AN EDUCATIONAL EBOOK FROM IMS HEALTH
Making intelligence actionable:
No longer mission impossible
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“Infolust” demands a new way of doing businessOne of the defining forces of our time is “infolust”— a term coined by Trendwatching.com to describe our seemingly insatiable need to have information whenever and wherever we want it.
The ease with which we can instantly access information as consumers has raised our expectations as business decision makers. Basic reporting will no longer suffice.
If life sciences companies are to use business intelligence (BI) for strategic advantage, information must be:
• Actionable
• Alert-based and visual
• Self-service and interactive
• Integrated with other systems
• Delivered via mobile apps
It’s time to move beyond a “spreadsheet culture” to one where analytics provide evidence-based insights and automated alerts drive improved business performance.
“Advances in analytic technologies and business
intelligence are allowing CIOs to go big, go fast, go deep, go cheap,
and go mobile with business data.”
David F. Carr, “5 Business Analytics Tech Trends and How to Exploit Them,” CIO Magazine, March 23, 2012
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The evolution of business intelligence
YEsTErDAY’s BI MoDEl
• Difficult-to-use• IT-intensive• Proliferation of data; lists• Redundant data marts with siloed information• “Cube farms”• Rigid BI tools• Data latency• Lagging indictors• PC-based• Long deployments
ToDAY’s BI MoDEl
• Always on, always available • Mobile• Device/platform agnostic• Integrated• Intuitive• Single source of the truth• Actionable• Timely, relevant• Business-centric• Forward-thinking, based on leading indicators• Modular deployment
Most pharma leaders intuitively understand the value of enabling a fluid exchange of timely, actionable
information that meets the needs of discrete users spanning many roles and functions. Yet, few companies
have re-engineered their entire information architecture, and most are still working in a sub-optimal
environment. They depend heavily on IT, address information needs in silos (usually with near-raw data
or list formats) and contend with significant lag times in delivering data to Marketing and Sales teams.
Considering the complex and comprehensive data that are available today (the scope of which is
expanding almost exponentially), the time has come to embrace change.
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Data are what is pushed out to users via lists, lists and more lists. When given data, a rep may have to scan hundreds of lines in multiple reports simply to find a kernel of useful information for the week ahead.
Data become insights when the important findings are highlighted visually — such as in dashboards that display key performance indicators (KPIs) common to the entire commercial organization.
Insights become actionable when there’s a business process wrapped around each KPI so that:
• Users are alerted to findings that warrant their attention;
• With a single click, users can drill into details that explain what has triggered the alert;
• Instructions and contextual navigation lead the way to a plan of action; and
• The insights integrate seamlessly with other information and tools
1 2
4 3
Tell me when something is wrong…
What’s causing the problem?
What can I do about it?
Email alert – “attainment
below threshold”
Single click to get to details – “competitor taking market
share”
Contextual navigation – suggested call list – “who can I call on?”
Integrate with call plan via SFA
What makes intelligence actionable?
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A role-based approachMany diverse users across the organization consume BI on a daily,
weekly and/or monthly basis. Addressing the specific requirements
of each is important, although the guiding principles of what will
make intelligence actionable are the same:
• A self-service approach to accessing and consuming data
and information
• Alert-based insights and data visualizations that point to
next steps
• Mobile connectivity
• A single source of the truth (no discrepancies over whose
numbers are right)
• A combination of leading and lagging indicators
• More sophisticated analytics that incorporate all performance
influencers and drivers (e.g., payer, patient, prescriber)
When these conditions are met with the right infrastructure,
companies benefit from a lower cost of ownership, higher user
adoption, and improved, faster decision making.
Where are the opportunities to drive more scripts in my territory?
Sales Reps
Move toward role-based insights
Deliver timely information to support critical business decisions
What payers are driving brand performance?
Brand Managers
Does it make sense to co-promote our new product?
Executives
How would a change to Tier 1 formulary status affect revenue?
Analysts
What are top performing districts doing that under-performing ones are not?
