PCI Pharma Services – RFI Development

Overview

PCI Pharma Services is a global, integrated Contract Development & Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO) delivering a comprehensive range of pharmaceutical services from the earliest stages of development through to commercial launch and beyond.

Situation

Not surprisingly, the PCI Commercial Division receives many client Requests for Information / Ǫuotes / Proposals (RFIs) asking for crucial project-related information from an initial design to detailed specifications. However, with multiple sites across the world – many of which have become part of the PCI family via the company’s successful acquisition strategy – there were many different methods and systems for dealing with them.

Always keen to maximise digital opportunities to streamline business processes, PCI’s Senior Director for Global Proposals in the Commercial Division, Jacob Wilson, wanted a customised element of the company’s Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System offering a standardised process for entering the RFIs, eliminating duplication and ensuring information was accessible across the whole organisation.

Solution

Mint was asked to help develop the solution and the first step in the task was to pare down and consolidate the data requirements, while retaining enough scope to cover any Commercial RFIs. Mint then produced a logical screen flow which enabled the sales team to enter the information required with conditional show/hide logic depending on the nature of project (i.e., if they selected yes to ‘Cold Chain Storage’ for example, then (and only then), would the additional relevant questions to that requirement be displayed).

Effectively, Mint had created a ‘back door system’ to functionally build an opportunity within Salesforce. The flow uses the RFI information to build an opportunity which the Business Development team can then track through its lifecycle.

The solution also populates associated SKU and Materials records with relevant information and a button added to the opportunity uses a macro which allows all the information to be exported to quoting templates. Mint has even included a function to clone existing Materials records to save the time it would take to re-key that information in.

Results

As an innovative and progressive company, PCI is often pushing the bounds of what systems can achieve – and feel that Mint is the partner who can help them take things to the next level.

Jacob Wilson explained: ‘Mint are such experts in their field – they really understand the data structure within Salesforce and combine this with their knowledge of our internal processes. Their creativity enables us to turn concepts into reality – in this case by reducing the time it takes to input RFIs with the additional benefits of linking to our quoting systems. It all enables us to track and trend internally more effectively, which also means better forecasting. There is no doubt they have come up with a very good solution.’

“Mint are such experts in their field. They really understand the Salesforce data structure and combine this with knowledge of our internal business processes!”

Jacob Wilson
Sr. Director, Global Proposals – Commercial Services