Recipharm has sent its ERP platform to the cloud

Swedish pharmaceutical manufacturer Recipharm has enlisted Merit Globe and Infor to modernise the company’s ERP systems to help reduce application fragmentation across the organisations.

Recipharm said it wanted to streamline its ERP system and reduce risk associated with its fragmented suite of legacy applications. It deployed Infor’s M3 cloud-based ERP platform to replace its existing on-premise solution.

“We can see that new features are being developed and industry-specific functionality added, removing the need for customisation.  This is critical for us as we instigate business process improvement projects,” said Mikael Porat, director of supply chain, Recipharm.

“Looking ahead we are assessing options outside of the ERP such as electronic signature , as this is of major importance for compliance within the pharmaceutical industry,” he added.

The project also included integration with a host of third party systems as well as a migration from IBM AS/400 to Microsoft SQL.

“Success in the pharmaceutical industry depends on managing two contrasting factors, continual product innovation and complete compliance with regulations,” said Mark Humphlett, director, industry and solution strategy, Infor.  “From an operational perspective this means an agile ERP and standardised processes are critical.  Customisations must be kept to a minimum and integration must be lightweight and flexible to support growth.”

Pharma is a heavily regulated industry and one of the main inhibitors when considering a shift to cloud services. Results from the BCN Annual Industry Survey earlier this year, which included responses from over 715 senior enterprise IT decision makers, suggest Pharma was among the top three least likely sectors to shift to cloud services in the next two years, Aviation and Emergency Services being the other two.