Field Managers
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DElIvErABlE ExAMplE
DATAA spreadsheet with all 150 doctors in my call plan and the last 12 months of data.
INSIgHTS My lead product is underperforming compared to last quarter. Competitor X is outperforming me by five market share points.
ACTIONABLE INTELLIgENCE To reverse the current trend and improve performance, proactively suggest 20 doctors I can call on this quarter to message against competitor X.
An example of actionable intelligence for field users
Alert Inform
Enable
ProcessOriented
Watch “Making Intelligence Actionable”
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Popular types of alerts
• Top-ranked prescribers/targeted prescribers who were not called on in past 30 days
• Prescribers increasing in NRx for top competitor over past 60 days
• Over-sampled prescribers
• Prescribers associated with payer pull-through/formulary
• Product performance fluctuations beyond pre-established thresholds
• Prescribers decreasing in TRx for “my product” over past 60 days
• Reps/DMs/RMs not meeting call plan adherence targets
• Updates on monthly incentive comp goal attainment
• Mined insights/campaign segmentations with specific messages
Variations on a theme
Since the goal of business intelligence is to empower people to do
their jobs more effectively, each different user group within the
commercial organization — from senior executives to sales reps —
naturally has different information needs.
These diverse needs can be met through role-based dashboards,
access parameters and capabilities. That doesn’t mean, however,
that each type of user should operate on a different platform,
rely on different source data and follow different business rules.
Ideally, the entire commercial organization should:
• Consume insights derived from the same data sources
and shared market definitions
• Focus on the same KPIs — those identified as important
to the brand
• Operate on the same data infrastructure and technology platform
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The expectation is that your BI system will be easy to deploy, flexible enough to grow and change with your business needs, and integrated with your other business systems.
How can this be achieved? The first step is to adopt an investment strategy aimed at creating:
• A scalable and efficient enterprise-wide technology platform (using cloud-based, software-as-a-service models)
• A single, consolidated data infrastructure
• An integrated suite of BI tools
• Tools that are platform agnostic, i.e., able to be delivered on different devices
The goal will be to put a business-rules engine on top of information to scan for trends that are important to the brand.
A framework that supports insights
MODULAR ANALYTIC DATA MODEL
BI METADATA LAYERMetrics KPIs Hierarchies User Security
EXTRACT TRANSFORM LOAD (ETL)
DATA SOURCES
Rx DDD CRM LRxWatch “Thinking Beyond Traditional KPIs”
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orgAnIzATIon TYpE CHArACTErIsTICs METHoDs To ADDrEss
MATRIXED • Believe that departmental BI needs require unique solutions; leads to siloed thinking and systems
• Have little or no common data governance or infrastructure
• Circulate data (not BI) around the organization
• Consolidate data management under one umbrella to serve common needs
• Establish a common data infrastructure that works with any BI platform
• Apply the 80/20 rule: the majority of BI requirements across departments are usually the same, and can be met with a common solution
CAPTIvE • Utilize outdated, proprietary BI packages that offer little flexibility
• Feel that business users cannot handle any change
• Use a standards-based BI platform
• Trust the user community
OCEAN BOILERS • Attempt to meet “every” business need at once; embark on 12+ month projects
• Collect requirements by the ton
• Think that one BI tool can meet every need
• Deploy in phases and architect for change, knowing that in two months, there will be new requirements
NEWBIES • Tend to be small/mid pharma
• Have limited internal resources and capabilities
• get limited exposure to industry best practices
• Build consultative relationships with experts outside the organization
• Leverage out-of-the-box solutions where possible
In theory, delivering BI is easily done. But the unfortunate reality is that most companies
aren’t doing it yet for a myriad of reasons. Often it often comes down to organizational
culture, long-held beliefs within functional areas, and the company’s size, structure, and
budgetary constraints. However, these challenges can be easily overcome given strong
collaboration, well thought-out plans, and a willingness to change the status quo.
Why haven’t companies made the transition?
