Digital Transformation Assignment: Innovation And Sustainability Of Pfizer

Question

Task: You are required to write a 2000-word report for a novel value proposition within an existing business or organization. You must use appropriate headings to structure the body of the report.

Your report must demonstrate:

1. Logical and persuasive articulation of: the problem to be solved: problem insight: a portfolio of generated solution concepts: solution selection analysis: value proposition: targeted customers: competitive advantage and strategic fit (this includes elements into 4 in the disciplined entrepreneurship canvas by Aulet (2017. p. xviii) and all elements in the value proposition canvas by Osterwalder. Pigneur. Bernarda, and Smith (2014. pp. 8-9).
2. Logical and persuasive assessment of critical assumptions and uncertainties related to: customer desirability; technical feasibility: and financial viability.
3. Logical and persuasive argumentation for the selection of the innovation tools and techniques used to support the report findings and recommendations.Minimum eight (8) tools and techniques must be selected from the unit textbooks and online materials.
4. Logical and persuasive application of the selected innovation tools and techniques used to support the report findings and recommendations. Minimum height (8) tools and techniques must be applied from the unit textbooks and materials.
5. Candid and critical self-analysis about assessment 1 tasks including: a reflection on the development of personal innovation capabilities and practices: identification of own personal strengths and weaknesses: supported with examples of own behavior.
6. Clear flow of thought throughout the report with: a convincing executive Summary: clear and succinct purpose described in the introduction: relevant structure and content within the body of the report: and a clear and succinct conclusion.
7. Critical review skills and integration of relevant academic and professional literature. A minimum often (lo) academic and professional references must be used.
8. Appropriate in-text referencing and reference list. Adherence to CQ University APA reference style.
9. Clarity of expression. grammar and spelling. Appropriate report format with good use of bullet points, illustrations and figures. Within ±10% of the word limit for report. Excluding references and appendices: 2000 words.

Answer

Background of the study
The report on digital transformation assignment showcases the concept of digital transformation illustrating that the pharmaceutical industry has increased the pace of change in consumer and patient expectations, according to research Pharmaceutical and Healthcare organizations have been lagging behind in adopting changes. Digitalization is fundamentally changing the face of healthcare industry. The focus of pharmaceutical industries is shifting towards providing high value due to the increasing price regulations and challenges from big pharmaceutical companies demanding improvement in medicine development and patient care. It is obvious that the traditional means, business models and Pharma products are insufficient to face the market challenges and meet the current requirements. According to the report by Statista (2019), 1.4 billion US dollars was spent on digital advertisements by Pharma marketers to neutralize the lags in the Pharma Industry. The ultimate goal of Pharma Industry is to become more patient centric and offer cost effective outcomes. The digital underinvestment has created opportunities for third parties to provide better resources rather than the big pharmaceutical companies utilizing digital transformation as a means to provide better services. The big names in the industry are GSK Consumer Healthcare, Johnson and Johnson, Merck and Novartis who have prioritized their efforts towards the end consumer or patient. As identified by Lu (2017), Pfizer is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies that has embraced digitization within its supply chain. However, with Pfizer, the major hurdle lies in receiving approvals from the regulatory agencies so that patient privacy can be maintained. Their supply chain also needs to be rigorous for the supply of medicines.

Aim of the study
The aim of the study is to evaluate the innovative solutions coined by Pfizer to digitally transform its operations and make its business sustainable in the long run. The value proposition will aim to make Pfizer a digitally mature company. Pfizer is a well-recognized pharmaceutical company but has been slow to digitalize its operations likely due to regulatory issues and maintaining patient privacy. Nevertheless, the increasing competition and sustainability efforts have become stiffer and more important in the pharmaceutical industry.

Scope of the study of digital transformation assignment
The scope of the study has been kept clear and concise that summarizes the digital transformations in the pharmaceutical industry specifically focusing on Pfizer and what more progress it requires to transform itself as a digitally mature organization. It also reports on the current digital ventures by the organization and its impact on the end consumers and patients.

