Supply Chain Management: Mark Talens Of ParkourSC On How To Ensure Product Security in Collaboration with External Vendors and Partners

An Interview With David Leichner

David Leichner, CMO at Cybellum
Authority Magazine
Published in
11 min readJul 18, 2024

--

Transparent communication, collaboration and mutual understanding of each other’s win factors. It seems such an obvious best practice but where many functions and roles are involved amongst different partners and firewalls are up, this is anything but obvious and partners/vendors that understand each other’s business and critical success factors and collaborate will win. Often external vendors are just given the minimal information (like order, data and quantity), but if the external vendors are privy to context and intent the partnership can thrive and minimized risk on product quality and patient impact.

In an increasingly interconnected world, maintaining the availability & security of products while working with external partners and vendors presents a crucial challenge. How do product security managers ensure this vital aspect of supply chain management? What best practices, technologies, and strategies do they employ to guarantee the safety of products throughout their lifecycle, especially when these goods may pass through multiple external entities? As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Talens, Executive Vice President — Chief Strategy & Solutions Officer at ParkourSC.

Mark Talens is an accomplished supply chain management expert with extensive experience driving digital transformation and unlocking value through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies. He currently serves as the Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy & Solutions Officer at ParkourSC, a leading provider of digital supply chain operations solutions.

Prior to joining ParkourSC, Talens was an Associate Vice President of Global Supply Chain Operations at Organon, where he played a pivotal role as a founding member — overseeing the de-merger of Merck and Organon, including all global supply chain operations and system disentanglement across the two organizations. Previously, he held a global leadership role at Merck & Co., where he was responsible for deploying an advanced planning system.

Mark has a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering & Business Administration from Eindhoven University of Technology. He has been a pioneer in the digitization of the supply chain, connecting technology with business outcomes to generate immediate value for customers.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

I am originally from The Netherlands. I am married with two teenage children and grew up playing soccer and a myriad of other sports. After graduating with a Master Degree in Industrial Engineering & Management Science from Eindhoven University of Technology, I started working in 2000 for the Pharmaceutical Division of Akzo Nobel in the field of E-Procurement where I got my first taste for digital transformation.

I have always had an affection for working with different cultures, nationalities and seeing the world and from 2002 onwards I have been on a “journey around the globe.” I moved to The United States with my family for Organon International and then subsequently led the Supply Chain Organization for them in Brazil. In the following years I went through two mergers, with Schering Plough and then Merck Sharp & Dohme, where I led the Planning Integration between the two merged multinationals. After leading the Latin America Supply Chain Organization from Panama, I moved back to start transforming end-to-end planning with the global design and deployment of an Advanced Planning System. There I led the Global SCM Center Of Excellence and de-merged Organon from Merck Sharp & Dohme.

In my latest move to ParkourSC, I am back to Digital Transformation. I see incredible white space in enabling AI/ML Supply Chain capabilities in the Life Sciences community, and think there is a real opportunity to improve the wellbeing of patients across the world. I believe that ParkourSC is excellently positioned to be the premier enabler for Life Sciences companies to unlock value and improve patient lives.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in this field? We’d love to hear it.

I have always been entrepreneurial and someone keen to transform and disrupt the status quo. I am also a strong believer that my energy should be directed towards a positive outcome for humanity — and my choices in my career always reflected that.

I spent seven years in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where I saw first hand that access to even basic medical infrastructure is not a given and that large communities around the globe do not have access to medical care that enhances and prolongs life. Caring for people in all forms has driven me throughout my career and my choices in what professional roles to accept and aim for.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are working on something really exciting that is going to allow life sciences companies to navigate the dynamics of supply chains that impact the availability of medicine to patients across the globe.

We live in a world with ever-increasing globalized footprints and more and more complicated regulatory, political and economic environments — not to mention the increasing impact the climate has on availability and cost of product. Using AI/ML to support companies in making more holistic decisions will be a game changer for them and for patients — as product availability, security, and integrity become more challenging.

Ok, thank you. Let’s now move on to our main topic. Can you share a few reasons why it is so critical to ensure product availability & security in collaboration with external vendors, in today’s environment?

