Beyond ERP: How Apellis Scaled Global Planning
Apellis Pharmaceuticals was at a pivotal stage of growth, transitioning from managing a single commercial product to a multiproduct portfolio with expanding markets, complex manufacturing networks, and varying regulatory demands. The company’s global planning team faced increasing pressure to maintain supply continuity while adapting to commercial and operational realities.
Our Case Study
Empowering agile analytics-driven supply planning alongside SAP
Apellis Pharmaceuticals was at a pivotal stage of growth, transitioning from managing a single commercial product to a multiproduct portfolio with expanding markets, complex manufacturing networks, and varying regulatory demands. The company’s global planning team faced increasing pressure to maintain supply continuity while adapting to commercial and operational realities.
Apellis had been managing end-to-end supply planning using multiple Excel workbooks, supported by SAP as the inventory system of record. As the organization grew, this approach strained under the weight of increasing data volume, constant revisions across spreadsheets, and manual data entry demands. “We relied on a web of interconnected Excel sheets,” recalled Rachel Young, Associate Director of Global Supply Chain at Apellis. “Version control and data integrity were constant challenges, especially as our supply network expanded.”
Adopting a Fit-for-Purpose Planning Solution for Biopharma
Supply chain leadership at Apellis began investigating options to evolve planning beyond spreadsheets. They attended an industry webinar hosted by Converge Consulting where another biotech supply chain leader shared his success story using ABC-Plan’s Master Planner solution. Converge was already a long-time supply chain partner to Apellis having supported previous planning and S&OP initiatives.
“We often work with companies in the process of evaluating, selecting, and supporting the implementation of scalable industry-specific tools to help them meet critical business objectives,” said Todd Applebaum, Converge Consulting Managing Director. “Most emerging companies reach a point where spreadsheets alone become too cumbersome for global planning. When that happens, we recommend transitioning to a more robust digital planning platform, but without the disruption and cost of implementing full ERP capabilities.”
The webinar presentation and discussion closely paralleled Apellis’ own planning challenges at the time, prompting a closer look at the Master Planner software. Their decision to implement was driven by the solution’s fit-for-purpose design for the pharmaceutical environment.
“Unlike many other planning tools that require heavy customization, the Master Planner solution was ready for us to use out of the box,” said Young. “Its intuitive interface and built-in understanding of pharma workflows made it a natural fit for us.”
Implementation and rollout followed a structured and collaborative approach. Apellis began with a 30-day trial to test functionality, followed by a five-month implementation period. During this time, the team conducted parallel runs each month, comparing ABC-Plan’s results with the existing Excel-based models, to validate accuracy and build confidence in the new solution. ABC-Plan and Apellis held weekly implementation working sessions to prioritize features according to business impact, ensuring that all “must have” functionalities were complete before Go-Live.
Apellis requested several key functionality enhancements early on, including bulk data uploads from the ERP, time-phased safety stock planning, clear differentiation between financial and manufacturing costs, and an analytical dashboard that allowed planners to generate on-the-fly scenario comparisons. ABC-Plan supported these enhanced capabilities, which improved visibility, efficiency, and confidence across the planning function, and set the foundation for sustained adoption.
Enhancing the Capabilities of ERP
From the outset, Apellis approached ABC-Plan not as a replacement for SAP, but as a complement to it. SAP remained the enterprise system of record for inventory, procurement, and finance, while ABC-Plan became the agile layer for forward-looking scenario-based planning. Periodic data feeds directly from SAP ensured alignment between the two environments, creating a seamless connection between strategy and execution. Standard ERP systems such as SAP excel at transactional control, but lack critical industry-specific planning capabilities, such as incorporating regulatory and quality constraints, managing expiry-driven product lifecycles, and modeling manufacturing campaigns or variable CMO commitments. They also offer limited flexibility for rapid scenario-based decision-making.
June Osofsky, CEO of ABC-Plan, explained the design philosophy behind the Master Planner solution, “Many tools aim to replace Excel or replicate ERP, but our Master Planner was designed to coexist and complement systems like SAP. It gives pharmaceutical and biotech companies the industry-specific flexibility they need without the lengthy, costly customization that ERP-based planning often requires.” For Apellis, this coexistence allowed the company to retain the integrity of SAP while gaining the agility and transparency that Excel could no longer support.
As Apellis’ product portfolio and market reach has expanded, the ABC-Plan solution proved highly adaptable. New products, suppliers, and regions have been integrated with minimal configuration, and the platform’s visual interface provided intuitive insights into end-to-end supply chain dependencies. Feedback from Apellis helped shape future enhancements to the Master Planner software, including the development of a now-popular Analytics Add-on module, originally requested by the Apellis planning team.
Reflecting on the journey, Young noted, “The speed—and therefore the volume—of scenarios we can produce for our monthly S&OP process has at least doubled since adopting ABC-Plan. It’s changed how quickly we can make confident decisions.”
Apellis’ experience offers a guide for biopharma peers in similar transitions, Young said, including lessons such as investing in process redesign before system adoption, establishing strong data governance early, and aligning on a single cutover plan to drive adoption. “Go-Live is just the beginning. Continuous improvement and user engagement are what sustain the system’s value.”
Status Today
Today, Apellis manages the ABC-Plan software internally, relying on it as their end-to-end planning platform. The supply planners use it to drive monthly S&OP cycles, evaluate excess and obsolescence risk, and support quarterly financial reserve decisions. The platform’s analytics dashboards are used directly in leadership reviews, and data from ABC-Plan continues to inform both tactical and long-term capacity planning. The result is a planning process that is faster, more transparent, and better aligned across functions.
Looking ahead, they plan to explore ways to integrate artificial intelligence into the planning ecosystem. “As our organization evolves, we see significant opportunity to expand ABC-Plan’s capabilities alongside our business needs,” said Young. “AI will play an increasing role in enhancing accuracy, driving efficiency, and enabling more proactive decision-making.”
Apellis also continues to collaborate with Converge, now a division of Dark Horse Consulting Group on other supply chain initiatives.
Converge, in turn, provides planning and S&OP consulting services as ABC-Plan’s “go to” consulting firm, partnering across multiple biotech clients facing similar growth challenges and reinforcing a shared commitment to scalable, industry-focused planning solutions.