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The DIY vs. partner debateCompanies certainly can build their BI solutions from scratch, but
they usually face a steep learning curve and significant investment
in time and costs to do so. It’s common for an initial release to
take eight months and more than $1 million to develop, and even
then, the release often does not meet objectives or truly address
users’ needs.
It is all too easy to underestimate the knowledge required to:
• Set up processes to provision syndicated data
• Design and build a data model
• Design and build processes to extract, transform,
and load data from third-parties
• Establish a BI infrastructure
• Design and build BI metadata
• Build reports, dashboards and alerts
Partnering with software and service vendors accelerates the
process, reduces stress on the organization and avoids the pitfalls
of learning as you go.
Tips for success
• Consolidate data management under one umbrella to serve common needs
• Provision and store data in one place
• Adopt a data infrastructure that can accommodate multiple BI tools (don’t lock yourself into a rigid data model)
• Architect for the long term, but deliver in phases, starting with the basics
• Consider pre-built offerings as accelerators
• Use as much “off the shelf” software as possible
• Use standards-based BI platforms
• Develop consultative relationships with external partners
Read how one company was able to deploy an IMS-hosted BI solution in just 14 weeks.
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Adoption advice
• Empower users to ask questions themselves, without the need for IT or analyst support
• view e-commerce sites as an analogy for the user experience
• Deliver actionable intelligence, not data
• Keep it fresh
• Draw users into the system rather than push out reports
• Tie into incentive compensation data
Sustaining high adoptionHow do you ensure that the BI approach you’ve introduced is really used within your organization?
Before designing the system, discuss with each user group:
• The KPIs that are most important to the business and how they should be expressed for each function
• What the end user should do in response to a specific type of alert
Then, ensure that the tools and information you provide are:
• Intuitive. Tools should be as easy to use as the leading e-commerce sites.
• Actionable. give users role-based insights that help them succeed at their job.
• Fresh. Offer ever-changing information rather than static data.
• Integrated. Present one dashboard — not a dozen reports.
• stored with information of personal interest. Nothing draws people in like real-time reporting on their incentive compensation.
Read how one company improved compliance with POA directives.
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The benefits of the new BI modelCreating a dynamic BI environment in which users are empowered to access the information they need when, where and how they choose is good business practice —although not simply because employees now expect such convenience and immediacy. It also drives results.
Providing actionable, role-based intelligence to every function within the commercial organization:
• Supports timely, critical decision making at all levels
• Correlates with increased revenue
• Improves sales productivity
• Relieves users of having to “make sense of the data”
• Eliminates debate over whose numbers are right
• Removes redundant IT processes
• Frees IT and analysts for other business priorities
These are aspirations of most companies, and achieving this state need not be difficult, time consuming, expensive, or overly burdensome to any one functional area.
Key questions to ask as you’re getting started
• Is your organization a spreadsheet culture? Do you deliver data … or insights?
• What are your KPIs? Do you have KPIs?
• Are you able to inform action?
• How is your blocking and tackling? Do you have the right foundation to grow?
• Is your data infrastructure tied to your BI platforms?
• Are your business users empowered to ask questions?
• Where should you build vs. partner?
Read how one company enhanced performance via self-service BI.
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Mission accomplishedOver the past five years, business intelligence capabilities have advanced dramatically. It is now possible to move beyond a “spreadsheet culture” to one in which decision makers from the C-suite all the way through the field force have access to the information they need to further the company’s business goals.
The keys to success are to begin with the right investment strategy and architect for the long term — but deliver in the short term — and to ensure that the intelligence provided is visual, alert-based and points to a specific course of action.
When data infrastructure and BI tools are designed properly, users will access the insights they need and will be able to say, “I know what this means and I know what to do with it.”
If there is a magic bullet to optimizing business performance it is just that: empowering people at every level of the organization to take the initiative in pursuing the company’s objectives.
Access a replay of the IMS webinar, “Making Intelligence Actionable: No Longer Mission Impossible”
© 2012 IMS Health Incorporated or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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