Case: Specific Pharma
We saved DKK 500,000 in one click.
“Inact Now tells us so much about our products, customers, and suppliers; it makes a huge difference”
– Interview with Project Manager at Specific Pharma A/S, Josefine S. Christensen
Highlights
The challenge
Specific Pharma was dealing with increasing excess inventory and products with short shelf life, where purchasing and inventory decisions were too often based on gut feeling. At the same time, growth and changes in the market made it harder to meet customer needs and manage the business with precision.
The solution
Together with Inact, they divided their assortment into three focus areas and set clear targets for, among other things, days of supply and service level. With just a few key reports, they gained a much sharper foundation for understanding sales, forecasts, and purchasing needs — enabling more precise actions.
The result
Specific Pharma saved DKK 500,000 by canceling old backorders that they likely would not have identified in time. At the same time, they achieved a healthier inventory, a stronger decision-making foundation, and a more efficient daily workflow with less manual work and direct access to updated reports.
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From gut feeling to more deliberate purchasing
At Specific Pharma, the ambition was clear: minimize bottom-line losses and build a healthier business.
But in practice, they faced several challenges.
Inventory had grown. Excess stock was increasing. And at the same time, they were working with products that had very short shelf lives. This meant the window to sell them could close before they had time to react — leading to significant losses.
Specific Pharma knew their current way of making decisions was no longer sufficient.
"But we just felt that we could no longer make decisions based on gut feeling."
Josefine S. Christensen
Project Manager
The company had grown rapidly. The market had changed. Competitors had moved. And several times, they experienced that they didn’t hit customer needs accurately — or failed to bid competitively in tenders due to lack of insight.
They needed something more precise that could keep up with the development.
Not just more data.
But a tool that could help them manage and differentiate their inventory — ensuring they had the right products in stock when they were actually needed.
Three focus areas made the work concrete
Together with Inact, Specific Pharma began working more focused with their assortment.
They divided products into three focus areas:
sellable, minimize loss, and avoid loss.
In practice, three reports became central to Josefine’s daily work:
- What they had sold over the past three months
- How sales were developing
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How many days of supply they had based on forecast
These reports became the foundation for much of the work.
As she describes it, the solution was actually quite simple — but the impact was significant.
One click saved them DKK 500,000
The new approach quickly made it clear that they did not need to continue purchasing in the same way as before.
This led to a very concrete gain:
Using a report they had built together with Inact, they identified a number of old backorders that could easily have gone unnoticed. With a single click, they were able to cancel them.
The saving amounted to DKK 500,000.
This is perhaps the best example of what changed at Specific Pharma:
They didn’t just gain visibility.
They started acting earlier and with more precision.
"This tool, which can teach us about our assortment, our products, suppliers and the distribution of our business, has made a huge difference."
Josefine S. Christensen
Project Manager
The new visibility also meant that while the overall inventory value remained similar, the composition of the inventory had become much healthier.
The ABC distribution had changed.
And in practice, this meant their inventory was now creating more value than before.
In other words:
They were generating more profit from the inventory they already had.
More visibility and less manual work
The impact was also felt in daily operations.
Previously, data had to be pulled from multiple systems, combined in Excel, and shared manually. This was time-consuming, created extra work, and made it harder to react quickly.
Now, updated reports can be accessed continuously and used directly in daily operations. This also applies to the quality manager, who can now independently pull an updated report on quarantined products every day.
This doesn’t just save time.
It also makes decisions less dependent on individuals and manual processes.
In this way, Specific Pharma moved from managing inventory based on intuition and firefighting to working systematically with what the products actually require — and what the business truly needs.
About Specific Pharma A/S
Specific Pharma A/S was established in 2010 and specializes in supplying unlicensed medicines for special purposes such as clinical trials and shortages. Today, Specific Pharma A/S is the largest supplier of unlicensed medicines in the entire Nordic region.
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