Business Intelligence Framework For Pharmaceutical

Business Intelligence For Pharmaceutical
Industry
More than ever, the pharmaceutical industry is challenged with an increasingly dynamic environment.
Growing competition, government regulation, product segmentation, and corporate consolidation have
driven the need for organizations to effectively analyze both internal and external information.
This document studies the challenge of Business Intelligence in the pharmaceutical industry and presents
conceptual solutions to deliver information to the enterprise.
The Pharmaceutical Business
Similar to other industries, Figure 1 displays the business flow for a typical pharmaceutical company.
Figure 1: This figure displays the business flow of a pharmaceutical organization.
The Business Defined
From a business perspective, each component drives every other component in a synergistic cycle. The
effectiveness of each organization has traditionally been assessed individually through department-specific
Business Intelligence systems. However, true power is harnessed when information is integrated across
components.
The Information Challenge
The challenge with integrating data across business components is that most information systems are built
around the day-to-day operational needs of the business unit. In order to satisfy the corporate-wide
information integration requirements, enterprise business intelligence (BI) systems must be developed and
deployed. Such systems help companies with:
Business Intelligence - Understand the needs of the business
Business Management - Manage internal operations based on those needs
Business Operations - Run the business based on management directives
These capacities enable companies to realize the opportunity of a business landscape characterized by
customer relationships, product delivery, and opportunity-driven profit. One of the key enabling
technologies to this evolution is the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).
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The Enterprise Data Warehouse
Conceptually, an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) is a platform upon which an organization can integrate
information from a variety of sources into a common and consistent format and deliver it to analysts through a
business-oriented semantic layer. The EDW approach is widely recognized as a necessity for companies
around the world.
Figure 2 illustrates how the data warehouse delivers business intelligence capabilities to support business
functions in the pharmaceutical industry. Though not covered in the scope of this document, the figure also
illustrates how the operational data store, a key component of any EDW deployment, delivers business
management capabilities to complete the information solution.
Figure 2: This figure displays the processes and resulting functions of an EDW approach.
More than ever, an EDW approach is critical in the pharmaceutical industry. With a variety of data sources
(both internal and external to the company) and a trend of consolidation, it has become increasingly
challenging to analyze information across systems, particularly when the number of systems multiply after a
merger.
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Pharmaceutical Analysis
Like other industries, the pharmaceutical data warehouse provides insight that drives new customers, helps
retain current ones, streamlines operations, reduces costs, and helps management to achieve their targets.
One of the unique characteristics of a pharmaceutical EDW, however is the fact that there are a broad range
of candidate data sources to integrate. Figure 3 displays just a few of these data sources. It is challenging
just to prioritize these sources and find methodologies to merge them into the EDW.
Figure 3: This figure displays some of the candidate data sources for a pharmaceutical EDW.
Several additional key challenges are unique to the pharmaceutical industry:

