From OKORO CHINEDU in Lagos, Nigeria
LAGOS -THE Nigerian-German Chemicals (NGC) has fast-tracked its digital transformation journey to become a leading pharmaceutical company respected in the local market and globally.Chris Akinyomi, Project Manager at NGC, said the company’s business transformation process needed the support of world-class application infrastructure that would enable its transition to a healthy and rapidly growing company of international repute.
“We were looking to standardize our business process across the organization while controlling deviations from standard processes and ensuring good governance,” he said.
Given the level of information technology maturity within the company, NGC also needed to find an implementation partner with a successful track record in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as a technology partner that understands global best practice in the healthcare industry.SAP, the market leader in enterprise application software, came in handy.Akinyomi said SAP Enterprise Resource Planning was a unanimous choice given its fitment to the pharmaceutical industry and its adoption by world’s leading pharmaceutical companies.The project implementation included Sales and Distribution, Material Management, Production and Planning, Quality Management as well as Finance and Controlling.
“It was essential that the project be implemented as quickly as possible,so our choice of partner would also be determined by their knowledge and experience with pharmaceutical industry best practice, which allowed us to pre-configure some of the solution,” Akinyomi said. Nihilent were the local implementation partner.
Jay Shah, Associate Vice President and Enterprise Applications Head at the company, said NGC relied heavily on SAP and industry best practice, leaving customization at a minimum.Shah said the remote location of NGC’s head office, in Ota in the south-western Ogun State meant connectivity was sometimes limited.
To encourage the user team to invest additional hours to meet the project deadlines, Nihilent secured executive team buy-in who incentivized the user team.“This commitment and involvement of the senior team was invaluable in ensuring we were able to meet project objectives while still allowing users to practice and build confidence with using the system,” according to Shah.
Pedro Gurreiro, Managing Director: SAP West Africa, said with NGC now operating on global best practice, it was ideally positioned to leverage its core system for fast-tracked product development and better operational efficiencies.
“This is a great showcase of how the confluence of business, technology and industry insight can unlock the benefits of digital transformation for companies in the pharmaceutical industry,” said Gurreiro.
NGC has a more than 40-year track record of improving and enhancing the healthcare and well-being of the people of Nigeria and the West African region.
– Guardian