If you run R&D or NPD,the formula is the record.

What goes wrong today

• Bringing a product to market is a mess of stakeholders

  Marketing, sales, procurement, NPD and regulatory all have to align, usually across more than one contract manufacturer, sometimes with the BOM split between suppliers. Tasks scatter, nobody owns the whole picture, and launch dates become guesses.

• Formulations live in spreadsheets

  Whether they're made in-house or come back from the CM, there's limited version control and no single source of truth for cost or regulatory status.

• CM interactions are siloed in email

  Sampling, comments and sign-offs sit in inboxes, so there's no visibility and no forecast.

• Raw material and component data sits in supplier PDFs

  INCI breakdowns, allergens, TDSs and CoAs live in attachments, and product and packaging data lives on shared drives.

What goes wrong today

• Speed to first sample is what wins the work

  Turning a brief into a formulation and a lab sample is manual, and the fastest credible submission usually takes the job.

• Fragmentation within NPD

  Data management, testing, formulation creation, brand interaction, samples and sign-off, all running across hundreds of projects at once.

• Testing management in spreadsheets

  Stability, compatibility and PET results tracked apart from the formulation they belong to, at scale, costing real team hours.

• Customer formulation management

  Hundreds of customer formulations, each with versions, briefs and constant revisions. Version history matters more here than anywhere.

• Product documentation by hand

  Ingredient lists, QQ lists, SDSs and allergen statements, all painful to create and harder to keep current.

• Pricing pressure

  "Can you make this formula cheaper and better than your competitors?" needs qualified raw materials with up-to-date pricing to answer.

What goes wrong today

• Formulation and portfolio drift apart

  The formula record, the cost record and the launch plan are maintained separately, so a change in one is discovered late in the others.

• Testing at scale

  Stability, compatibility and challenge tests run for months and are tracked outside the formulation, so delays surface only when a launch slips.

• Cost of the formula isn't live

  Raw material prices move, and the cost sheet doesn't, so margin is calculated on stale numbers.

What goes wrong today

• The applications lab runs without a tool

  Mock formulations showcase how ingredients get used, and that work drives sales. Lab notebooks, tests, raw materials, regulatory checks and inventory rarely have a home.

• Application development is a multi-step workflow across hundreds of projects

  Data, testing, formulation creation, customer interaction, samples and sign-off, all at once.

• Formula versioning and documentation is the worst maintained record

  Exactly what was in each trial, what was done to it and what happened is the central record of the function, and it's usually incomplete.

• Technical know-how sits in people's heads

  "Will your ingredient work in my emulsion at pH X?" is answered from memory and old lab books.

• Composition management

  Impurities at ppm, ranges against exact percentages, version control and INCI naming differences across markets, all kept accurate by hand.