o The pharmaceutical industry has a great dependency on third-party data. Companies such as IMS,
NDC, and Scott Levin gather information directly from data sources about patient care and
prescriptions. Since most pharmaceutical inventory is sold to wholesalers and not directly to
customers, it would be very difficult to analyze sales data without third-party information.
o Many of the data sources are available at different intervals. External data sources frequently
become available months after the transactions occur, while internal data may be available
real-time. Internal reporting needs may require an EDW to house different data sources with different
load intervals.
o External and internal data often are not readily nor easily mapped together. They are often aligned
by different keys and have differing levels of granularity and cleanliness. This may require a
substantial scrubbing process to cross-match the data. ·
o Different parts of the business often view or align the same data in different ways. For instance,
marketing analysts may view product and market roll-ups differently than sales analysts. This results in
a more challenging development process than typical for other industries.
o Many pharmaceutical data warehouse users are often remotely located which may drive the need
for a more sophisticated delivery process.
o There are many regulatory security and reporting requirements that are imposed on the
pharmaceutical industry. Since Federal law protects customer privacy, it is more critical to carefully
design the warehouse for security and the appropriate level of anonymity.
o The pharmaceutical industry is highly dynamic. With legislation and business changes to the health
care industry, the sales process (and consequently the data) is in a constant state of change.
Therefore, an EDW must be constructed with adequate flexibility so that such changes do not require
major modifications to the system.
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Building a pharmaceutical data warehouse is a complex and iterative process. Understanding the
uniqueness of the industry is absolutely essential for success. A carefully constructed data warehouse is not
only beneficial to the business, but has become a necessity to the strategic direction of any pharmaceutical
company facing increased competition and external pressures.
The following sections identify the information needs of each business organization, and explore solutions in
addressing them. Each section includes a brief description of the business organization and the information
challenges it faces. Each section breaks out the types of analysis for each business organization and
discusses the specific challenges and possible approaches for each.
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Finance
Pharmaceutical finance departments are responsible for a complex business model. In addition to
unexacting stock market metrics, many pharmaceutical companies are challenged with managing a
very wide breadth of suppliers and customers. In addition, finance organizations must manage
agreements with a variety of buyers ranging from direct customers (for over-the-counter products),
distributors, hospitals/managed care organizations, prescribers (for sample products), and pharmacies.
Some of the key finance analysis challenges are broken out below.
Budgeting/Forecasting/SEC Reporting
Challenge: It is difficult to consolidate information about allocated funds and predicted funds to
meet the market demands. Furthermore, it is difficult to update and reevaluate these values
throughout the year when the information is maintained in different systems. In addition, companies
must build financial performance estimates based on sketchy information on sales and pipeline. This
is not easy without a consolidated big-picture information store. What costs should be cut? What
would the impact be? What is our budget versus actual? What is the historical market trend? Will
we hit our target?
Approach: By extracting information from forecasting and finance systems and integrating it with
manufacturing, market research, and sales data, accurate values can be derived for budget,
manufacturing, and outlook. This delivers a single version of truth for all information consumers. With
insight into sales and marketing initiatives, it is much easier to build SEC estimates from the bottom up -
not top-down. Business cost, R&D, manufacturing, and sales information can be combined to
generate such an assessment.
Merger & Acquisition Analysis

Challenge: Pharmaceutical companies often merge even where a wide overlap in product lines
and operation functions exists. Heavy analysis is needed before committing to a merger or
acquisition, heavy analysis is needed to determine financial viability given various scenarios. What
products serve the same customer base? What products have synergies? What new cross-sell
opportunities exist? Should some of the products be sold off? What is the fiscal impact? How can
we integrate business intelligence information from both companies? How in line is their financial
infrastructure with ours? What is the overlap from a manpower perspective for operations, R&D, and
manufacturing?
Approach: With analytic insight into product performance, doctor segmentation, competitor
information, and product synergies, many more informed decisions could be made with respect to
possible mergers and acquisitions. Market research, R&D, and pipeline data can be integrated to
support this analysis.
Pricing
Challenge: Price sensitivity is not only a sensitive political issue but also difficult to measure.
Approach: An integrated EDW allows analysts to measure the impact that pricing has on
consumption and prescriber/user acceptance. Key sales and prescriber information may be
consolidated with price information to measure elasticity.
Chargebacks/Rebates
Challenge: Some customers require greater rebates while others have more chargebacks. It can
be challenging to target the most lucrative customers while addressing those who are more
problematic.
Approach: Integrating sales and financial information into an EDW and providing access via a set of
analytical tools facilitates effective targeting and management of different customers. By
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integrating Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) information with sales and marketing information,
companies can determine the value of its customers and how best to manage those who are not
high value.
KPI Reporting
Challenge: Consistency and accuracy is paramount when reporting key performance indicators to
the business. What is the overall state of the company? Are we on target versus our plan? What is
the state of our financial ratios? Who are slow payers? What debts are due soon? What does my
cash flow look like? What are my inventory levels?
Approach: Everyone in the organization should receive the same numbers for the same KPIs. An
integrated EDW provides a single consistent source of information that can then be disseminated
through various means. Financial KPI reporting may integrate information from a wide breadth of
systems but are often primarily driven from the ERP system.
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Contracting / Legal
Pharmaceuticals have one of the most stringent regulatory bodies of any industry. This is due to the
nature of the business and the fact that it is highly patent driven. In addition, the rules governing product
disbursements, inventory, pricing, clinical trials, FDA approval, and manufacturing are also highly
regulated. The recent enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996
("HIPAA") has expanded protection of patient data. Some of the key contracting and legal analysis
challenges are broken out below.
Regulatory Compliance
Challenge: Development, manufacturing and inventory information is often fragmented across a
wide range of operational systems. This creates a challenge not only for regulatory compliance
but also for internal reporting and tracking. Am I within CGMP regulations? Are my clinical trials
successful? Should I Fast-Track clinical trials? Is sample distribution within compliance?
Approach: An integrated EDW allows analysts to track market research, manufacturing, inventory
and distribution data and report on it internally and externally with the same rules and assumptions.
This allows analysts to assess whether manufacturing, distribution are in compliance. Furthermore, it
will help market researchers with clinical trials analysis. Data sources would likely include market
research, ERP systems, external vendors (e.g., for samples), manufacturing, and distribution.
Bids & Contracts

