In an interaction with CIOTechOutlook, Balaji Aravamuthan, President IT, Emcure Pharmaceuticals Limited shares his views on inventory management in pharmaceutical industry.

Inventory Management Software Market is projected to reach USD 2998.55 Million by 2028. How do you see this market evolving in India? What are the key factors that will drive the growth?

Inventory management software is there for ages. They always revolve around ease of use, simplicity, time to value and lower cost of ownership. They have redefined their way of operations based on the technology available at that time which is typically getting disrupted every 7-8 years. With the advent of cloud, logistics and AI it is shrinking lead time and JIT is almost reality.

Need analysis is an effective way to design the inventory management system. What are the key factors that need to be considered while performing a need analysis for a pharmaceutical firm?

Right need prediction is the combination of both art and science. While there are tools through which we can build models of predicting, ground realities often surprise. Many external environments like Covid, War, country specific unpredictable sourcing restrictions induces heavy bias and calls for skillful balancing act. For pharma prediction goes further based on type of diseases and its seasonality.

Order management is crucial for companies in the pharmaceutical industry. Data about the availability of products in the different levels of the supply chain is a key decision making factor. How can an inventory management system be leveraged to overcome this problem?

Order management is the result of various parameters viz., customer firm order, inventory holding strategy, lead time, discounts, currency fluctuations, credit management etc., While there are many controllable parameters, in the current day context there are many uncontrollable external parameters needs to be considered. AI/ ML models are getting matured in this space and hopefully the dream of perfect order management will be achieved in coming years.

Temperature control is a vital part in pharmaceutical inventory management. Drugs and the raw ingredients need to be stored in the optimum temperature at every point. How is inventory management tech helping the pharmaceutical firms to attain the same?

True there are many temperatures driven inventory management is the order of the day for pharmaceutical industry. It is equally applicable for other industries as well like Agriculture, FMCG etc., good news is IOT driven tracking is very much reality in this space. We can set the alerts if the temperature is beyond the range. Naturally cost of storing is high in those cases and technology can help in reducing the same through systematic monitoring.

Today, tracking of drugs from origin to customer has become vital, for both domestic and global markets. How is this issue addressed by the pharma companies?

Track and trace are mandatory for drugs to prevent spurious drugs and also it is required as per regulatory to keep the complete batch information. Technologies like QR code, RFID, Blockchain are playing crucial role in this space depending on the business case. Such tracking is catching up in many other industries and ONLY through technology we can solve this problem as it is humanly impossible to keep a track manually. 

How do you see the future of the Inventory Management Software Market in India?  

It is heavily crowded market and industry specific solutions are evolving. As long as trade is there, inventory management is bound to happen. Newer technologies are emerging day by day. To that extent it is a continuous disruption space.