Driving Decision Intelligence in Clinical Supply Chains: A Joint Perspective from ZS and Aera Technology

Why We Wrote This

As consultants and technology providers immersed in supply chain transformation, we hear the same question from every life sciences client: How do we keep up with the rising complexity of clinical trials without endlessly adding people and inventory?

That challenge shaped our latest collaboration with a global biopharmaceutical leader’s clinical supply team. In this post, we reflect on how ZS and Aera Technology partnered to bring decision intelligence to life, sharing why it matters, how we deployed it in record time, and what others in the industry can learn from the journey.

From Data‑Rich to Decision‑Ready

The pharma industry is undergoing a period of change, where the number of trials has increased significantly over the last 2-3 years. To meet this increase in the number of trials, along with the complexity of modalities, clinical supply organizations significantly increase headcount to keep up with demand. While this growth reflects a thriving R&D pipeline, it has also surfaced a core tension: manual ways of working cannot keep pace with increasing demand volatility. In addition to the increased demand, there’s growing pressure to reduce waste — it’s very common for more than 50% of packed products to end up in the bins!

In our client’s case, it was clear that scaling through people alone was not sustainable. Together, ZS and Aera Technology proposed a new approach: scale decision intelligence and create a digital workforce.

For this pharma company, the decision intelligence journey began with a crucial first step: making the data usable. Like many global organizations, our client was rich in data but faced challenges with fragmentation and inconsistency. Clean, joinable data was essential. Before activating Aera, the decision intelligence agent, the clinical supply team launched a data excellence initiative that governed critical datasets to make them AI-ready. That investment laid the foundation for rapid progress.

How We Made It Real

Clarify the North Star. We began with a four-day “decision theater” workshop, bringing together business, IT, and quality leaders to align on the outcomes that matter most: improved productivity, reduced waste, and uninterrupted patient supply. These priorities grounded every decision that followed.

Launch fast. Within just three months, the first live Aera Skill was deployed, freeing analysts from time-intensive data wrangling and accelerating action. The team’s energy was palpable, marked by what are now fondly remembered as “Aera parties” — internal events that introduced the concept of a digital coworker and helped build engagement and excitement.

Demonstrate impact early. One of the first real-world wins came when a delay was flagged that could have resulted in rescheduling a cancer patient’s visit. Because the delay was flagged early to the right team, a decision was made to expedite the shipment, ensuring the patient stayed on protocol. Moments like this turned abstract value into tangible outcomes, boosting support across the organization.

Link every use case to data excellence. Every new skill was paired with KPIs for data quality, ensuring stewardship efforts directly contributed to business outcomes. That discipline created a virtuous cycle: better data enabling better decisions, which in turn fueled further investment in data maturity.

Five Takeaways for the Life‑Sciences Community

For organizations just beginning their decision intelligence journey, a few guiding principles emerged:

• Start small, scale quickly. A single high-impact skill can shift mindsets and spark enterprise-wide momentum.
• Treat data like a product. Data governance may not be glamorous, but it's the fuel for every intelligent decision.
• Blend expertise from day one. Pair business domain leaders with technologists and data stewards to co-create scalable solutions.
• Make change tangible — and fun. Live demos, peer testimonials, and yes, even parties, help bring transformation to life.
• Measure what matters. Link every skill to hard KPIs — cycle time, waste, stock-outs — so stakeholders can see value early and often.

What’s Next

This is just the beginning. With more Aera Skills rolling out later this year, our client expects to unlock further cost savings, increase efficiency, and — most importantly — protect every trial participant from preventable supply disruptions.

Decision intelligence isn’t just about automation. It’s about changing how decisions are made — introducing new workflows, data inputs, and organizational capabilities that drive faster, more confident action.

If you’re ready to explore what that could look like for your organization, connect with our joint ZS–Aera team. Let’s turn your data into decisions that move at the speed of science.