Challenge: A big-picture view of how the industry behaves is often difficult to generate. This makes
it challenging to structure contracts that account for a dynamic industry. Which companies default
most frequently? What is my fiscal exposure if a contract goes to litigation? What are the
commonly accepted price thresholds?
Approach: By integrating data across sources, the EDW can provide invaluable insight into what
should be considered standard practice and what is an outlier. For example, a pharmaceutical
company may be able to contest a payer's refusal to cover charges for services deemed
unnecessary if the data shows that such tests or treatments are standard among patients with the
same condition. Furthermore, such observations may result in contracting policies that protect the
company in the future. Market research data must be integrated into internal contracting data to
drive such analysis.
Privacy
Challenge: It is difficult to ensure consistency between systems with respect to customer privacy.
Since the advent of HIPAA, it has become more important than ever to ensure privacy.
Approach: With an integrated EDW and corresponding data dictionary it becomes much easier to
consistently manage privacy across both operational and analytical systems. From an analysis
standpoint Extract Transform and Load (ETL) rules can drive consistency across data sources. It
becomes possible to ensure consistency and make certain that individually identifiable information
such as a patient's name, social security number or address are not stored or accessed across the
organization. On the other hand, aggregate data, which is data that has been stripped of individual
identifiers, may be made available for analysis in a consistent and legal manner.
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R&D
R&D is the lifeblood of modern pharmaceuticals. Companies are measured, not only on how they
perform, but also on what their R&D pipeline looks like. Some of the key R&D analysis challenges are
broken out below.
Market Research
Challenge: Ideally, decisions that drive a product’s commercial potential are made long before that
drug enters the market. As companies realize this, they begin market research activities in the pre-
launch drug development process. This can greatly impact a drug’s selling power at launch and
improve acceptance by the marketplace. What markets should we be getting into? What is the
upside potential of a drug? What drugs should be further segmented by form or strength? Who are
my primary competitors? Why do customers change drugs? What are the insurance and managed
care organizations saying about my and other drugs?
Approach: By establishing an integrated repository of analog drugs, insurance and managed care
purchase trends, and competitive intelligence market analysts can better work with upper
management and R&D to drive the company’s overall product strategy and focus.
Testing & Clinical Trial Analysis

