“Good quality supplier data is the backbone of procurement,” says Lana Radosevic, Global Supplier Lead in Procurement Excellence at Astellas
In her role in Procurement Excellence, Lana Radosevic’s primary focus is on improving supplier data quality across all SaaS systems used by Global Procurement and integrating supplier data.
In the latest episode of the PharmaSource podcast she explains the importance of accurate supplier data and shares her experience in driving improvements.
“Data management and analytics are becoming increasingly important in the biotech world. I believe they play a significant role in the success of any organisation’s Procurement function.”
“Having accurate and comprehensive information about our current suppliers is critical for procurement decisions. These decisions can range from cost savings and category strategies to determining which suppliers we want to continue working with.”
Driving Procurement Excellence across Five Tech Platforms
Lana’s work involves five different, interconnected platforms that Astellas uses for risk, category management, spend analytics, supplier relationship management, and ERP.
“The data is captured in various systems for different purposes, and there’s some interrelation,” she explains. “I am trying to understand each one and see how we can better utilize, cleanse, and clean the data system. We’re also implementing processes to ensure we get clean data moving forward, rather than falling into the ‘junk in, junk out’ trap.”
To drive operational excellence, Lana collaborate with teams across Master Data Management, Legal, Procurement Operations, and Change Management.
Lana explains some of the key technology platforms they use.
“A key system for us is SAP, our ERP system, and Arriba, which we use to generate requisitions and POs. We also use a SaaS system for spend analytics, which transfers information from SAP related to invoice data. This allows us to generate reports related to invoice spend and relevant supplier information, such as different commodity codes or category purchasing categories.”
“We use another SaaS platform for updating category strategies and tracking sourcing initiatives. We also use Vizibl, a supplier relationship management platform, where we focus on uploading information relevant to our key suppliers. These suppliers are defined as strategic or preferred based on our supplier relationship management, segmentation, and evaluation. We also have a system for risk management.”
While it is a complex network of platforms to navigate Lana believes“ all these systems are absolutely useful and necessary”.
“The challenge is that there are limitations what we can do in each system, and even with how things have been configured since we started using them. Some systems may actually have more capabilities, but they just haven’t been configured for us. These are the challenges we’re facing right now as we strive for continuous improvement. My focus is more on process improvements rather than system improvements.”
The Journey to Better Supplier Data
Lana’s approach to improving supplier data quality is strategic and resourceful. She refers to the Pareto Principle, where the top 20% of suppliers account for 80% of spend.
“You cannot cleanse it all. With limited resources, you want to tackle the ones that are high spend, and strategic and preferred. That’s how I’ve been strategically approaching how we tackle all these cleansing efforts,” she explains.
“We don’t have the bandwidth to do it all, but we don’t necessarily need to. If we focus on high spend with almost everything we do, we’re going to make a much bigger impact than if we just tried to tackle random ones all over. With limited resources, that is the best approach. Of course, if we can get artificial intelligence to help with this, which I think we will at some point, that’s a different story.”
Capturing Sustainability Impact of Suppliers
While financial metrics, typically tracked in your ERP, are easier to track, capturing the sustainability impact of suppliers presents a unique challenge. Astellas, as an organisation, has committed to achieving net zero by 2050. “At Astellas, our main focus right now is sustainability, which also includes risk factors,” Lana shares.
“Scope three emissions from the suppliers are such a critical factor in getting there. It is going to be important to procurement to be able to break that down and to be able to track that. We are trying to prioritize this in relation to the supply chain with a focus on packaging, raw materials. We want to get innovation ideas from suppliers for how to improve our sustainability as well as moving to renewable energy.”
Looking Ahead: The Role of Data Science
Going forward, Lana is interested in learning more about data science. “I would like to learn more about data science by attending an internal course that will be offered multiple times after its initiation this month. I think that acquiring knowledge in this area would improve my competence in my current role and be useful in general.” This reflects Lana’s commitment to continuous learning and adapting to the evolving landscape of procurement.
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