportunity to be here, to interact with those customers, and meet them.
Aparna Seksaria:
And also, send a message that SAP is not just for the larger biopharma, we are there in the startups and the small biopharma as well.
Rebecca Willumson:
Jumping in, can you provide an overview of how SAP is supporting clinical supply management and cell and gene therapies in life sciences organizations? Aparna, do you want to start with you?
Aparna Seksaria:
A couple of years ago, some of our customers have approached us with lack of status solution in terms of clinical trials. There is no one-size-fits-all and the clinical trials were running on Excel spreadsheets, which is not a good way to do it. SAP has invested in the clinical trial solution with big customers and now we have a full suite of how clinical trial supply management solutions that can track, execute, all the way from the initiation of the clinical study to the direct shipment of the clinical kit to the patient. SAP has launched into this space, and we have covered a lot of white spaces in the clinical trial study, and execution, and on the cell gene therapy.
Kevin Brophy:
Cell gene therapy is an area our customers asked us to really get involved. It is a growing therapeutic area, there's only a handful of approved therapies today, but there is a huge pipeline of new cell gene therapy solutions coming. It's a different business process. It doesn't involve a volume. It’s personalized medicine. It is something in which the business processes are very different.
Those companies that tried to support it, have failed, and that's where our customers asked us to step in and help support them with what they need to be able to take a sample from the hospital from the patient, take it through a apherisis center, then into manufacturing to process blood sample (in the case of CAR-T therapies reengineer the T Cells , and completing the process sending the infusion bag back to the hospital to be infused in the patient.. That is how SAP is helping to support from a business process standpoint.
Aparna Seksaria:
And the best part is these solutions work together. When you start your pre-clinical phase, you can actually start on these solutions and it helps to transition from pre-clinical, to clinical, phase zero, phase one. We have a lot of small customers who are approaching us with less than 10 trials or five trials, they wanted to use that solution so that they can standardize their processes and lay a steppingstone for their commercial process once they reach phase three, phase four. When it's going into the commercial supply chain, you should have a systematic way of doing things. They are really bridging the gap between the clinical and commercial as well.
Rebecca Willumson:
Tell me, in the context of clinical and commercial supply chain management, what challenges or issues do you think SAP can help organizations address?
Kevin Brophy:
It's our DNA and what we do from an overall supply chain standpoint. Supply chains with smaller companies start small, but as you get approvals in different countries it creates complexity, and that's what we've been doing for years from an overall supply chain solution standpoint in supporting end-to-end supply chain. From overall planning, right on through the actual manufacturing scheduling on the floor, and what we like to talk about interoperability. When something that happens on the shop floor, immediately a signal is sent to affect the overall schedule. Dynamically people know we now have a situation where we may not be able to meet that demand or have to be able to shift and use another plant, manufacturing line, or CMO to make up for the change to the schedule. That is really how we overall support.
Getting into the clinical is a part I was talking about before; this is the bridge. When you are a young company, you're in clinical phases, you don't worry about a commercial supply chain. And that's the beauty of SAP, we'll support you in that clinical phase. Eventually when the company does commercialize, we'll help you right from the tech transfer standpoint, digitizing and automating that rate right into your commercial supply chain as it grows because there's a never-ending task of getting approvals in different countries for a therapy that becomes commercialized.
Aparna Seksaria:
And we actually remove the roadblocks from the technology front, so that the customers can release their drugs faster to the market because their supply chains are streamlined, they are more organized. You have a wider reach with their products where you can procure from, where you can really ship them to. You have a beautiful network chain that you can leverage on. We are really bridging the technology gap for our customers and enabling them with clinical and commercial supply chain synergies.
Rebecca Willumson:
Tell me, how do you see the role of AI evolving in the context of supply chain management for the biopharma industry
Aparna Seksaria:
We had a panel earlier about AI. On the AI front, it's actually become a buzzword that we want to adopt AI, but AI is something that you need to leverage on as you go through. It has to be a bite size consumption of what you can do with respect to processes. As a standard, SAP products have inbuilt AI ML technologies already. How do you leverage those technologies to be able to really build in a business case and also bring value to the particular use case? That's what I would start from.
Kevin Brophy:
It's a huge initiative at SAP, Generative AI across all the business processes. We're in a great position for companies because you're not going to be able to do a lot of AI without data. We have the data, we have the business data. We already have some solutions out there, especially as we talk about supply chain. We already have some AI in the supply chain area helping with demand planning and forecasting, picking up on where the human may not see certain patterns and such. And you're going to see us at SAP across the board continue now deliver more and more out-of-the-box AI. AI is the future, it is how our customers will do more with less, how they can run more efficient, how they can make better decisions.
Aparna Seksaria:
And going forward, SAP is going to embed a lot of AI technology to , give more options to use predictive AI technology, for example, take the forecasting algorithm for supply chains and site replenishments. There's a lot more coming up on the SAP roadmap.
Rebecca Willumson:
Very good. Well, that feels like a good place to stop. Thank you both for joining me. I appreciate the conversation.
Kevin Brophy:
Thank you.
Aparna Sekasaria:
Thank you.