How United Pharmacy Replaced Spreadsheets with an EPM Integrated with SAP

35 Years of Pharmacy. One Platform for What Comes Next.

United Pharmaceuticals Co. is one of the first retail pharmacy companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with over 35 years of service. Headquartered in Jeddah, United Pharmacy runs a multi-branch network and growing e-commerce channel, offering pharmaceuticals, vitamins, skincare, baby care, medical devices, and personal care products.

With national delivery coverage and thousands of SKUs, United Pharmacy operates at a scale that demands structured financial oversight. Its core operations run on SAP, handling day-to-day transactions, inventory, and financial recording. What it lacked was the layer above: a structured environment for planning the business forward, not just recording what had happened.

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What We Did

Azdan implemented Oracle NetSuite EPM as United Pharmacy's dedicated financial planning and performance management platform, connected to SAP and built to replace the manual processes that had been absorbing finance team capacity.

Planning and Budgeting

A structured, multi-dimensional environment for annual budgets, rolling forecasts, and scenario analysis. Department heads and branch managers plan directly in the platform, with shared assumptions, standardized templates, and workflow approvals replacing the old email-and-spreadsheet cycle. Expense, headcount, and capex planning all run in one place, giving finance a consolidated view without manual aggregation.

SAP ERP Integration

The foundation of the engagement. Actuals from SAP (GL balances, cost center actuals, branch-level P&L) flow automatically into NetSuite EPM on schedule, eliminating the manual export-and-import cycle. With plans and actuals in one platform, variance analysis runs live at cost center, branch, or company level, always in alignment with SAP.

Narrative Reporting

Monthly reports, executive presentations, and budget review packages are produced inside the platform, combining figures, commentary, and charts in one workflow. Reports that once took days are now generated in hours.

Financial Dashboards and KPIs

Role-specific dashboards give leadership and finance a real-time view of the metrics that matter: actual versus budget, branch performance, forecast accuracy, and cost variances, pulled directly from SAP with no prep required.

ZATCA E-Invoicing

Native ZATCA compliance built in, covering UUID generation, QR embedding, and automated transmission to the authority, so every invoice meets Saudi Arabia's mandate without extra tools or manual steps.

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Planning That Moves at the Speed of the Business

What Azdan built for United Pharmacy is not a standalone planning tool sitting next to SAP. It is a connected performance management layer that draws from SAP continuously and gives the finance team a structured environment to plan, forecast, analyse, and report from a single source of truth.

The budget cycle is now governed by a platform, not by email chains and spreadsheet versions. Variance analysis runs against live SAP actuals. Management reports are produced in the platform, not assembled in PowerPoint. And as United Pharmacy continues to grow its branch network and online channel across Saudi Arabia, the planning infrastructure in place is built to scale with it, without adding headcount to the finance team to manage the complexity.

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