I feel rejuvenated after a briefing with Apprentice. Their Tempo suite is a fresh approach that marries the latest enterprise mobile and SaaS technologies with composable applications for pressing industry issues. Yes, there’s a SaaS MES – but there is more for the plant, quality lab, enterprise, and manufacturing network. It serves the product lifecycle, starting with preclinical and clinical.
The company came into being in 2014. The founders saw the industry move toward large molecule and personalized products, and they predicted the resulting radical changes in the structure of the industry. They believed older software could not support production needs such as faster changes, higher mix, continuous processes, demanding processes to grow and culture biologics, and tight collaboration with contract manufacturers. So they leveraged the most modern B2B SaaS technologies to develop the GMP-compliant Tempo Manufacturing Cloud.
The latest addition to the Tempo suite is Connected Manufacturing Network, to connect internal and external sites and teams. Capabilities include product lifecycle, enterprise recipe management, external manufacturing collaboration, and streamlined tech transfer. This real-time data-sharing capability could revolutionize how biopharma companies manage global and CMO operations.
The Tempo product line started with Tandem Virtual Collaboration, a connected worker platform with headset. Augmented Work Instructions for EBR, Procedures management, line clearance, training, and an electronic logbook came from that foundation. MES includes built-in quality, no-code procedure and recipe authoring, and enforcement. LES for the quality lab leverages some of the strengths of the MES but tailored for scientific testing and managing samples, materials, and equipment.
Apprentice.io has been growing rapidly for the past five years and has just raised another VC round to keep that momentum going. Like the company itself, their team of VCs includes both traditional high tech and life-science-focused investment companies.
I now understand how a company less than a decade old got on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the second year in a row and moved into the visionary quadrant. The time appears to be right to infuse the most modern B2B software capabilities into the biopharma production process.
Thank you, Kristen Kucks and Marie Forshaw, for taking the time to get me up to speed!
