Cytiva: Advancing future therapeutics from discovery to delivery by digitalizing ordering processes and transactions
A novel discovery for optimizing B2B processes
In the fast-growing biopharmaceutical industry, Cytiva embraced new ways of working on SAP Business Network, shoring up the company’s capability to solve complex healthcare challenges through B2B automation. By converting from manual order intake processes to digital ordering channels, Cytiva provides an optimal B2B buying experience for its customers.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Life sciences | Marlborough, Massachusetts | 15,000 employees |
increase in order volume over the last three years.
buyers integrated on SAP Business Network.
of all B2B transactions automated.
eBusiness Solutions Leader, Cytiva
Enhancing its capacity to accelerate the impact of tomorrow’s science
Cytiva is a global biotechnology leader dedicated to helping the biopharmaceutical industry discover and commercialize the next generation of therapeutics. Part of Danaher Corporation, a global science and technology giant, Cytiva provides technical expertise and a broad portfolio of tools, technologies, and services for developing, manufacturing, and delivering transformative medicines to patients.
As a recognized expert in antibody purification technology, Cytiva has a 60-year track record in the biopharmaceutical industry. The company is present in 41 countries, operating 36 manufacturing plants and 23 R&D innovation centers around the world. Using its scientific knowledge and technical expertise, the company helps biomanufacturers increase speed to market, reduce costs, and improve productivity.
As Cytiva builds a culture of sustainability across the business, it has committed to leading with eco-design and product transparency while accelerating decarbonization across the value chain for customers, plants, and suppliers.
Focused on its mission to advance and accelerate therapeutics for people that need them, Cytiva sought to simplify how the biopharmaceutical industry—including researchers, biopharmaceutical companies, and drug manufacturers—interacts and transacts with it. As part of an organization-wide digital transformation, Cytiva prioritized collaborating with large and global strategic accounts, facilitating supply chain visibility, and providing more information to customers.
Helping solve complex healthcare challenges through B2B automation
Because Cytiva is involved across every stage of drug development from discovery to delivery, the company made the strategic decision to centralize B2B transactions on SAP Business Network. As a supplier, the move would allow it to digitalize the order-to-cash cycle on one advanced trading platform in the cloud.
The network enables the automation of indirect and direct spend with customers. This allows Cytiva to streamline customer processes from ordering to invoicing by exchanging documents such as purchase orders, order confirmations, shipping notifications, and invoices electronically through the network.
On SAP Business Network, there’s more control over the transaction, and the network provides better visibility into order processing steps. As well as offering simplification and efficiency for its business, transacting on SAP Business Network makes it easier for its customers to do business with the company. And customers also benefit from better insight into their supply chain.
Martin B. Heikens, eBusiness solutions leader at Cytiva, comments, “SAP Business Network serves as a self-serve space for us to integrate with customers, speeding up this critical process. In fact, customer onboarding time has decreased significantly, and we’re seeing a trend toward standardization, which is greatly increasing transactional efficiency.”
eBusiness Solutions Leader, Cytiva
Reshaping B2B interactions to support life-changing therapy development
Cytiva believes that with the right setup and established business rules on both the buyer and supplier side, SAP Business Network can drive efficiencies and speed in the transactional space, resulting in better experiences and cost reduction for both parties.
Since it became part of SAP Business Network, Cytiva has integrated with more than 100 buyers, smoothing business interactions with touchless transactions and tripling order volumes over the past three years. By automating purchase orders, order confirmations, invoices, and shipping notifications, the company has reduced manual interactions and accelerated processing time. There’s also improved data quality, and with all B2B transactions visible in the same centralized location, its customers have benefited from improved insight into their supply chains. It also supports the company’s sustainability initiatives, particularly with paperless invoicing.
Greater collaboration between buyers and Cytiva is another upside of transacting on SAP Business Network. This has resulted in higher-quality purchase order data and enhanced processing automation. Heikens comments, “For direct spend, we work closely with the customer to make sure that the purchase information records they hold of our products are correctly registered. This avoids any misalignment in data points and makes purchase orders flow successfully. For indirect spend, Cytiva uses the PunchOut feature, supporting customers with level-two punchout catalogs on their e-procurement marketplaces.”
eBusiness Solutions Leader, Cytiva
Expecting increased automation demand on a global level
As Cytiva has acquired significant knowledge and experience from using the SAP Ariba Catalog and SAP Ariba Sourcing solutions for over 20 years, it is now helping buyers maximize value from the network. Automation now drives close to 50% of company’s transactions, and that number is set to grow with ongoing customer integration into SAP Business Network.
SAP Business Network helps Cytiva streamline operations with strategic customers by enabling order automation and improving on-time delivery. It enhances supply chain visibility and transparency throughout the procurement process, from order placement to delivery, and supports more timely payments—ultimately boosting cash flow.
The company is also highly engaged in the future road map of technology development and enhancements for SAP Business Network.