As we are a SaaS solutions company, I will take the viewpoint of what we are seeing with our customers:

  • Specifically in life sciences, complexity and capital requirements have moved supply chains to a mixture of both internal and external vendors, suppliers and partners, in all functional areas like logistics, manufacturing, IT and R&D.
  • These external vendors bring specific know-how and technical capabilities that the company can use to accelerate their time to market, reach certain product quality goals, or increase the reach to patients. Without these external vendors, a lot of drugs would not have been developed, or would not have made it to market.
  • I already mentioned the know-how, reach, and speed to market that external vendors will bring to bear — but specialization is also key here. Today, bringing a product from discovery to market can cost a billion dollars! Specialists like contract manufacturing or contract research organizations allow life science companies to lower their cost to development: allowing more compounds to make it through the pipeline.

The above points prove that in today’s world, companies cannot control the whole supply chain while remaining competitive and high-quality in required services and product offerings. While multiple partner organizations bring a set of unique challenges — which we will discuss as well — the larger point is that today, a successful company is defined by the level of collaboration and alignment it establishes with its ecosystem of partners and vendors.

How do emerging technologies like AI and machine learning augment the collaborative efforts between organizations and external vendors in securing the supply chain? Could you share a case where leveraging technology markedly enhanced product availability & security?

Emerging technologies like AI and ML play a crucial role in enhancing collaboration between organizations and external vendors to secure supply chains. They provide advanced capabilities for monitoring, predicting, and responding to potential disruptions and vulnerabilities. The below examples are illustrations of benefits that can be derived from using AI/ML:

  • Predictive Analytics — through assessment of risk factors and historical patterns — cross references multiple signals such as geopolitical events, natural disasters and markets and patient/diseases trends.
  • Real-Time Monitoring and Analytics creates a holistic overview to detect outliers and anomalies: creating great value for organizations. In the case of drug discovery, it also creates correlations between molecules and diseases that can help advance the discovery and synthesis of new medications and therapies.
  • Enhanced Communication and collaboration through the use of GenAI ensures that all stakeholders have simultaneously equal access to all information — and in specific cases advice on actions to be taken or avoided. These tools allow for faster, unbiased information exchange between organizations, and increases accuracy and timeliness of decision making, and product security.
  • Security & Compliance enhancement as ML models can learn fraudlants or “off pattern” signals, and can advise based on potential anomalies and trends. In the Compliance and Auditing field, AI can track all relevant data and compose audit trails and documentation for health authorities or other competent authorities and build trust in the chain of custody.
  • Optimization of Processes enables algorithms to find correlations within large sets of data. This allows for infinite possibilities and solutions, and the maximization of objectives between partners and vendors in a complex ecosystem. It also uncovers risks that otherwise would be lost in between the fragmented systems and signals.

As Industry 4.0 and smart factories gain traction, how are strategies and approaches evolving to foster product security within the supply chain?

As Industry 4.0 and smart factories become more prevalent, strategies and approaches to fostering product security within the supply chain are evolving significantly. The integration of advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), AI, big data, analytics, and blockchain is driving new methodologies to enhance security, transparency, and efficiency.

A decade ago, computational power was the limiting factor. Nowadays big queries and pattern searches are common. This has shifted company strategy since where previously companies settled for monthly or weekly updates, real-time, or near-real-time supply chain health assessment are reality. Some examples are:

  • Tracking & Tracing: We no longer rely on fixed markers to monitor where product is and what condition the product is in. Today, complete E2E visualization is possible with sensors and correlation of multiple other metadata sources.
  • Advanced Modeling & Pattern Recognition: continuing the previous threat, visualization and monitoring are now “commodities.” However, advanced predictive analytics, pattern and outlier recognition, and modeling are all parts of the supply chain approach.
  • We also have to touch on blockchain capabilities. Although blockchain has not brought the hype it was thought it would bring, it still allows product chain of custody (through immutable records). Smart contracts allow for enhanced security and safety protocols that limit threats to product security and patient impact. Another use case is the movement to E-leaflet that will allow for better efficiency and patient service instead of the dreadful paper inserts that are still widespread used.
  • The other big strategic change is how advanced technologies allow for a collaborative and integrated platform which is in line with Industry 4.0 principles — as that highlights the use of integrated collaborative platforms for seamless data exchanges with all partners in the ecosystem.

