Perspectives
Our consultants, who average 15 years business and consulting experience, are sought-after thought leaders.
Most Recent Publications
A Tangled Web
In the March 2012 issue of Quality Progress, Clarkston’s Jim Dougherty and Wylene Lengel discuss SaaS in a regulated environment.
Serialization in a CMO Environment
Faced with pending regulations, product diversion, and drug counterfeiting, pharmaceutical manufacturers are exploring serialization as a means to not only prepare for future regulatory compliance, but also reap the business benefits as well. A complex undertaking to begin with, serialization is further complicated when a company relies on multiple vendors for packaging and logistics.
2012 Life Sciences Industry Outlook
2012 promises to be a year of new and different innovations from the Life Sciences industry as companies are forced to respond to unique and difficult challenges that have not previously been characteristic of this market yet have been looming in the background for the last decade.
2012 Consumer Products Industry Outlook
2012 will be a year of guarded growth for the Consumer Products (CP) industry. The economy, while continuing to show signs of a slow recovery, remains fragile and increasingly exposed to the risks associated with a global market. Consumers remain cautious in their spending, with purchase decisions dictated less by brand loyalty and more by cost and convenience. Technology continues to change how people shop, mandating that CP companies connect with shoppers through new media to drive advocacy.
SAP Bolsters Position as Distributor of Choice
As a leading distributor of fine wines, spirits, beers, and non-alcoholic beverages, The Charmer Sunbelt Group (CSG) faces complex challenges—from increased demands from wine and spirits suppliers to unique state and local laws and regional customer preferences. CSG decided to implement a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to help maintain and strengthen its position as the “Distributor of Choice” and bolster its highly effective, localized sales and distribution structure. Partnering with Clarkston Consulting, CSG responded with a strategy that addressed corporate-level needs while preserving and enhancing the advantages of local operations and addressing their unique business challenges.
Agribusiness Leader Readies for the Future
With Clarkston’s experience and partnership, Seneca Food’s disjointed system architecture has been replaced by an integrated SAP ERP platform that will support strategic, integrated solutions; respond to customer and regulatory needs; and allow additional growth. It also establishes a single set of core business processes across all plants and distribution facilities that are scalable, efficient and based on proven industry best practices.
SAP Delivers Business Value for Commercial Product Launch
Auxilium teamed with Clarkston for this initiative because of Clarkston’s extensive knowledge of the biotech industry and its compliance and regulations challenges, as well as Clarkston’s SAP business solution and technology expertise. Clarkston was also a good fit because of its experience in helping emerging companies that are in varying stages of development.
Do You Want Jobs or Do You Want Productivity?
While the U.S. stock market is performing like a roller coaster, many Americans are wondering if we really are recovering from the recession. After all, the unemployed and underemployed
labor force continues to grow. While economists may disagree on the amount, a sustained recovery requires anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000 jobs to be created each month. Unfortunately, we severely underachieved these targets by only adding an average of 83,000 jobs for the five months ending in October 2011.
Strategic Outsourcing: It’s Time for an “Outside-In” Approach
Today, every large corporation has more than one supply chain, disruptions threaten the flow of goods and services at every hand-off, and social networks can radically change “perfect” demand plans at internet speed. As such, we believe it’s time for an expanded set of decision-making tools and a fundamentally different mindset, from the initial outsourcing decision to the final supplier selection and service level agreement (SLA).
ERP Implementation: Building a Foundation for Growth
The proliferation of systems over the years, including reliance on departmental excel spreadsheets, had resulted in redundant systems with silos of information in functional areas as well as regionally in the United States, Mexico, Canada and The Netherlands. This created an environment where Banner management could not readily access or leverage key information.
