Packaging for pharma industry is on a transformation mode. There is a huge demand for faster and cost-effective solutions being sought more than ever before and changes to packaging that took months are now expected to come by in a few weeks. Indegene has strived to deliver value beyond just cost and labour arbitrage. Our focus on quality has resulted in many improvements to the existing ways of working besides our continued efforts to work up the value chain. Our experienced team can claim to have delivered a ROI of more than 3X value to the customer for similar services which include significant cost benefits, said Manish Gupta, CEO, Indegene Lifesciences, in an interview with Nandita Vijay.
How would you see the growth of the packaging for pharmaceuticals in India and globally?
In today’s environment, the industry is encountering numerous external challenges, especially with products going off patent, competition from peers, cost pressures, quality errors resulting in delays to market, multiple joint ventures, besides mergers and acquisitions. The complexity is further enhanced due to the changing customer behaviour and demographics, altering regulatory requirements, challenges in supply chain management and the growing influence of private and new labels.
All this means more packaging artwork has to be produced faster and in a very cost effective manner than ever before and changes to packaging that took months are now expected in weeks. However in reality, package, label design and development are time consuming and often act as bottle-necks in accelerating time-to-market. The complexity arises out of lack of in-house expertise, absence of sophisticated tools and techniques, inability to share best practices and the involvement of global multifunctional teams from various departments.
The ability to innovate, simplify & standardize the operating model and deliver a more cost effective, robust and scalable business model that can run on a global scale is now a key requirement. Consolidating and optimizing spends on production and purchase of associated services - graphic design, artwork creation, repro and print - is no more adequate at a national or regional level, but needs to be done on a global scale.
What are the visible trends?
There could be around four expected changes in the industry. Firstly, there would a shift in the traditional ways of working - will be a key process in driving lower costs, increasing efficiency and quality and be one of the catalysts in the simplification program that most companies are embarking upon. The question to ask is how much and how soon. This part of the supply chain process is highly knowledge intensive and will be best delivered if there is a proactive strategy and execution plan in place which in turn would lead towards a world class service for the companies.
Secondly, the packaging would be viewed as a specialised service that no longer is core but a process that is repeatable, trainable and deliverable using technology, knowledge base, external partners with a global hybrid operating model besides reducing complexity through process simplification and standardization. The advantages are distinct and realistically achievable as long as the organisation is willing to acknowledge and drive the change management diligently with a certain manageable element of risk. More and more companies are expected to accelerate this change in the years to come.
Thirdly, partner and supplier consolidation is going to be the way forward. The amount of time companies are spending in oversight and program management is soon going to be unsustainable given the resource pressure that they themselves are facing in their own organizations. It's time to identify key suppliers that add value in the company's future operating state and provide a comprehensive stack of services that meet the customer's long term objective.
What are the issues in packaging for which Indegene can provide solutions?
Indegene has a focused line of service on Packaging Artwork Creative Services (PACS) delivering end to end capability across regulatory labelling, artwork development and project management. The experience of Indegene’s team members differentiates the company in the global marketplace for similar services and helps neutralize some of the common issues faced by the packaging industry.
Some of the industry challenges and issues which Indegene can proactively provide solutions would be 'reducing product recalls'. The continuous focus on quality has ensured that we have had no product recalls till date from our operations team. The team is committed to deliver the highest level of service to its customers and work on stringent SLA’s to ensure that all the artworks released to the market are proof-read and accurate as per the change request brief.
There is need for best-in-class operational processes to ensure consistent quality and timeliness with ISO 27001/ ISO 9001 certification. Indegene aligns its QC processes to the GXP standards adhered to by the pharma industry and follows an exhaustive critical checklist before artwork is submitted to the client thereby minimizing iterations. There would be well defined centralised processes. The go to market strategy is to help customers simplify, standardize and centralise their global packaging operations and deliver a more cost effective, robust and scalable business process using an offshore delivery model.
Could you briefly give us an overview of the full spectrum of services to manage high volumes of cost-efficient artwork creation and modification for pharma & healthcare product packaging?
Indegene not only manages the artwork management process end to end but also has been working in the area of regulatory labelling which triggers many of the change requests for our customers. Our ability to work with various markets and manufacturing sites besides 3rd party CMOs makes us deliver the process with high level of efficiency and consistency in quality. Indegene has also expanded its capabilities to provide project management oversight to support centralization of services, integration of new sites and markets (acquired through acquisitions or JVs) to the existing supply chain besides providing support for process documentation and roll out of training procedures. Our functional expertise, excellence in operations and focus on quality and metrics makes us one of the most active offshore players in the market today.
When did Indegene begin offering the Pack Management Solutions to the pharma sector?
Indegene has a focused line of service on Packaging Artwork Creative Services (PACS) delivering end to end capability across regulatory labelling, artwork development and project management consulting services for the pharma and consumer business units besides supporting strategic initiatives like M&A, JVs and other business unit integration. The competency centre on PACS comprised of experienced associates with the right skill sets, equipped with state-of-the-art technologies and track record of providing 24x7 services in a highly secure environment, to customers across the globe.
Is the company only catering to global pharma majors or even the Indian companies? Is there competition for the company in this space? Does Indegene face head on competition with companies like Goose?
Indegene has been working with some of the top 10 pharma leaders at a global level, as well as some top Indian pharma companies as well.
We deal with competition from global artwork studios, large IT & ITES companies, besides some offshore niche suppliers. However the key differentiation here is that while many of them are focussed on multiple industries like pharma, Indegene is the only specialised pharma services firm providing end to end service capability in this area. A broad segregated area of competitions are to global suppliers for companies like SGS, Schawk & Perigord which provide complete turnkey graphic solutions from packaging to print design. They also have a lot of emphasis on global workflow management, consultancy, artwork solutions (packaging and brand design), and content management and translation services amongst the key areas. Some of these firms also have offshore presence in India.
The government of India is enforcing the 2D bar coding for all pharma products with effect from July 2014. Would Indegene look at tapping opportunities from this space?
Indegene has the capability for creating 2D bar codes for all pharma products, and would definitely look at positioning itself for any opportunities that will come up in the future.