Europe’s Largest Biopharmaceutical Company Takes Big Leap into Procurement-Powered Business Performance with Zycus

BASEL, SWITZERLAND, SEP 04, 2014 – Zycus, a world leader in Procurement Technology solutions across the source-to-pay cycle, announced today that Actelion, Europe’s largest biopharmaceutical company, will adopt its complete suite of procurement performance and automation solutions, including Procure-to-Pay (P2P), eSourcing, Contract Management, Supplier Management, Financial Savings Management and Spend Analysis.

Headquartered in Allschwil/Basel, Switzerland, Actelion has more than 30 operating affiliates around the world, including the United States, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Switzerland and a number of EU countries. In June 2013 Actelion began a comprehensive evaluation of all major procurement suite providers, which included extensive piloting and testing phases, with the objective of equipping its enterprise sourcing and procurement organization with a state-of-the art, fully integrated set of procure-to-pay (P2P), sourcing, contracting, performance management and analysis solutions, “We had a very clear mandate to identify the best complete suite of procurement solutions fully compatible with our innovation driven science culture,” says Samuel Zbinden, Director, Head Global Procurement at Actelion. “From the very outset Zycus set the standard for integrated and flexible solutions, ease of use, preparedness and responsiveness. They also demonstrated real commitment to understanding and addressing Actelion’s needs and objectives, challenging us to examine and develop our requirements and being flexible in meeting our needs. In my 30 years of business I have not experienced such enthusiasm and commitment from a prospective partner to support and drive a process – not with aggression but with patience and competence. We feel confident that Zycus is the right partner to ensure we succeed with this critical initiative.”

“In my 30 years of business I have not experienced such enthusiasm and commitment from a prospective partner to support and drive a process – not with aggression but with patience and competence. We feel confident that Zycus is the right partner to ensure we succeed with this critical initiative.”

“Jerome Schieb, Information Systems and Process Manager, Global Procurement for Actelion, who was instrumental in driving the selection process, also highlights Zycus’ expertise with ERP integration, willingness to enable extensive hands-on testing and professionalism of the Zycus team as key reasons for Actelion’s selection. “We were impressed with the collaboration and rapid flow of information amongst the Zycus team members and with their ability to enable our procurement team to undertake hands-on testing of P2P and other solutions, which is something other competitors were unable to offer. In addition, Zycus demonstrated a willingness to incorporate our evolving requirements into its solutions development and enhancement roadmap. Zycus shows us that they have the most advanced solutions with the best people to support our implementation.”

Global implementation of the complete Zycus suite will begin immediately and will replace current solutions that had been implemented previously at Actelion.

“Actelion is at the forefront of a new phase in which procurement organisations cease to focus on fixing old problems instead they will be taking full advantage of the immense strategic potential in connecting procurement processes and ensuring that business intelligence flows seamlessly and flawlessly from the moment a requirement or need arises all the way through supplier performance management and payment,” says Aatish Dedhia, founder and CEO of Zycus. “The cultural fit between our companies is strong, and we are very much looking forward to supporting Actelion drive business performance and exploit the true power of fully integrated procurement information solutions.”