“Digital collaboration is a competitive advantage for everyone — for CDMOs and CMOs, it’s not a question of if you’re going to do it, it’s when. So how do you get ready for it?”
At CDMO Live Europe 2026, Sham Afzalpurkar, CEO of Collabrix, presented a standards-based, AI-enabled framework for connecting sponsor-CDMO networks at scale, arguing that custom point-to-point integrations are structurally unsustainable as external manufacturing portfolios grow.
The Problem With How Networks Are Connected Today
“Custom integration one-offs are not scalable. I wouldn’t invest in it, even if the sponsor is ready to pay for it. The only way to scale is industry standards.”
Most pharmaceutical companies manage external manufacturing relationships through a patchwork of bilateral integrations: custom-built connections between a sponsor’s enterprise systems and each individual CDMO. As networks expand, this model breaks down. Afzalpurkar identified five consequences of what he called fragmented digital collaboration: high integration cost, slow partner onboarding, significant data latency, limited supply chain visibility, and increased operational risk.
The root cause is variable digital maturity across the CDMO base. Partners range from manual, paper-based operations to fully digitized environments with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. A single integration architecture cannot serve both ends of that spectrum without heavy customization, which is why the current model does not scale.
A Standards-Based Framework: BioPhorum DISCO
The proposed solution centers on the BioPhorum Digital Integration Specification and Connectivity (DISCO) framework, which Afzalpurkar described as a set of standardized message structures and defined integration touchpoints for the sponsor-CMO relationship. The goal is a reusable digital architecture, not a project-by-project build.
The framework produces a Digital Integration Specification (DIS) that maps end-to-end supply chain collaboration process flows and defines the standard messages required for each touchpoint. These messages cover the full operational cycle, including purchase order collaboration, advanced shipping notifications, goods receipt, inventory visibility, and reconciliation. By agreeing on message formats at the industry level, sponsors can onboard new CMO partners using repeatable templates rather than custom builds.
Afzalpurkar challenged the audience with the framing question that closed his session: “Are we building integrations, or building an industry digital backbone?” The distinction matters, he argued, because only the latter creates compounding returns as networks grow.
Connecting Partners Across Maturity Levels
For partners with low or medium maturity, where data still flows via email, PDF, or Excel, an AI pre-processing engine extracts structured data from those documents and converts it into standard BioPhorum message formats before ingestion into the collaboration platform. This allows immediate collaboration without requiring the CMO to overhaul its systems.
For digitally mature partners, full ERP-to-ERP integration enables real-time, bidirectional data exchange with exception-based management workflows. Afzalpurkar noted that this model delivers lower long-term IT cost per partner connection, faster data flow, and improved data integrity. The two models are not mutually exclusive: a sponsor network will typically include both, and the architecture supports both running in parallel.
A case study from a medium-maturity CMO illustrated the practical approach. The initial scope covered 4 collaboration areas: goods receipt and consumption, advanced shipping notifications, inventory visibility and reconciliation, and purchase order collaboration. The implementation followed a 3-stage path:
- Short term: Documents uploaded to shared folders with standard naming conventions, eliminating email-based exchange through a single point of contact.
- Medium term: Automated ingestion of CMO data from existing reporting tools, reducing manual data entry.
- Long term: Full ERP-to-ERP integration for real-time, bidirectional flow across all transaction types.
