Labialfarma | SAP S/4HANA

Labialfarma modernises pharmaceutical production

The family-run Portuguese company has taken a giant step into the future to meet the challenges of the pharmaceutical sector. The solution was SAP S/4HANA, implemented by SEIDOR, in the midst of the pandemic.

Labialfarma is a Portuguese company in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industry, founded in 1981, with manufacturing facilities in the centre of Portugal, in Mortágua. As a Food Biology and Pharmaceutical Laboratory, Labialfarma designs and produces medicines and food supplements, developing innovative concepts in the manufacture and packaging of the products produced, in response to the constant challenges facing the Pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical Industry.

Portuguese and family-owned company

A distinctive facet of Labialfarma is that it is a family business, currently run by members of the second and third generations. Miguel Ferraz, Labialfarma's Managing Director and a member of the third generation of the family to control the company's destiny, tells us how it came to be: "Labialfarma's history begins in 1981, when my grandfather, José Ferraz, who had returned from Angola, opened a practice in Portugal and began to need his own products". In 1994, Amílcar Ferraz, the founder's son, joined the company, and in 2000 he acquired the entire share capital.

Successful implementation at the peak of the pandemic

The modernisation journey with the support of the SAP S/4HANA solution began with the entry of the third generation into the company's management at the end of 2018. "It was then that we gave Labialfarma the impetus to modernise and computerise, opting for SAP solutions," explains Miguel Ferraz. A journey that was made more difficult by the arrival of the pandemic, adds Anaísa Pires, the company's Production Director: "We started implementing the SAP system in January 2021, at the height of the pandemic, with all kinds of restrictions, particularly on the movement of people. But between Labialfarma, SEIDOR and SAP, we made a great joint effort and were able to achieve a good result."

The success of the implementation generated clear benefits for Labialfarma, as Anaísa Pires emphasises: "the main benefits of the SAP implementation are clearly the simplification and elimination of bureaucratic processes, greater traceability and more immediate and effective control over our processes". The results were immediate. "We were able to look at the processes we have and the data that the SAP S/4HANA solution provides with greater confidence and security," she says.

Better control and visibility

The benefits are also underlined by Mário Amaral, Deputy General Manager of SEIDOR, a technology multinational of Spanish origin with a business unit specialising in end-to-end services in the SAP ecosystem, who was responsible for implementing the SAP solution at Labialfarma. "As a pharmaceutical company, Labialfarma has a specific set of requirements and demands in terms of the systems and information that have to be made available," says the SEIDOR manager. In this context, "the SAP solution brought a much greater level of integration and visibility over the stages of the production process," he emphasises.

Regarding the project, Mário Amaral praises the excellent three-way relationship between Labialfarma, SEIDOR and SAP. "This work begins with the task of proving to the client that the SAP solution is suitable for a medium-sized company in a sector with its own complexities, such as the pharmaceutical sector," he says. In the implementation itself, the SEIDOR Director emphasises the adoption of SAP EWS (Extended Warehouse Management), an integrated and highly flexible warehouse management system. "At Labialfarma, warehouse management is specific because it is procedural. In other words, it's a process of consequence throughout the logistics chain," he explains.

Intelligence is the future

Looking to the future, Miguel Ferraz, Labialfarma's Managing Director, believes that SAP will play a role in Labialfarma's growth, "namely in digitalisation and the transformation and use of data". In his view, "in the future we will connect data to Artificial Intelligence tools, which will help us to analyse and identify trends in order to make faster decisions and achieve better results".

From SEIDOR's Mário Amaral's perspective, "SAP, for all the right reasons, will continue to be our partner par excellence in all areas". For innovation, as the head of SEIDOR said. And for efficiency, as Labialfarma's Managing Director emphasised.