Information System Strategy at Neelkanth

Drugs

Submitted To:
Prof. Divya Sharma

Submitted By:
Abhishek Sanghai– 19PGDM141
Nishtha Seth– 19PGDM168
Rishabh Kumar Agarwal– 19PGDM176
Sheetal Goel– 19PGDM187
Surbhi Jain– 19PGDM202
Vishant Chopra – 19PGDM207

1
Q1) What role do information systems play in the pharmaceutical industry?

Ans: Information systems used in pharmaceutical industry are termed as pharmaceutical

management information systems. This involves biomedical data, information and knowledge-
their storage, retrieval and optimal use for problem solving and decision-making process.

Molecule Discovery Pre-clinical testing Clinical testing

Value chain Approval from

authorities

Figure 1Drug molecule life cycle

 Molecule discovery: In pharmaceutical industry information systems are used to

characterize the drug molecules and to study their physical properties. Computer
software is used to design new molecules with help of structure activity relationships
database available. This reduces the time spent in discovery of salt for use.
 Pre-clinical testing: information systems are used to record various physical properties
and therapeutic values of molecules during pre-clinical studies.
 Clinical Study: Information systems are used to record data and create central database
for sharing data about a product in a company. This stage is very important as results
about effectiveness of molecule is obtained from here with help of bio statistician. This
data collected is used as an evidence to get approval from pharmaceutical industries.
 Value chain: Once a molecule or salt is approved, company decides to manufacture
and market the product. Here, information systems play an important role as they help
in planning production schedule and provide a real time demand from market. For
wholesalers, information systems have reduced ordering time, simplified storage
systems, made inventory management effective, increased surveillance of expired
products. All these functions of information systems have greatly increased profitability
of wholesalers and carrying and forwarding agents. For retailers, this has reduced turn
around time which thus increases their return on investments and prevents stock out
conditions. With ease of ordering and reduced time of ordering and processing retailers
receive their order same which further helps in increasing profits for retailers.

Thus, information systems play a very important role in pharmaceutical industry. Unlike other
industries, information systems play an important role from inception of products to its value
chain and reaching to customers.

2
Q2) How have information systems contributed to the growth of NDPL? How can NDPL
leverage information systems in future?

Ans: NDPL’s IT intervention began in 1993. The nature of NDPL’s business meant that it was
important for the company to properly manage information. Since the required level of
efficiency depended on an accurate and timely exchange of information from the retailers to
the distributor to the manufacturer any delay could result in a lot of business NDPL had
previously used a manual system but this process was associated with many problems as the
time required to do a job was significantly high, and billing errors occurred because of
excessive human intervention among numerous other problems.
Owing to the problems with the manual system, NDPL management decided to incorporate IT
solutions starting in 1998 Information sharing (IS) was introduced into the system all beginning
with the finance and sales and purchase division.
Through this the operational efficiency increased from 25% to 100% and the workforce
requirement fell from 400 to 100.
In 2002 a telephone system was used to replace manual order taking machine, this process
reduced the probability of errors, to reduce data redundancy and inconsistency the management
introduced servers and EasySol software. Manufacturers started interacting with NDPL
directly. The time from purchase orders to automatic bill generation time was reduced from 8
hours to 30 minutes. By 2009, computerization had been carried out in almost all departments.
NDPL was one of the early adapters of the cloud based solution, as cloud technology could
help an organisation to leverage computing resources without investing in the infrastructure.
But there were some problems with the cloud based system as the computing software provided
to NDPL had limited experience and couldn’t satisfy the requirements of pharmaceutical
industry. Also, there was a concern about Connectivity between parties involved and
availability of the software 24*7.
To leverage information system in future they can go for ERP solution rather than cloud
computing. If they want to use cloud computing, they must make sure that the platform shared
by the internet provider and cloud vendor are same so that no connectivity issue happens.