Novartis - Automated Commercial Analytics For Brand Uptake

Team members:

Deepthi Sanam, Senior Data Solutions Manager, Insights and Commercial Solutions, with:

• Anjani Sharma
• Piyush Kumar
• Vikneshwaran Sambanthan

Country: India

Organization: Novartis

At Novartis, we are reimagining medicine to improve and extend people’s lives. We are working hard to produce breakthroughs and address unmet needs for patients with devastating diseases, including genetic disorders and certain deadly cancers. We also are committed to ensuring our medicines reach as many people as possible.

Awards Categories:

• Best Acceleration Use Case
• Best Moonshot Use Case
• Best Data Democratization Program
• Best Approach for Building Trust in AI

Business Challenge:

Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people’s lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world’s top companies investing in research and development.

With 66 products in the market, Novartis has a unique set of challenges associated with each business group (product category), and unit (country). There was one specific challenge that surfaced in the Commercial Analytics space for a newly launched product in US - the arduous task of wrangling huge volumes of data and creating a storyboard on key KPIs for leadership teams to make well-informed decisions.

The cumbersome overhead of summarizing large data volumes of 7 billion records, copying data to Excel, and then creating visualizations consisting of 50+ different charts with millions of data points added to the already daunting burden faced by analytics team for analyses that required quick turnaround time.

Each dataset refresh demands a considerable amount of time and effort, leaving little room for other essential tasks. This inefficiency hinders productivity, dampens creativity, and restrains the agility necessary to adapt to dynamic market conditions. As a result, the need for a more streamlined and automated approach to data visualization arises to address the priority asks by the leadership team in a time-efficient way.

By embracing innovative solutions and leveraging modern technologies, businesses can alleviate these challenges, empowering analysts to focus on core tasks, while ensuring that data-driven insights are effectively communicated without excessive manual labor. Overcoming this hurdle will unlock greater efficiency and enhance the Marketing & Strategy team’s ability to make well-informed decisions, propelling them towards success in an increasingly competitive business landscape.

Business Solution:

To conquer the pressing business challenge of maintaining KPIs storyboard amid data wrangling and reducing overhead for developers, Novartis turned to Dataiku, a versatile data science platform. The decision to opt for Dataiku stemmed from its unique capability to seamlessly integrate various open-source packages, streamlining the entire data pipeline within a single platform. By centralizing data processing and visualization tasks in Dataiku, the organization could now harness its full potential while alleviating the burden on developers.

Dataiku's versatility and ability to integrate different open-source packages:

• Integrating Python libraries and Bokeh’s capability with Dataiku:

Leveraging the power of Python and Bokeh, Dataiku enabled the creation of interactive visualizations that effectively portrayed complex datasets with ease. Python's extensive libraries and Bokeh's interactive capabilities synergized seamlessly within Dataiku, empowering developers to craft compelling data-driven narratives. The intuitive visualizations conveyed insights in a captivating manner, facilitating better understanding and decision-making for end-users.

• Incorporation of Jinja templates:

Jinja templates efficiently converted the visualizations into web documents, which could be easily shared with end-users across the organization. The streamlined approach eliminated the need for time-consuming manual data copying to Excel or laborious storyboard creation, making information dissemination swift and hassle-free.

Dataiku’s ability to integrate different open-source package enhanced the tech stack efficiency. The seamless integration of Python and Bokeh enabled the creation of dynamic and interactive visualizations to understand the Pre-launch Market for the product, Competitive research, Source of Business, Patient Persistency, Prescriber universe; thereby enabling deeper data exploration and analysis.

Automation using Dataiku:

• Global Variables:
  • Using global variables in workflows, allowed teams to parameterize the processes eliminating the need to hard-code values that may change.
• Scenarios:
  • Use of scenarios eliminated the need of additional scheduling tool; and handled dependencies between different projects for a seamless data refresh.

With Dataiku at the helm, the organization experienced significant reduction in the data ingestion time by 600% from a week to matter of 5 hours and effort required to maintain up-to-date visualizations reduced from creating 35+ manual slides to the click of a button. The seamless integration of Python, Bokeh, and Jinja templates within the platform led to a highly efficient and scalable data pipeline. Developers now had the bandwidth to focus on more strategic tasks and innovation, while the end-users benefitted from a user-friendly and engaging data sharing experience.

As a result, the organization witnessed a transformation in the process of identifying the newly launched brand’s opportunity – patients and prescribers . Data-driven insights were no longer confined to static PowerPoint slides but instead, became interactive and actionable, fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making across the board. The successful implementation of Dataiku not only resolved the initial business challenge but also opened new possibilities for leveraging data as a strategic asset in the organization’s journey towards continued growth and success.

Day-to-day Change:

Significant value brought by Dataiku was the democratization of data through its user-friendly interface. With Dataiku’s intuitive features, data insights were made accessible to newly launched brand’s Leadership Team (Director and above roles) in an intuitive and easy to navigate manner with varying skill levels, not just limited to data experts or developers.