Challenge: Pharmaceutical companies are challenged with keeping abreast of progress in
various clinical trials and the FDA approval process. The impact of such results can transform a
company but often the information resides in a variety of locations. What is the progress for all
clinical trials for a particular product? What side effects have been identified during a study?
What other medical uses might exist for a product?
Approach: By consolidating clinical trial information into a single information store, an organization is
empowered to investigate and report on a variety of metrics. Outcomes of groups of similarly
afflicted patients treated with different drug regimens can be compared to determine which
treatments statistically work better. In addition, studies can be made to better predict the effects of
diverse drug combinations and interactions. Up-to-date progress reports may be generated and
new discoveries identified. Furthermore, existing document management systems can be raised to a
new level of capability by both sourcing and feeding the integrated EDW.
Risk Analysis
Challenge: The pipeline drives not only strategic and acquisition strategies but also drives the overall
corporate picture on Wall Street. The pipeline is surrounded with technical and business risk, however.
Will a drug be developed on time? Will it pass clinical trials and be approved? How big could a
product be? What might the manufacturing challenges be to deliver the product?
Approach: In addition to qualitative risk assessments in R&D, a more quantitative approach may
be possible provided the underlying information is available for electronic access.
Molecule Database
Challenge: Keeping track of thousands of molecules that have been developed and all of their
characteristics is a daunting task, especially when you have development facilities scattered
across the globe. Which ones look promising for developing treatments for a target indication?
How can we effectively share this information to all users?
Approach: Maintaining a database of these molecules can allow R&D executives and scientists the
ability to search for certain characteristics and adverse interactions among them. This can
streamline development and eliminate unproductive development paths. It also makes the
information available for disparate users. Data mining applications can also be used to explore
possible permutations of this information.
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Manufacturing
Manufacturing is a logistically challenging and cost-intensive component of the business. Three key
areas of manufacturing are imperative; regulatory compliance, cost control, and satisfying market
demand. By adequately analyzing manufacturing information an organization becomes much more
capable of addressing these issues. Some of the key manufacturing analysis challenges are broken out
below.
Production Analysis
Challenge: Producing the correct amount of product to satisfy market demand can be a daunting
task, particularly when considering seasonal products. What will my demand be? Will my product
inventory adequately supply the demand? Will delivery devices and packaging be delivered on
time? What are my manufacturing costs and how can I control them?
Approach: Through an integrated EDW, analysts can analyze historical information and detect
seasonal trends, enabling them to predict future demand and ensure that the proper inventory is
available. Furthermore manufacturing information can help to include production estimates to
begin ramping production prior to seasonal requirements. Resulting metrics might include predicted
orders and units for an extended timeframe. Other metrics may include planned orders versus
produced orders, manufacturing life cycle, and pipeline predictions.
Inventory Tracking
Challenge: The more money a company has tied up in inventory, the less they have available for
other investment. How can a company minimize its inventory while keeping up with demand?
Inventory tracking may also include information about samples on hand and distributed by sales
representatives.
Approach: The EDW can integrate data to determine optimal inventory levels across all product lines.
This may use historical values for similar products and prediction factors from market research data.
Furthermore, sales representative sample inventory may be optimized to reduce spoilage.
Supply Chain Analysis

Challenge: In today’s world of Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing, knowing when you need to order raw
materials for production can mean the difference between manufacturing delays and excess
material buildup – all factors in controlling costs and cash flow efficiency.
Approach: Data from ERP, supply chain software, etc. can be used in business intelligence
applications to efficiently manage both raw materials and packaging material purchasing to
eliminate inventory buildup, waste, and ensure on-time delivery of supplies. Data can then be
integrated with logistics to combine manufacturing and shipping time frame analysis.
Vendor Performance
Challenge: Which vendors are more efficient than others? Who gets me their shipments on time
and who is always late? What are we paying for raw materials among various vendors? Can
cost efficiencies be achieved?
Approach: Using data from supply chain, ERP, vendor source systems, and Business-to-Business
applications, analysts can rate vendor performance and price and use the information to
negotiate new contracts, prices, and delivery mechanisms.
Regulatory Compliance
Challenge: The government closely governs manufacturing of pharmaceutical products. Am I
within CGMP regulations?
Approach: By integrating manufacturing information into a consolidated system, it is much easier to
meet regulatory compliance reporting and audits.
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Marketing
Pharmaceutical marketing varies from other industries in that it spans a wide breadth of customers.
Pharmaceutical companies must target product end-users, prescribers, hospitals, and distribution
channels. Furthermore, Federal law restricts the amount of information that they can track and use for
specific customers. This makes pharmaceutical marketing a challenging proposition, particularly when
considering the increasingly competitive climate in the industry. Some of the key marketing analysis
challenges are broken out below.
Demographic Analysis and Segmentation

