A major pharmaceutical company faced a critical challenge in the management of one of its specialty drug divisions. A legacy reporting system that provided third party prescription data no longer provided the business functionality necessary to support management efforts.
Recent developments in the organization had perpetuated some environmental and application changes to the legacy reporting system, which include territory code translation, re-alignment of territory code, consolidating of the division and relocation of the hosting sites.
To solve this business challenge, the client engaged Helios & Matheson to perform a four week assessment on the existing program.
Using the System Delivery Framework (SDF) methodology, the Helios & Matheson assessment revealed a number of obstacles:
As part of the assessment deliverables, Helios & Matheson then outlined and highlighted recommendations to increase the functionality, usability and scalability of the legacy reporting system on all levels:
(Additional technical findings were discovered and documented.)
Included with the assessment findings, Helios & Matheson proposed an end-to-end development and enhancement solution for the client to consider. Utilizing its SDF, Helios & Matheson provided the client with the optimum combination of Quality, Duration and Cost. The SDF also segments an effort into three distinct phases (DEFINE, DESIGN and DELIVERY) with each phase consisting of a set of well-defined disciplines. At the core of the SDF was the Accelerated Design Approach (ADA). The ADA spans the DEFINE and DESIGN phases providing a comprehensive methodology for defining, designing and dimensioning enterprise capable distributed systems.
The proposed solution called for Helios & Matheson to outsource the development effort. The plan was for Helios & Matheson to build a Web Portal Service so division members could point, click and access their way through pertinent information.
Helios & Matheson assembled a nine member team and proposed fixed pricing on a five month initiative. The client agreed with the terms and the project commenced in April 2004.
Helios & Matheson regarded this project as an opportunity to demonstrate its expertise in Business Intelligence practices and processes. The objective was to produce a solution that would enable the client to:
The Stabilization/Integration Release of the Pharma Portal Project consisted of three phases over the course of a five-month period. The Define and Design Phases were used to capture requirements and finalize the system design. These were then followed by a Delivery Phase in which the Pharma Portal was developed and deployed. Some of the major in-scope deliverables included:
This Pharma Portal Project was a big success because it was not only completed on time and on budget, but it was considered one of the first projects to be accomplished within three corporate silos - Sales, Marketing and Finance.
The client now has a single source for all their data that is reliable and delivered in the format for each of the respective communities. They are now exploring how they can leverage various features and architecture for other applications and solutions.