Discussion
Organizational background: As suggested by Mikulic (2019), the pharmaceutical industry is a growing industry with trillions of dollars of revenue on worldwide. The industry's efficiency can be understood from the prices consumers pay for purchasing their drugs. Digital transformation has enabled Pharmaceutical companies to evolve and deliver better services to end consumers and patients. One of such companies is Pfizer Inc. that has helped transformed the face of Pharma Industry. The company develops and produces medicines and vaccines for a wide range of medical disciplines. Currently, the company operates in 2 primary segments namely innovative health and essential health. According to Banker (2018), digital transformation efforts derive better opportunities and allows to take more holistic decisions. Pfizer has adopted digital transformations in the past few years by forming relationships with innovative partners and focusing on their global physical supply chain. According to Garcia & You (2015), the supply chain of the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most untapped areas which needs to be addressed for its growing complexity. Pfizer, in the year 2012 first moved its supply chain to cloud. With the changing landscape, Pfizer realized the opportunity of making its supply chain more visible in order to identify demand from anywhere in the world and deliver the products on time. Even when Pfizer has embraced digital transformation, it still needs to invest more in supply chain digitization in order to elevate themselves above competitors (Fassbender, 2019). The digital and traditional integration of the operations of an organization results in an effective transformation and stronghold in the market. Since digital technology is changing the highly regulated world of pharma and healthcare, supply chain is also an important part which must be addressed in order to get closer to the customers and enhance customer experience.

Value Proposition: Pfizer has invested for digital changes in the organization to gain better visibility of the highly regulated industry. However, in order to fully embrace technologies like tracking and managing the supply chain, Pfizer will require to pass the hurdle of receiving approval from regulatory agencies to maintain patient privacy. The investments in supply chain digitization discussed in this digital transformation assignment will require to expand their cloud-based supply chain information system. This will require Pfizer to operate in emerging markets, but the issue lies in trials of paperwork and inconsistency of internet connection. These issues can be a big hurdle for the company if it wishes to focus on expanding the reach of supply chain digitization. The pharmaceutical industry is changing with each passing day as customer expectations are rising making it challenging for companies to bring innovation with respect to medicines, supply chain, global regulations, wearable technologies and use of internet of things. Global supply chain in the pharmaceutical industry is essential as it can achieve a greater success with decreased overhead cost and movement of different types of drugs across the supply chain to satisfy the demand of end consumers or patients. As evaluated by Pharmaceutical Commerce (2016), the global Pharmaceutical market has projected a growth at 6.3% CAGR by 2022. As mentioned earlier Pharma supply chains are highly regulated and can be complex as there are not many companies thriving for gaining a good position for supply chain. Digital transformation in supply chain of Pfizer will help the company to better manage the supply of its medicines, maintain quality, and maintain overhead costs. This will allow them to gain real time data from the retail shops to the patients, collect data from internal sources, social media and third parties which could be collected together at one place.

The report of by Dell (2018) suggests that Unified data set will allow the company to connect their strategies with the outside world. Supply chains being the core artery of any business will allow to harmonize data across multiple supply chains and therefore it is highly beneficial for Pfizer to improve their reputational score among the pharmaceutical companies. The company can utilize digitized supply chain by identifying various customer wearable technologies such as sensor wearables that would automatically lead to embracing at and machine learning into the innovative wings of the company. At the same time, the use of technologies like telemedicine, advanced analytics, cloud services and inventing wireless medical devices will require regulatory approval which can be challenging but has the ability to facilitate new opportunities for Pfizer to transform its existing business models. Major capital investment in the pharmaceutical industry is to meet serialization mandates which means that regulatory compliances are required to be met in order to strengthen the supply chain. Pfizer will require to connect and build an efficient supply chain ecosystem.

Findings
The digital transformation of supply chain depends upon making more holistic approaches, receiving good data, automating processes and utilizing analytics. Pfizer is one of the well-recognized name in the pharmaceutical industry which has made its way towards digital transformation. The company has been operating in 175 markets with more than 800 different highly regulated products. However, their major transformation relies upon transforming their supply chain. Ageron, Benzidia & Bourlakis (2018) opine that Pharmaceutical supply chain is challenging because companies have to deliver medicines within a stipulated time and as per the requirements. It is mentioned in this study of digital transformation assignment that not many of the companies have transformed their supply chains due to the issues in managing a highly operative supply chain, issues during transit of medicines, internet connectivity and unavailability of medicines. Even when the company operates at a great scale, it still needs to improvise the process of their supply chain. Currently, the company faces the issues of managing its supply chain but innovative solutions like digitizing the inventory storage, changing the shipment process for cold storage medicines and digitizing the shipment visibility. The company operates at a large scale which requires them to deal with numerous supply chain personnel and manufacturing managers. Since this is challenging, the company has been facing the issue of getting real time visibility of their shipments to other countries, when the inspection processes transportation of shipments, haywire process of receiving payment details from core supply chain personnel and escalations due to multiple orderings. These issues can be critical in the long run and therefore digital transformation will help them to track their critical shipment without challenging any regulatory issues or customer privacy. The company can also add new products in order to provide better service to its customers. The implementation of technology will be beneficial for keeping data accuracy and quality, managing core supply chain personnel, boarding and monitoring of supply of the products to end consumers. Digital transformation can help the company to reduce their inventory carrying costs, lower transportation charges as well as result in return on investment. The well-maintained network of manufacturer partners and stakeholders of the company will allow it to perfectly harmonize their operations and access relevant data in a digital, innovative and user-friendly manner.

