This leading US specialty pharmaceutical company relied on an outsourced vendor for its sales reporting and analytics needs. Due to the initial size of the company 10 years ago, an outsourced approach was the best fit at the time. Yet, as the company grew, its reporting needs grew as well.  Faced with increased costs from its vendor and a desire to make quicker decisions with their sales data, the company needed a different solution.

Partnering with Clarkston Consulting, the company worked to transition its sales reporting and analytics away from a 100% outsourced solution. At the completion of the project, the company was able to cut days in turnaround time for data requests, empower their mobile sales force with a dashboard reporting solution, reduce their reliance on third-party systems and processes, and integrate their sales data with key operational data.

CHALLENGE & SOLUTIONS

Challenge 1: The company needed an in-house solution for their sales reporting and analytics to make smarter, faster decisions for the business.

Solution: Clarkston helped the company by leading an SAP BI implementation to be able to consume, process, store, and report on sales and competitive data. This involved receiving and processing both transactional and master data from several third parties as well as sending transactional and master data to additional third parties.

The company needed two different reporting solutions for these parties to best accommodate their needs and help them increase performance. Clarkston helped establish documentation standards around the data processing and reporting as well.

Clarkston developed a solution that centralized all of the company’s sales data, including product, market, field/territory and customer information. The front-end reporting interface included unit conversion options and dynamic print settings. The new solution also allowed the company to develop dynamic data sets to display a summary of market trends using real-time data.

The customer information provided was also key to this solution. Within the interface, salespeople can now access all of their key customer information, including the physicians who were currently prescribing their products as well as the doctors who hadn’t yet prescribed their products.

Challenge 2: The company questioned the accuracy of its sales data metrics, but lacked the ability to validate the issue.

Solution: In developing the solution, Clarkston executed a process analysis to understand the current reporting solution and to better map out the needed solution for the company moving forward. Clarkston also recommended that the entire sales reporting process from request to delivery be analyzed to identify areas for optimization.

By integrating all of the sales data into one system, the company no longer had to question the validity of its sales data. The singular system allowed for repeatable processes and reduced the chance that one metric would provide different values throughout the organization.

Challenge 3: The company’s sales force needed a “one-stop shop” for their sales reporting and analytics.

Solution: Clarkston developed an all-inclusive dashboard for the company that contained critical KPIs for the company’s sales representatives. The dashboard is fully integrated and accessed by a highly mobile sales force through the cloud. The dashboard solution was developed with BusinessObjects Xcelsius, an emerging product within the SAP business intelligence portfolio.

The dashboard solution allows users to see not only aggregated sales numbers, but also detailed product sales records. The dashboard solution combined data from over 6 different disparate reports into a “one stop shop” that provided the sales force with all the key pieces of information to do their job. The solution was even able to provide metrics to the sales force which were not previously available such as quarterly goals, progress to date for those goals, and rebate redemptions. In addition to this, the solution required integrating the dashboard and data with the company’s CRM cloud service.

RESULTS
By implementing this analytics solution, the company brought their competitive and sales data reporting in-house, cut costs and increased the accuracy of their reporting and analysis. As the company moves forward with this new solution, their sales reporting costs will most likely be reduced by 50 to 70%. They are now able to analyze raw data themselves, respond more quickly to changes in market trends and perform root cause analysis to determine those shifts in the market. By securing quicker access to their data with the new solution, the company was also able to reduce the risk associated with delayed responses to changes in their markets.

With the new solution, the company can now process sales reports faster than the outsourced solution, reducing turnaround time between 50% to 60%. The reporting needs of the company have been streamlined, consolidating over 10 reports into the centralized dashboard solution. The company’s competitive analysis group is also able to more quickly respond to internal data requests given they have the ability to pull the information themselves. With this quicker response, the company is better able to react to changes in the market and predict opportunities for its sales force.

The business also experienced an increase in the overall understanding of their sales data throughout the organization. The company now has great flexibility in the presentation of their sales and competitive data, while also being able to integrate sales data with other key data points for the organization.

PARTNERING FOR SUCCESS
Clarkston’s expertise in analytics, program management, and change management, along with a longstanding client relationship and great cultural fit, secured Clarkston as the right partner to help this company with its analytics challenge.With its new internal analytics and reporting solution, this company is now able to process sales data in-house, respond more quickly to changes in its marketplace, integrate sales data with key operational data – all while reducing the costs of reporting for the company.