Managing Shipment Variety

PC: What are the main challenges faced by shippers in the pharma industry?

Jain: The pharmaceutical industry is something which is actually very complex. It's not like other industries, and the reason is that pharmaceuticals are hazardous and non-hazardous. They are perishable and time sensitive. Many of them require temperature control. On top of that, we have shipments happening through air, shipments happening through like ocean FCL and LCL. We have over-the-road shipments. If you combine all of these, you are shipping to different countries, different regions of the world. All of them require different regulations, because it is something which is having an impact on the health, and people will consume these products. That's why following those regulations, while getting and ensuring that you are able to manage all these different complexities of hazardous, temperature control, and time-sensitive perishable cargo—has been very tough to do.

They had their teams who are managing these thousands of shipments, just being on top of them. What they have realized over time is that actually, because of the disruptions which have increased due to COVID, once-in-a-lifetime disruptions have been happening every few months since then. This has caused a lot of issues for pharmaceutical companies, because their cargo is time sensitive as well as perishable. It leads to a lot of opportunity loss, because if cargo doesn't reach the distributor on time, it cannot go on the shelves on time, and the products cannot make the revenue that they should have, so it leads to revenue loss. It also leads to loss of customer trust. If there is a disruption and you are not aware of it, the customer is aware that your cargo is impacted by the disruption, or in a normal sense, there are generally delays. You can't predict the delays very accurately, but when actual delays happen, your customer is aware of it. If they are asking it's already late, so you have to inform the customers in advance.

How do you do that for thousands of shipments? How do you ensure you are not taking any fines due to not meeting compliances? I'm talking about not just the regulatory compliances, but also the customs and carriers’ compliances. Management of so many things is very complex, and companies have been doing it on emails and spreadsheets. This is one of the biggest challenges that companies have been facing, especially in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The second category of problems would be that few companies have actually adapted a few systems to manage their entire cross-border shipments. However, they are facing implementation issues in that they're not able to get the objectives that they wanted to get. These are the two kinds of major categories and buckets of challenges faced by the shippers in the pharmaceutical industry, manufacturers in the pharmaceutical industry, as far as the supply chain is concerned.