Analysis
The above discussion within this digital transformation assignment of the supply chain of Pfizer is critical as this will allow the company to better respond to the dynamics of pharmaceutical industry, the needs of its customers and the regulations required to bring innovation in the supply chain. It has been analyzed that the company operates in a highly complex and regulated infrastructure which has expressed its need to evolve in complexity. For instance, Prevnar-13 vaccine is one of the highly complex products of Pfizer that is used to prevent pneumococcal bacterial infection. The process of preparing this vaccine requires more than 1700 employees, 400 raw materials across 500 steps over 2.5 years (Vaccines, 2019). Since the process is so complex, the company had to master it in order to make it available when required. Currently, the business needs of the company are to transform its supply chain completely but most likely leveraging cloud technology is the most effective. Is also been analyzed that the highly orchestrated supply chain network of Pfizer required to sync with their supply chain partners as well as their IT systems. The company is advised to streamline its infrastructure by making fewer shipments rather than multiple batches of products. The use of Analytics can be transformational to generate significant cost savings. The use of Internet of Things technology can be extremely beneficial to streamline the supply chain, manage supply chain partners, meet regulatory compliance and ensure patient safety. However, all these digitally equipped transformations like cold chain supply chain and installing sensors to monitor the condition of the shipments will allow Pfizer to gain massive competitive advantage over other pharmaceutical companies.

Conclusion
The above analysis initiated in this digital transformation assignment regarding digital transformation of the supply chain system even with its complexities can be concluded by stating that supply chain management although is critical but can be extremely beneficial in terms of gaining competitive advantage. The pharmaceutical industry is transforming with the advent of digital transformation. Even when companies are slow in adapting to these changes, they have also been slow in understanding the needs of their customers. Therefore, it has given an opportunity for the big names in the industry to focus on providing the necessary requirements to its end consumers and patients. The value proposed for Pfizer is extremely transformational as it would allow the company to connect with the world and deep dive into identifying better opportunities for the betterment of the society.

Reference List
Ageron, B., Benzidia, S., & Bourlakis, M. (2018, January). Healthcare logistics and supply chain–issues and future challenges. Digital transformation assignment In Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 1-3). Taylor & Francis.

Banker, S. (2018). Pfizer Embraces Digitalization For In-Transit Visibility. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2018/10/18/pfizer-embraces-digitalization-for-in-transit-visibility/#330865582d38

Dell. (2018). Creating a Data-Driven Business in Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences. Retrieved from https://boomi.com/wp-content/uploads/Driven-Pharma-Executive-Brief.pdf

Fassbender, M. (2019). Pfizer, Biogen-led blockchain project demonstrates proof-of-concept in pursuit of a better supply chain. Retrieved from https://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Article/2019/08/14/Clinical-Supply-Blockchain-Working-Group-led-by-Pfizer-and-Biogen-completes-proof-of-concept-project

Garcia, D. J., & You, F. (2015). Supply chain design and optimization: Challenges and opportunities. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 81, 153-170.

Kemppainen, P. (2017). Pharma Digitalisation: Challenges and opportunities in transforming the pharma industry. Retrieved from https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/article/51733/pharma-digitalisation-challenges/

Lu, T. (2017). Pfizer’s digital supply chain transformation: innovation or necessity? Retrieved from https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/pfizers-digital-supply-chain-transformation-innovation-or-necessity/

Mikulic, M. (2019). Global Pharmaceutical Industry - Statistics & Facts. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/topics/1764/global-pharmaceutical-industry/

Pharmaceutical Commerce. (2016). Global pharma market will reach $1.12 trillion in 2022. Retrieved from https://pharmaceuticalcommerce.com/business-and-finance/global-pharma-market-will-reach-1-12-trillion-2022/

Statista. (2019). DIGITAL ECONOMY COMPASS 2019. Retrieved from https://static2.statista.com/download/pdf/DigitalEconomyCompass2019.pdf

Vaccines. (2019). Digital transformation assignment FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PREVNAR 13 FOR PEDIATRIC USE. Retrieved from https://www.pfizer.com/files/health/vaccines/about_prevnar13_faqs.pdf