From hurricanes in the Southern US to conflict in Europe and the Middle East, global supply chains are increasingly at severe risk of disruption. For pharmaceutical organisations, ensuring supply chain speed and resilience is a non-negotiable goal. 

Steve Bonadio, Vice President of Global Marketing at supply chain and logistics visibility technology company Tive, believes that traceability driven by strong data collection and analysis is the key to unlocking the resilience that global pharma supply chains need. 

With 25 years of industry experience and a distinctive background that combines expertise as both an industry analyst and a revenue-driven growth marketer, Steve has a proven track record in building scalable marketing and go-to-market organisations. Before joining Tive in 2022, Steve led a global demand generation team that contributed to the rapid growth of Ivalua (enterprise procurement SaaS). He has also held senior positions at leading companies such as Oracle, Vidyo, and META Group (acquired by Gartner).

At this year’s LogiPharma 2024 event, we caught up with some of the pharmaceutical supply chain sector’s leading executives to learn more about them, their analysis of the trends shaping the industry, and how their organisations are responding to the challenges ahead. 

1. Would you be able to give me a brief introduction to your role and the company you work for?

I am the Vice President of Global Marketing at Tive, a global leader in supply chain and logistics visibility technology. 

Inside LogiPharma 2024

2. What is the value of events like LogiPharma 2024? How important is this conference in the supply chain pharma calendar?

LogiPharma U.S.—and its sister show in France each spring—are among the top conferences that Tive invests in year-after-year. 

The quality of the audience, excellent conversations with customers and prospects, and the intimacy of the event really stand out.

3. Is there anything that makes this event stand out for you? How is it different from others you’ve attended?

The audience with whom we’re trying to connect is well represented at LogiPharma. Specifically, this means senior-level supply chain and logistics executives from the major life sciences and pharmaceuticals companies. 

Not only do we get to spend valuable face time with our customers and prospects at LogiPharma, but we also get to meet professionals from new companies that are actively seeking a complete chain solution which enables them to monitor their shipments in real time, achieve compliance, reduce excursions and waste, and ensure product quality and patient safety. 

Additionally, unlike a major tradeshow exhibition where the show floor seems to go on forever, the intimacy of LogiPharma and the focused agenda truly stand out to us.

4. What are the biggest takeaways from this year’s LogiPharma for you?

The need for accurate, real-time data and insights came across loud and clear—from all corners of the industry. 

As life sciences and pharma leaders move from passive shipment tracking or legacy EDL solutions to real-time location and condition tracking, the opportunity to collect multimodal shipment data in real-time is unlocking tremendous ground truth insights that can be used to drive supply chain efficiencies—optimising lanes and routes, minimising dwell time, understanding cargo theft danger zones, and more.

The global pharma supply chain

5. Given the backdrop of the global disruption over the past few years (COVID, wars, inflation etc), how would you sum up where the pharmaceutical supply chain space finds itself today? 

From the perspective of traceability and visibility into the location and conditions of life-saving pharmaceuticals (e.g., vaccines, drugs, cell & gene therapies), many pharmaceutical companies still rely on legacy passive loggers to monitor their shipments. 

Passive loggers may check the box for creating an audit trail and maintaining cold chain compliance, but they are often cumbersome to work with. For example, the receiver of a shipment needs to manually extract the data via USB, transfer and review the data, and email/fax the data to the shipper for review. 

This is inefficient at best, and at worst doesn’t provide the opportunity to intervene—in real time—should a shipment exceed certain thresholds (e.g., temperature, humidity).

On the other hand, our research reveals that real-time visibility is no longer just a value-added service—it’s become a fundamental customer expectation. 

The adoption of real-time IoT trackers and devices has more than doubled over the past year—from 25% in 2023 to 53% in 2024—and Tive continues to experience tremendous growth as a result of customer demand to unlock ground truth operational data and drive best-in-class supply chains. 

6. What do you feel are the biggest lessons supply chains have learnt over the past few years and how well equipped is the modern day supply chain now to deal with ‘black swan’ events like the ones we’ve seen recently?

