Blog | June 3, 2025

How to accelerate your APS journey

Implementing advanced planning in life sciences and pharmaceutical supply chains

Supply chain leaders in life sciences today are constantly striving to shorten lead times, run smoother operations and deal with material shortages. At the same time, they’re also facing increasing regulatory compliance requirements and changing patient needs.

Supply chain success in the life sciences depends on advanced planning

In this complex environment, the supply chains that can adapt quickly and easily change course are the ones that will ultimately be very successful and make their organizations competitive on the market.

Successful life sciences supply chains can maintain a feasible plan, including aspects like

Expiry management
Tender planning
Campaign planning
Jurisdictional control
Attribute-based planning
Inventory allocations
Contract manufacturing
Collaboration

These are some of the standard areas where life sciences and pharmaceutical organizations are looking to advanced planning systems (APS) to provide the information necessary to run the supply chain.

Sound interesting? We look forward to hearing from you.

Quick time to value with accelerators for APS implementation

There’s a common belief that supply chain transformations such as APS implementation must take a long time. But working with 4flow customers, we’ve identified several accelerators to help these projects go quickly and smoothly.

Know your must-have requirements

The complexity of supply chain planning makes it difficult to predict your requirements from the beginning of your APS project. That's why we usually recommend splitting APS implementation into phases and focusing on the core requirements for the first phase. This ensures quick time to value.
Gain executive support

Understand the different interests and pain points of your executives. You need to have compelling reasoning for all different stakeholders – from supply chain to sales and beyond. In addition to a positive business case, reasoning that appeals to emotions like excitement or relief can help get support for your project.
Prioritize change management

Many organizations are aware of the importance of change management, but the urgency of daily tasks gets in the way. It's essential to create a common vision between all the planners and other stakeholders very early in the project so everybody is aligned on this significant upcoming change. If the time and resources for change management aren’t available internally, it’s worth seeking external support.
Enable your organization

APS implementations naturally lead to a change in how people work, due to new processes or system functionalities. Preparing and enabling your organization for the new way of working is critical to the success of an APS transformation.
Ensure data readiness

Don’t let data be the stumbling block in your project. We recommend performing a data readiness assessment very early on – even during your software selection process. By closing the critical gaps early, organizations can significantly reduce time to value.

By leveraging these accelerators, organizations can expect to see value in four to six months, depending on the process complexity. Especially for mid-sized life sciences businesses, that’s a realistic implementation timeline if the project starts with the core requirements and expands from there.

Benefit from innovation with a system-first approach

There’s been a shift in the approach to recent APS implementation projects that helps organizations achieve this quick time to value. Traditionally, planning processes were designed holistically before starting the software implementation. Many of our customers today are taking a disruptive approach and saying processes will follow the system. That's a true accelerator because organizations can leverage existing best practices for the many innovative APS options on the market.

In addition, this approach reduces the risk of maintaining as-is processes and missing out on opportunities to improve how things are done. It also reduces the likelihood of building a heavily customized solution that is difficult to maintain.

Finding the right APS in life sciences

When selecting an APS for pharmaceutical or life sciences organizations, let these three key considerations guide your decision.

Sound interesting? We look forward to hearing from you.

It’s important to see if your requirements are met in one preconfigured solution, or if there are different modules that might meet your requirements. This is an essential difference when it comes to avoiding ongoing development and additional costs during implementation.

For example, consider inventory planning. If a software only understands inventory and not lot-based inventory, it will ultimately make decisions that might not satisfy customer demand. If data like expiry or country of origin are important for your supply chain, find out if the platforms you're considering can answer those questions without customization.

Can the promised capabilities be implemented on time and on budget without customizations and delays? Look at the credentials of the APS vendors to see how much experience they have implementing the solution in life sciences. That gives a good idea of how deployable the platform would be.