Challenge: How can a pharmaceutical company best target its customers? This not only includes
product consumers but also prescribers and institutions. The message delivered to each should be
tailored and should promote high-valued customers. This ultimately results in improving satisfaction
for current customers and acquiring new customers with the same profile as highly satisfied customers.
In concept, this is an incredibly powerful paradigm. In practicality, however, it is challenging. Not
only can the data integration be difficult, but also deploying such a system without compromising
customer anonymity requires a well-thought-out approach.
Approach: By using an EDW to consolidate strategic knowledge about customer value, a
pharmaceutical company can develop profiles of loyal customers and determine customer lifetime
value. With information such as demographics, behavioral or lifestyle data, product utilization, refill
information, and survey data, the marketing message can be tailored to deliver the right message to
the right people. Integrating data sources including purchased sales data, samples and details data,
marketing campaign information, purchased demographic and census information, web site and
survey data, and ERP information provides a great deal of information capability.
With respect to privacy, there are several mechanisms to provide valuable analysis without
compromising legally mandated anonymity. By using a customer key that eliminates personally
identifiable information, or by aggregating demographic information, an EDW can protect
confidential information while enabling highly valuable analysis.
Product Analysis
Challenge: It is challenging to determine the most effective product segmentation and
acquisition/development strategies within the pharmaceutical industry. Thought must go into factors
such as multi-product treatments, product overlap, synergies, future product releases (both internally
and within the market as a whole), manufacturability, suppliers and so forth. It is critical to ensure
that new and/or segmented drugs provide the greatest value and open new markets to a company
while not overly cannibalizing existing product sales.
Approach: Marketing data within an EDW provides information about the products that customers’
use most often, which they most value, and their consistency in renewing prescriptions or purchasing
additional product. Furthermore, information about multi-drug regimens, product synergies, and
cross-sell information may be obtained. By integrating clinical trials information with product
segmentation, sales information, and survey data, it is possible to generate an analysis system within
the EDW to support strategic analysis such as this. This can help marketing analysts to determine
factors such as market share, retail vs. non-retail performance, packaging, and product form
performance.
Data Mining
Challenge: The breadth of pharmaceutical data makes it a prime candidate for data mining.
Analysts oftentimes don’t look for a specific piece of information, but rather want to identify potential
trends or patterns of events. Although the value of data mining has been identified across the
industry, few companies have successfully deployed it. Often this is due to the fact that an EDW is
not available from which to source consistent and cleansed information. How do various factors
about a product impact the products performance within a market? How do these factors affect
other products in other markets? How does prescriber specialty impact the way they prescribe our
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products? Other products? What prescription profile over time indicates a prescriber that will jump to
another product? What prescription profile over time indicates a prescriber that will begin prescribing
more? What marketing and sales activities impact the behavior of a prescriber? How?
Approach: Data mining can be used for a variety of purposes from R&D to marketing. Starting with
clean and consistent information, however, is crucial. Data Mining is only as good as the input
information. By sourcing an EDW, data mining analysts may begin to generate value through analysis
such as doctor segmentation and targeting, customer segmentation, and product molecule
discovery. Knowledge of the business and the data generated by that business comes first in the
process. The business rules and data sources are documented and reviewed. The second step is
integrating the data into one system or file structure. Typically this is called data preparation, or the ETL
process. The third step is to select the modeling techniques. Different tools use different modeling
methods, and familiarity with those tools is essential to getting the desired results. In the Fourth step,
the results of the model must then be evaluated, and a decision to change algorithms or continue
with the chosen ones must be made. This feedback loop is critical. The sensitivity of the data and
results always drives the degree to which the model is tuned. Finally, the fifth step is the delivery of
the model results to the business users. How this information is displayed can vary widely. Infowise has
used delivery mechanisms ranging from simple spreadsheets to seamless integration into existing
business intelligence systems
Geography, Payer & Prescriber Analysis

