Improved coordination
Spimaco: Consolidating the market position on an integrated data base

Private and state customers in the Arabic region and international organizations are all supplied by Saudi Pharmaceutical Industries & Medical Appliances Corporation (Spimaco). With over 150 drugs, the pharmaceutical company achieves sales of around 120 million dollars a year. Since the end of last year, Spimaco has been controlling its business processes using the mySAP All-in-One industry solution myPharma@icm. All the latest information from the incorporated company divisions is now always available on an integrated database.

Since 1990, Saudi Pharmaceutical Industries & Medical Appliances Corporation (Spimaco), based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has been producing cold remedies, antipyretic drugs, anti-inflammatory products and antibiotics, amongst other things. The company employs around 600 people and supplies private and state customers in the Arab market and international organizations. In the future, involvement in the private sector is to be further developed and additional sales potential opened up in America and Europe. This means that it has become necessary to map every business process in a validated IT system. The corresponding international regulations, however, could not be fulfilled with the island solutions that had been implemented. The company software consisted of a large number of subsystems with platforms and databases that were independent of each other. As time passed, it became increasingly complicated to handle business transactions in production planning and sales management economically, for example. Another reason for replacing the old system was the rising cost of maintenance and updating. “We were looking for an integrated system that is widespread internationally and that can be expanded flexibly through the addition of new functions as we grow”, explains Dr. Salim Ahmed Babhair, Deputy Managing Director of Scientific & Technical Affairs. In addition, it had to be possible to validate the company IT in accordance with the requirements of cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) and GAMP (Good Automated Manufacturing Practice).

Won over by many years
of experience
The mySAP All-in-One industry solution myPharma@icm met these requirements extremely well. The preset pharmaceuticals-specific business processes in the company software were an important criterion in the decision-making. In addition, the company was also won over by the specialists at ICM Deutschland GmbH as competent launch partners. “The comprehensive IT expertise of the consultants and their many years of experience with projects in pharmaceutical companies were also important criteria”, Dr. Salim Ahmed Babhair adds. The task of validating the system in parallel with the launch was taken over by the experts at ICM’s partner, Chemgineering. The project started at the end of February 2002, and just eight months later, the IT solution had been introduced in the areas of Financial Management, Quality Management, Human Resources, Controlling and Sales. In addition, materials management and automatic warehouse management, production planning and control and the project system for product development came within the scope of the implementation services.
Supporting process
planning and optimization
Since the real start at the beginning of November 2002, employees now have much faster access to information from the incorporated divisions such as production and materials management. This has accelerated movements of material and the integrated costs calculation facility means that individual corporate divisions can be much better controlled. In book-keeping, entries are updated automatically across all the linked business divisions. In view of this improvement in process management, Dr. Salim Ahmed Babhair is looking optimistically into the future. “We are reckoning on a return on investment within 24 months.”
In order to gradually connect further company divisions to the IT system, the next stages have already been planned. The expansion of the system through the addition of Customer Relationship Management aims to further improve customer support. In addition, it is planned that the Process Planning and Optimization division will be supported by an Advanced Planning and Optimization Tool (APO) so that processes within the logistics chain can be controlled without gaps. Integrating maintenance and mapping the company processes and information in a business intelligence system are also on the agenda. Through the expansion of the business management IT system, Spimaco is continually optimizing its business processes whilst also promoting customer satisfaction. This creates the best conditions for further expanding its position as a top pharmaceutical company in the Arab market.