Modern supply chains require strategic vision, a focus on operational efficiency and flawless execution, and robust technology infrastructure. Together, these requirements are essential to building resilient supply chains—and black swan events like COVID-19 have illustrated beyond a doubt that resilience is key.

From Tive’s perspective, resilience is knowing where your shipments are in real time, seeing what condition they are in, and having the ability to act immediately when excursions occur. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tive was right there in the thick of things—driving successful vaccine deliveries for the Australian government and others, which this customer story dives into.

Sustainability in the supply chain 

7. Sustainability is an important item on most Chief Supply Chain Officers’ agenda. Amid government legislation and changing customer demands, is a sustainable supply chain a non-negotiable in today’s world?

Absolutely, yes. At Tive, sustainability starts with visibility. All the major life sciences and pharmaceutical companies have set targets to reduce the Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that occur in their supply chains. Achieving a more sustainable supply chain requires anticipating and adapting to unforeseen events, and Tive ensures that our solutions provide access to the end-to-end data visibility and real-time alerts shippers need—while also protecting the environment.

Tive actively supports sustainability initiatives on millions of shipments moved by all modes of transportation—around the globe. We help our customers reduce their Scope 3 emissions by:

• Providing traceability: Tive trackers help customers know the exact location and condition of their shipments at all times, which helps minimise transit time—and carbon emissions generated.
• Saving shipments: Real-time alerts enable shippers to mitigate disruptions—or avoid them altogether—reducing transit time and preventing waste.
• Reducing truck “dwell” times: When a container is detained or delayed, Tive helps shippers quickly detect and leverage strategic appointment scheduling—decreasing idling time.
• Eliminating empty miles: Identify round-trip opportunities across all lanes—creating more efficient routes.
• Tracking damaging events: Documentation and real-time reporting capabilities enable Tive customers to quantify the impact of real-time visibility in relation to reducing damages, spoilage, and waste.

8. In what ways have you incorporated sustainability into operations?

Tive’s Green Program is the heart of our sustainability strategy. Introduced in 2021, the Green Program is built on a simple yet powerful idea: incentivise customers and receivers (those receiving trackers at the completion of a shipment) to return used Tive trackers to us instead of discarding them. 

We encourage customers and receivers to gather trackers post shipment; once they have a full box, we send them a prepaid shipping label—facilitating a simple return process.

This initiative serves a couple of key purposes. First, it significantly reduces electronic waste by renewing and recirculating trackers, extending their useful life, and reducing the demand for new device production. Second, this program provides an opportunity for customers to be part of a sustainable cycle—which helps them contribute to their own ESG initiatives and priorities.

What the future holds for the pharmaceutical supply chain

9. How can the pharmaceutical supply chain industry take that next step and what strategies can it implement to push the industry forward even further?

From a shipment tracking and supply chain visibility perspective, as mentioned earlier, the shift from passive logging to real-time tracking—and the ground truth insights that it enables—will have a profound impact on how vaccines, drugs, and therapeutics are delivered to both end users (e.g., retailers, hospitals/clinics, CROs) as well as direct to consumer. 

10. Are there any exciting projects that you’re currently working on or any past ones that you’re proud of that you’d like to highlight?

We are particularly excited about the success our customers are achieving with Tive’s solutions. In the first half of 2024, we achieved a customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 48 and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) resolution of 96%, with less than 1% revenue churn in Q2 2024—highlighting Tive’s deep commitment to its global customers.

11. Is it an exciting time for pharmaceutical supply chain management? 

The sky’s the limit. The amazing innovations being developed by life sciences and pharmaceutical companies—new treatments and drugs, cell and gene therapies, etc.—can only be truly harnessed to drive positive patient outcomes when the rest of the pharma supply chain collaborates and joins to drive innovations of their own. 

At Tive, we’re developing modern new products to stay abreast of the innovations in the industry as a whole—and we couldn’t imagine a more important cause or better place to be.