Our SAP S/4HANA Best Practice Approach for the Life Sciences Industry

Unlock the true potential of SAP S/4HANA with it.lifesciences. We understand that there is no one-size fits all in the life sciences industry. With it.lifesciences, you can jump start your project, with more than 300 industry best practice processes already available and ready to adapt for your organization. These include processes to optimize R&D, compliant manufacturing, quality control, supply chain management, and more.

This page explains how we set up new implementations of SAP S/4HANA for life science and pharma companies. If your business already uses SAP, for example, ECC 6.0, you don’t have to set up a new implementation. We can upgrade your old system to SAP S/4HANA in a process known as validated system conversion. Learn about this on our SAP S/4HANA system conversion page.

A modern ERP should be able to unite data from all your critical systems in one place and be updated in real-time. It should allow you to track your quality and supply chain as extensively as desired, from raw materials to finished products. It should be user-friendly, can scale to support large volumes of data, and use machine learning to uncover trends faster than we can.

Our implementations of SAP S/4HANA enable all of these benefits. In addition to a next generation platform, our clients find it significantly easier to comply with increasingly complex rules and regulations, such as 21CFR Part 11 and Eudralex annex 11, while their processes are far less vulnerable to human error.

Product Features

it.lifesciences is designed to unite all of your data in one place, connect to LIMS, eQMS, MES, support updates in real-time, and uncover trends automatically, with the power of machine learning. Features for each business function include:

• Research & Development: Formula management for product development and production processes, including sampling, controlling, and project management.
• Compliant Manufacturing: Simple sales and production planning that responds to changing needs. Production cockpit with weighing and dangerous-goods integration.
• Quality Control: Integrated quality management with comprehensive LIMS functionality. Automated printing of quality certificates, calibration, stability studies, extensive batch management, and cold chain management.
• Supply Chain Management: Stock management and planning, including labeling requirements, track & trace functionality, and serialization.

SAP S/4HANA is the fourth iteration of SAP’s enterprise-level business suite, running on the new HANA database. It’s the first in a new generation of ERPs, built with AI and machine learning capability.

Imagine having a single source of truth for all of your critical data. No more duplicate databases, delays while data is transferred between platforms, or costly mistakes from a lack of end-to-end visibility. SAP S/4HANA solves these common challenges with the additional benefit of AI.

Processes can be easily automated, while trends and insights in huge data sets can be uncovered automatically. Thanks to its new in-memory database and simplified data model, on SAP S/4HANA, vast amounts of information are available in an analytics dashboard that’s as user-friendly as a consumer product.

The platform can support any number of IoT devices, allowing you to record data from the plant floor and logistics network automatically. With the ability to easily adopt new features and no limits to scale, SAP S/4HANA can be the final step in digitizing your operation.

This system is designed to be scalable and modular. It can be hosted on SAP’s cloud or other hyper-scaler environments, including AWS, Azure, as well as with us.

Our project methodology is based on GAMP5, the pharma industry standard, as well as SAP’s own methodology, SAP Activate+. With many years of experience in life sciences, our specialists understand the complex nature of computer system validation, as well as the regulations your business operates with on a daily basis, such as Eudralex and 21 CFR Part 11. Our consultants have extensive experience in the highly regulated life science environment. Combined with our refined implementation process, this allows us to completely mitigate risk and keep budgets under control. We don’t just mean this figuratively, we back it up by providing a fixed cost as well as a fixed delivery schedule.

A full portfolio of services is available for all our clients: implementation consultancy, training, licenses, as well as functional and technical support. Implementations are crafted to solve your unique challenges, and they include only the software and hardware modules that make sense for your business. Our solutions are validated, future-proof, and risk-free.