Transforming Clinical Supply Planning From Spreadsheets To Smart Forecasting

The customer’s supply management team had been relying on spreadsheet-based forecasting and planning, which had become a major bottleneck to growth. With a lean team juggling multiple responsibilities, the manual and fragmented processes limited the number of trials they could forecast accurately and efficiently.

As their clinical pipeline expanded, each new trial required separate spreadsheet forecasts, complicating the aggregation of demand and management of pooled supplies. Critical inputs — such as subject recruitment data from Interactive Response Technology (IRT) systems and real-time inventory levels — had to be manually entered across multiple spreadsheets.

This time-consuming process not only strained team resources but also introduced a high risk of transcription errors, potentially leading to costly stock-outs, inventory shortages, or wasteful overproduction.