What are your “5 Best Practices for Ensuring Product Security in Collaboration with External Vendors and Partners”?

  1. The first one is not digital or high tech at all: ensuring a rigorous and independent vendor assessment and selection, using thorough vetting and a comprehensive due diligence including financial analysis and references and where possible customer stories. Also checking of the officially recognized industry and regulatory certifications is an essential component. But aside from that, mapping the risk that the vendor or partner can pose to the company’s ecosystem (for example single sources, geographical or other risks). Every company and executive has handled this, a partner that was recommended through a social network or “friend” and as a result fast tracked through due diligence only to have the relationship falter.
  2. Next up is clear agreements with crisp language that are establishing the rules of the game in case of “stormy weather.” Many of the vendor’s risks are coming from poorly or loosely negotiated contracts or Service Level Agreements that are ambiguous. Part of successful partnership is auditing (trust but verify) in a safe environment, meaning, the intent of audits and checks is not to “trip” the vendor but mutually establish that processes and quality are in control and the risk corrective and preventive procedures are in place and independently managed. This then links to the last item, a clear quality agreement, and roles and responsibilities arrangements are vital for success of long term relationships with external partners and also helps with the following point.
  3. Transparent communication, collaboration and mutual understanding of each other’s win factors. It seems such an obvious best practice but where many functions and roles are involved amongst different partners and firewalls are up, this is anything but obvious and partners/vendors that understand each other’s business and critical success factors and collaborate will win. Often external vendors are just given the minimal information (like order, data and quantity), but if the external vendors are privy to context and intent the partnership can thrive and minimized risk on product quality and patient impact.
  4. When negotiating, even in cases where there is a “David & Goliath” size difference in the arrangement, ensuring that all parties understand the commercial wins for each other and allow for all of the parties to thrive in this partnership will ensure maximum effort and drive for all parties to make the supply chain work. A clear story is what is known as the “Lopez Method” when Volkswagen was negotiating new deals with component suppliers and the procurement department made the vendors completely reliant on VW and then started to squeeze them and then ultimately vendors lost interest and it affected the quality and security of the product.
  5. The last item links to our earlier part of the interview, leveraging advanced technology to break functional and organizational silos and allow for all parties to monitor performance and make the right decisions for the end-to-end supply chain and not only their part of the puzzle. AI/ML are excellent new toolsets that can be deployed company and function agnostic and can provide predictive and automated decision intelligence to drive optimal end-to-end supply chain outcomes and threat/risk analysis across the partners in the supply chain. Other technologies like Blockchain for traceability and chain of custody and ML for pattern recognition are very useful to allow partners in the network to more effectively collaborate and avoid risk to product and tampering.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I am a big believer in taking every day one small step towards your end goal (which should be aspirational) and then those steps will form a journey. That journey might not lead you in a straight line — or even towards your aspirational goal — but it will teach you many things at every step and it will for sure get you farther than just staring at that perfect end state but being paralyzed by moving.

Every journey entails risks and your ability to deal with ambiguity and your perseverance will decide where and how far you will end. So for me, if everyone could make a small step, then bigger things will happen. (Note — I still am a huge fan of Retired Rear Admiral McMasters speech about making your bed!). The second thing is trivial yet in an everyday more polarized world, is to listen to each other on street corners and don’t judge and polarize. Always test statements against fact (even though they are yours) and be kind.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can find me on LinkedIn! Please connect with me and we’ll keep this conversation going!

This was very inspiring and informative. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this interview!

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.

--

--

Authority Magazine
Authority Magazine

Published in Authority Magazine

In-depth Interviews with Authorities in Business, Pop Culture, Wellness, Social Impact, and Tech. We use interviews to draw out stories that are both empowering and actionable.

David Leichner, CMO at Cybellum
David Leichner, CMO at Cybellum

Written by David Leichner, CMO at Cybellum

David Leichner is a veteran of the high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications

No responses yet