Challenge: A marketing organization must target buyers and geographies that provide the greatest
value to the company. Many organizations have difficulty viewing prescription volume trends at a
national level, let alone at the region or district level. It is crucial to assess where the greatest lift is
derived between channels such as retail, non-retail, mail order, or institutional. It is also important to
assess what payment medium provides the most benefit between cash, Medicaid, or third-party.
Finally, geographically based marketing depends on state or even zip-code level information. This
helps complete the big-picture for a marketing organization and helps them to tailor their focus
towards a high-value customer focus. What payers are generating the most revenue? What payers
are underutilized? What is my geographical market share? What prescribers should I target?
Approach: All of these factors vary over time with changing policies and administrations so there is
an added importance on live information and continual monitoring and reassessment. A marketing
data mart or data warehouse can integrate purchased data from a variety of resources and internal
sales information to determine aggregate and atomic level performance of total prescriptions (TRx)
as well as new prescriptions (NRx) activity at a prescriber and zip code level. This information may
then be aggregated to provide national level totals. It allows a pharmaceutical organization to
analyze prescription information broken out by payer and prescriber over time, market, geography,
and sales organization.
Campaign Analysis
Challenge: Because it is difficult to directly track customer behavior in an environment where
customer privacy is protected, campaign performance often goes unmeasured.
Approach: Through an EDW approach, it is possible to assimilate demographic, campaign and sales
performance information to obtain high-level campaign analysis. Obviously, privacy restrictions will
limit the detail level of analysis, however, aggregate or anonymous customer data may be used so
that customers are no longer individually identifiable.
EBusiness
Challenge: Ebusiness in the pharmaceutical industry may be broken into two main categories.
Business-to-business (B2B) typically applies to reorder systems and business transaction type
information. Business-to-Customer (B2C), applies to product marketing web sites. Many
pharmaceutical organizations have yet to adequately analyze either of these. It is often difficult to
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do so due to the nature of the information being collected. The challenges often include:
o Multiple web hosting companies
o Technology barriers (different web servers and log formats, availability of log files – FTP, different
browser capabilities –session tracking & cookies)
o Different data sources and types of data
o Time sensitivity
o Privacy issues
What web sites provide the most traffic? What is my site performance and uptime? How many
customers become qualified (e.g., fill out a survey, request information, etc) via web sites? How many
vendors actually use my B2B systems to reorder or ask questions? How many prescribers use my
websites? How do web site changes impact traffic? How effective is web-based marketing? How
effective are banner and add campaigns? What is my ECommerce ROI?
Approach: An EDW approach provides huge value to eBusiness analysts. It provides a set of
conventions and processes that allow the integration of web-based information into the overall data
warehouse. Not only does this facilitate web analysis such as customer analysis, campaign analysis,
survey data, segmentation, and web-site performance, but it also opens the doors to integrating
other enterprise information such as sales and marketing data.
For example, an ebusiness data mart could enable an analyst to measure the product sales impact
in a region for which a marketing campaign took place. It may even break this information out by
customer demographic. It may allow that analyst to correlate web site design and performance to
increases in prescriber and user acceptance.
Web traffic data is readily integrated into an EDW. Although conventions and transformation
processes are important, many of logistical factors are often they key to successfully deploying such a
system. In addition to creating ETL scripts to import the identified eBusiness information, negotiations
must take place with internal departments and external vendors to capture the required information
from internal and external web sites, and to deliver it on the desired frequency and with the proper
content to support technologies such as cookies and session variables.
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Sales & Distribution

