Much like today’s patients experience a journey across the healthcare spectrum of value-based care, so do prescribed products. From the supplier to the wholesaler and into the pharmacy, and downstream to the patients themselves, products follow a certain path and should be tracked accordingly along the way. Without a streamlined and joined system for tracking your products through channel sales and pipeline inventory, you are bound to encounter inaccuracies in tying the ultimate demand of the brand back to the shipment or sales.

As you’re reading this, you might be asking yourself, “Why do I need to monitor my channel sales and pipeline inventory to support my daily business needs?” The best way to answer this question is to examine the key expectations that many of today’s manufacturers have in relation to their data collection. Manufacturers need:

• Visibility into downstream sales and inventory
• Support of accrual forecasts
• Informed manufacturing planning, safety stock planning, financial planning, and demand management
• Complete Gross-to-net planning
• Complete Returns planning
• Comprehensive Loss-of-exclusivity planning
• Standardized, centralized reporting space to discuss data nuances, as well as the outputs and estimations
• Controlled and unified reporting to reduce incomplete inputs and discrepancies within the estimation process
• Improved accuracy and transparency for the finance team’s reporting

Based on extensive experience around understanding the importance of product visibility and total pipeline inventory, IQVIA recommends creating complements within datasets to align assets and better forecast to enhance supply chain clarity. IQVIA offers two key services, Market Visibility and Pipeline Inventory, to provide complete visibility into brand pipeline analytics

Market Visibility is defined as providing full visibility into blocked and blinded sales, where Pipeline Inventory is providing knowledge to estimate exposure of downstream inventories, estimate return rates, specify accrual rates on rebates, and determine promotional liabilities. Likewise, Market Visibility relates to following sales from the manufacturer into the trading partner down to the Distribution Center location and, ultimately, to the store, clinic, or outlet, and patient. There is no blinding or blocking. This methodology supplies a complete package of 100% visibility based on the projections being applied and the unblocking projections being created to downstream customers. This information is stored in the ValueTrak environment and is part of the module that provides the view of activity of the downstream blocked and blinded locations for the brand.

Dynamics and gaps impacting downstream sales and inventory

There are controllable and uncontrollable dynamics that impact downstream sales and inventory.

Supply chain dynamics could be related to:

• Product or lifecycle events, such as a new product launch, product loss of exclusivity, and product recalls
• Market events or changes in the competitive landscape that impact your product’s demand, such as a new product, launch, generic entry, new class, or other events that could change the demand curve or order patterns of a current brand
• Volatility due to differences in wholesaler/retailer inventory management practices. Perhaps there is a new ordering practice for managing inventory levels
• Inventory levels within a specific therapeutic category related to price point, stocking strategy or other benefits specific to the brand

• Not all sales data will match all the demand data. Sales downstream don’t always match what’s being reported on syndicated audits. This will create significant issues when attempting to conduct any estimations without proper corrections
• Downstream sales are blinded or unreported due to retailer restrictions
• Government and non-retail demand are not available
• Downstream inventory goes unreported by retailers
• There are large data gaps and inconsistencies between varying data sources

Providing visibility across the distribution chain

The tools and resources available through the combination of IQVIA data assets work together to create a seamless and more complete view into pipeline inventory, customer specific buying patterns, and better outcomes.

Trade distribution data is segmented into sales and inventory reporting that tracks distribution center sales and inventory monitoring with calculated days-on-hand and service levels. Key benefits to this offering also include ensuring product availability while preventing stockouts and minimizing returns. From a market visibility standpoint, weekly outlet-level sales views are available and include blinded and blocked outlets, as well as a complete view of downstream inventory and methodology. Key benefits to this offering also include accurate forecasts.

Case study evidence

A recent case study for a large pharmaceutical client that incorporated both the Market Visibility and the Pipeline Visibility platform provides insight into how transparency in data inputs supports sound estimation practices as well as the pros and cons of accurate pipeline inventory estimates. Click here for more on this case study.

Having complete and accurate pipeline and market visibility data is critical throughout the lifecycle of a product. Sound and repeatable processes that are built on complete and accurate data allow your accounting and commercial teams to completely align your assets and develop comprehensive forecasting. This intelligence will lead to greater business strength and the ability to deliver the right product at the right time and place to the right patients.

We dug in deeper to this topic at the recent Fusion 2021 conference; if you missed this year’s sessions, click here to watch them on demand!