Some of the visualizations created are listed below.

This democratization of data fostered a data-driven culture within the organization, as decision-makers and 10+ teams across departments could now harness data for better decision-making, leading to improved operational efficiency and increased agility.

Additionally, Dataiku's implementation positively impacted risk management and governance through enhanced transparency. The platform provided end-to-end visibility into the data pipeline, ensuring that all stakeholders had a clear understanding of data sources, transformations, and visualizations. This transparency bolstered trust in the data and the insights derived from it, reducing the risk of erroneous decisions based on inaccurate or misleading information. With increased transparency, the organization was better equipped to manage risks, identify potential challenges, and implement robust governance mechanisms.

In conclusion, Dataiku's value in addressing the business challenge was multi-faceted. It revolutionized team efficiency, unleashing speed and agility by automating tasks and freeing up developer resources. The enhanced tech stack efficiency empowered the organization to delve deeper into data analysis, extracting valuable insights for informed decision-making. Dataiku's user-friendly interface democratized data access, enabling a data-driven culture that permeated throughout the organization. Moreover, the platform's transparency elevated risk management and governance, ensuring that decisions were grounded in accurate and trustworthy information. Overall, Dataiku's implementation not only conquered the initial business challenge but also laid the foundation for sustained growth, innovation, and data-driven success.

Business Area Enhanced: Marketing/Sales/Customer Relationship Management

Use Case Stage: In Production

Value Generated:

The successful implementation of Dataiku in addressing the business challenge brought forth significant value to the organization. First and foremost, the automation achieved through Dataiku's streamlined data pipeline significantly reduced the manual efforts and resources previously required for maintaining PowerPoint presentations and creating visualizations. With the entire process now automated, developers could allocate their time and expertise towards more strategic commercial analytics for brand uptake, driving innovation and accelerating project timelines.

Moreover, the one-click solution to obtain the latest data in the form of visualizations revolutionized the way insights were accessed and shared across the organization. This newfound agility allowed decision-makers to access real-time information with ease, empowering them to make informed and timely choices that were crucial for the business's success. No longer burdened by tedious data extraction and visualization processes, end-users could simply click a button to access the most up-to-date and interactive visualizations, enhancing collaboration and promoting data-driven discussions.

The value generated by this use case success story extended beyond immediate efficiency gains. By centralizing data processing and visualization within Dataiku, the organization cultivated a data-driven culture that permeated throughout the company. Employees at all levels now had access to data insights in a user-friendly format, promoting data literacy and fostering a deeper understanding of the organization's performance and challenges. This newfound data empowerment led to a more informed and engaged workforce, enabling them to contribute more effectively to the company's goals and objectives.

Furthermore, the interactive nature of the visualizations, facilitated by Python and Bokeh, enriched data exploration and analysis. Decision-makers could now delve deeper into the trend of patient universe and their demographics for existing market brand uncovering hidden patterns and trends in the patient Journey that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. This heightened level of insight not only influenced day-to-day operations but also informed strategic planning and long-term business strategies.

Beyond internal operations, the value generated by this use case success story had a positive impact on external stakeholders as well. The Jinja templates facilitated the seamless sharing of visualizations in web documents, enabling efficient communication with clients, partners, and other external entities. The ability to present data-driven insights in a visually appealing and interactive format enhanced the organization's reputation for data proficiency and credibility, ultimately strengthening business relationships and driving growth opportunities.

In conclusion, the value generated by the implementation of Dataiku in this use case was multi-faceted. The automation and one-click solution streamlined data processing and visualization, empowering developers, and end-users alike. The organization's data-driven culture was enriched, leading to better decision-making, and fostering innovation. Externally, the ability to share compelling visualizations strengthened the organization's position in the market, paving the way for future success and growth. Overall, the success story showcased how Dataiku's versatility and capabilities drove transformative change, making data-driven insights more accessible, actionable, and influential across the entire organization.

Value Brought by Dataiku:

Dataiku proved to be a game-changer for the business challenge, delivering immense value across multiple dimensions. First and foremost, Dataiku's implementation brought unparalleled speed and agility to the organization. By automating the process and creating visualizations, the platform significantly increased analytics team’s efficiency. Developers were no longer burdened with manual data processing and visualization tasks, enabling them to channel their skills and expertise towards more strategic initiatives. This newfound efficiency translated into accelerated project timelines, fostering innovation, and unlocking the full potential of the workforce.

Moreover, Dataiku's versatility and ability to integrate different open-source packages enhanced the tech stack efficiency. The seamless integration of Python and Bokeh enabled the creation of dynamic and interactive visualizations, enabling deeper data exploration and analysis. This enhancement in the tech stack facilitated better decision-making and empowered end-users to extract valuable insights from the data effortlessly. Dataiku's powerful capabilities thus fortified the organization's ability to leverage data as a strategic asset.

Value Type:

• Improve customer/employee satisfaction
• Reduce cost
• Save time
• Increase trust

Value Range: Hundreds of thousands of $