A Pharmaceutical sales organization is unlike that in any other industry. Although some sales reps may sell
product contracts to hospitals and managed care organizations, most act in more of a marketing
capacity. Many pharmaceutical sales reps provide information to physicians and potential prescribers
by discussing product characteristics and benefits. The goal of these sales representatives is to influence
prescribing habits that may indirectly result in the sale of a product at the pharmacy. Some of the key
sales analysis challenges are broken out below.
Sales Force Analysis and Compensation

Challenge: Tied closely with finance data, sales performance ultimately drives sales compensation. It
is often difficult to integrate finance and sales information.
Approach: By creating a cross-reference key between financial indicators and purchased sales
performance information at the territory or sales representative level, it is possible to generate sales
force metrics to analyze sales performance as a whole. Subsequently, it becomes possible to
develop a compensation model that takes into account factors such as:
o Prescribers that work out of multiple offices
o Prescribers that move or go out of business
o Constantly evolving sales force
o Sales force organizational changes
This is possible only if information such as profit, cash-flow, samples, calls and details, marketing
program costs, NRX, and TRX are integrated and made available for access via an EDW.
Sales Force Support

Challenge: In the pharmaceutical industry, information is critical to the success of the sales
presentation process. Pharmaceutical sales representatives and managers look for information that
can provide insight into the management of the sales process. They need to know current business
conditions (e.g., new drug launches), internal measurements (e.g., percent to quota), external
measurements (e.g., percent of market), and why changes have occurred. They not only require a
detailed knowledge of the product and marketplace, but also insight into what sales approaches
and/or products are most readily accepted by a prescriber or organization.
Approach: Certainly, a product database with product specifications, clinical trial and patient
outcome results is an invaluable tool to the sales representative. When information such as this is
integrated with prescriber segmentation, and quintile / decile / target information a pharmaceutical
sales rep becomes empowered. An EDW provides a platform upon which to develop sales force
reporting that pushes business intelligence to the field in support of sales initiatives, marketing
campaigns, and targeted/focused selling methodologies.
The data must be integrated across purchased sales information, market research and marketing
data, pipeline news, technical product documentation, and internal financial and organization
information. This integrated view is then pushed to the field. Logistics are often a hurdle when
deploying a sales-force reporting application. Deployment may range from e-mail, file transfer,
off-line reporting, or even on-line reporting
Samples & Details

Challenge: Samples and details accounts for a large component of cost in pursuit of new and
continued business. Often, however, this information is difficult to obtain and/or integrate with the
resulting sales data. This makes it difficult to “fine-tune” a sales operation by minimizing cost and
maximizing sales.
Approach: By creating a cross-reference key, it becomes possible to integrate sales cost information
with sales performance data. By integrating internal and/or external sample and detail data with
internal and/or purchased sales information at a common key level (e.g., ME#, SL#, DEA#) it becomes
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possible to track pharmaceutical sales ROI. This enables sales analysts to not only regulate sample
and detail counts but also to experiment with changes. With integrated information it becomes
possible, for instance, to reduce the samples a prescriber receives and monitor the outcome. It also
makes it possible to determine if some prescribers receive so many samples that they don’t have to
prescribe the product at all. By evaluating sales rep to doctor associations, it is also possible to
determine who is delivering the message that modifies the doctor’s behavior and who could use help.
Business-to-Business
Challenge: Pharmaceutical companies that use Business-to-Business systems for customers to
place orders often experience difficulty both analyzing usage and acceptance of such systems as
well as the resulting order information.
Approach: By integrating business-to-business information with the EDW institutional sales
information may be analyzed. Furthermore, system usage and change analysis can be
investigated.
Inventory Analysis & Control

Challenge: As with manufacturing, inventory management is a crucial part of cost control. Samples
often expire in sales representative garages. What regions, districts, and territories have the hardest
time distributing inventory? How many samples are given out by geography and time? How much
inventory is expiring and where?
Approach: By integrating samples inventory information into the EDW along with expiration
information, it becomes possible to more effectively distribute and manage sales activities.
Additionally, analysis of such information may provide potential cost-management opportunities for
upper management.
Factory Sales
Challenge: It is often difficult to view purchasing trends at a national level let alone at a more
granular level.
Approach: By sourcing and consolidating information out of internal financial and order systems, it is
possible to analyze dollar and unit sales, credits dollars and units, and charge-backs for distributors
and institutional buyers.
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The Integration Advantage
To this point, this paper has detailed each of the individual components of a pharmaceutical business and
their respective information needs. Though important, this is only part of the overall solution. As important to
the overall success of the organization is the capacity for cross-functional data integration. This enables two
additional capabilities:
1) It allows a consolidated and complete picture of the company for upper management
2) It allows business components to interact more effectively with each other while reducing
the information barriers between the components.
The implementation of an EDW allows the organization to achieve the ultimate integration goal. By
integrating information from each business component and housing it in a manner that makes it accessible to
all with a common shared vision, it is possible to supply all components of the business with a single version of
“truth”.
Strategic Planning
An integrated EDW approach facilitates the ability to integrate disparate data sources for a complete
picture of the business. In addition, it helps strategic planners to use this more complete picture to steer the
company.
Strategic planning evolves when upper management begins using the EDW to benchmark, track campaigns,
analyze performance, and plan for the future. Based on their findings, marketers build a personalized,
strategic approach that takes pharmaceutical marketing directly to the consumer. An EDW enables the
organization to provide the customer information to other components of the organization. By sharing this
information with finance, R&D, sales, and upper management, the pharmaceutical organization can improve
tactical as well as strategic planning. Anyone accessing the database throughout the organization can see
and understand a customer's value to the organization as well as the products and services that may be of
interest to the customers. This allows them to make appropriate decisions on:
o Budgeting & Forecasting
o Cost Management
o Marketing & Sales
o Production Planning
o Research & Development
With everyone in the organization better equipped to understand and deliver customer value, true
strategic planning emerges.
Cross-Functional Integration
An EDW approach enhances the information interface between business organizations within a
pharmaceutical company. The benefits of this integration are broad reaching and may significantly impact
the business as a whole. It will ensure that metrics and measures are consistently reported across
organizations, while maintaining the specific “view” mandated by each business unit. For example
alignments for sales, marketing, and managed care may vary while the underlying data and metrics are
consistent. It will provide a centralized and common data dictionary or definition of information. Perhaps
most importantly, it will allow analysts from each organization to access information about other organizations
from a common information source. This enables business components to interact more seamlessly and have
access to more accurate and timely information. The net result is an improvement in overall corporate
efficiency and reduced corporate expenditures and costs.
Industry
Conclusion
Rapid changes in the pharmaceutical landscape have demanded that companies re-evaluate their IT
infrastructure and information delivery methods. Heavy competition for market share, as well as a variety of
other industry-driven factors has necessitated the integration of disparate source systems to provide a single
version of “truth”.
Although each organization has company-specific nuances that impact information integration, this
document provided and outlined an approach to satisfy these needs. The concepts addressed in this paper,
in conjunction with a strategic company vision will drive effective strategic decisions; enabling
pharmaceutical companies to continue to compete in an ever-evolving market.

Business Intelligence Framework For Pharmaceutical

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Business Intelligence Framework For Pharmaceutical

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Business Intelligence For Pharmaceutical

The Pharmaceutical Business

Figure 1: This figure displays the business flow of a pharmaceutical organization.

The Business Defined

The Information Challenge

The Enterprise Data Warehouse

Several additional key challenges are unique to the pharmaceutical industry:

Merger & Acquisition Analysis

Bids & Contracts

Testing & Clinical Trial Analysis

Supply Chain Analysis

Demographic Analysis and Segmentation

Geography, Payer & Prescriber Analysis

Sales & Distribution

Sales Force Analysis and Compensation

Sales Force Support

Samples & Details

Inventory Analysis & Control

The Integration Advantage

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