A pharmaceutical company consolidating customer databases, increasing back-office efficiency and improving access to timely sales data and financial reports.
Done.
By partnering with StayinFront, Unisys installed and integrated StayinFront Visual Elk for Life Sciences, a Sales Force Automation (SFA) system, to drive immediate bottom-line results for Sanofi-Aventis OTC Italia, the fourth largest pharmaceutical company in Italy and subsidiary of Sanofi-Aventis Group, one of Europe’s leading pharmas.
How Did Unisys Do It?
When Sanofi-Aventis Italia launched a two-year customer relationship management (CRM) initiative for its over-the-counter (OTC) division, the company recognized that effective sales force automation (SFA) capabilities were key to overall success. By automating workflows and administrative processes and improving the communication between field-based sales agents, professional promoters, customers, and back-office staff, the SFA system would lay the foundation for improved efficiency, better customer insight and increased business intelligence.
The business requirements for the SFA system were:
- full integration with back-office systems, including SAP
- elimination of customer data silos
- anytime, anywhere “availability” via PDAs for 110 mobile sales agents
- an easy user interface and set of functionalities compatible with the company’s best practice processes
- tools for reporting and statistical analysis
- immediate availability of aggregate statistics and reports in flexible formats for review by sales managers and back-office staff
Angelo Zanibelli
CEO and General Manager, Sanofi-Aventis OTC Italia
The stakes were high for the Italian project because the Sanofi-Aventis Group was looking to deploy a similar solution across all of its European operations. Not only did Sanofi-Aventis expect to develop and deploy a solution in just six months, they also expected to configure their system for a low total cost of ownership and to realize full ROI in the near term. Because of the unique business and technical requirements, Sanofi-Aventis sought a project team that could deliver specific functionality tailored for the pharmaceutical industry quickly and efficiently, while managing the overall scope of the project. Plus, they needed their project team to have real understanding of their business.
Results Delivered
Sanofi-Aventis chose the StayinFront-Unisys Italia team. Unisys provided the business process consulting, systems integration, project management, and maintenance and support, while StayinFront provided the Visual Elk for Life Sciences suite of CRM tools and deep product expertise.
A proven development approach
The Unisys and StayinFront approach was based on a modular and iterative methodology. Great emphasis was placed on scoping and prototyping phases, followed by rapid reviews and approvals. The phased approach was necessary to understand the specific needs of different types of users, and to ensure broad adoption. Key users were engaged to help define implementation and adoption issues and craft plans for addressing them. As a result of the highly collaborative approach, the project team developed a prototype within two months, while gaining buy-in from both end-users and senior executives. Because of the flexibility of Visual Elk for Life Sciences software and the project team’s deep expertise, the customization and configuration were completed with great efficiency.
“The idea of weekly and iterative workshops left us hesitant at the beginning, but at the end they turned out to be critical to our success,” said Roberto Bassi, who is responsible for software development and acquisition at Sanofi-Aventis Italia. “Agents and professional promoters were actively involved in the definition of the functional requirements. The new system was built from all of us together, and this has represented the success of the project.”
The solution gave field-based sales agents a powerful new tool for capturing and reviewing customer information. Customer profiles contain billing and ordering data, as well as qualitative information on points of sales, promotions and competitors, none of which had been available before. All of the information is available via PDA, so sales agents can access it easily wherever they go. Better information will lead to increased revenue, as sales managers and agents can identify top customers and focus on strengthening those relationships.
The solution also achieved major gains in efficiency by automating the validation of orders and other administrative tasks. In the past, it had been necessary for back-office staff to manually check and validate all submitted orders before they could be automatically managed by the billing and invoicing systems.
Salvatore Butti, Sales Director, Sanofi-Aventis OTC Italia, said, “The introduction of Visual Elk enables us to focus on our core business, by drastically reducing the low value-added activities of the back-office personnel.”
Because of the success of the project, Sanofi-Aventis Italia has realized many benefits, including:
- Fast operationalization of the company’s CRM vision and strategy
- Customer database integration and consolidation
- Improved organizational performance through increased efficiency
- New reporting capabilities to analyze current sales activity and take corrective actions
- Broad end-user adoption
Angelo Zanibelli
CEO and General Manager, Sanofi-Aventis OTC Italia
The system is now being considered for deployment across Europe. Today Sanofi-Aventis Italia sales agents and promoters have a deep knowledge of all of their customers—pharmacies, wholesalers, and cooperatives. The data is centralized and integrated so different areas of the company can now work in a concerted and synchronized way to reach customers. Those customers benefit from clear, consistent information from Sanofi-Aventis. The bottom line? Stronger customer relationships.
“We have given our sales forces—agents and professional promoters—statistical information and data on sales and revenue,” Salvatore Butti continued. “We now have at our disposal pre-defined reports, which users can easily personalize according to their needs through drag-and-drop operations. We have a great reporting tool for control and target selection.”
Angelo Zanibelli, Sanofi-Aventis OTC Italia General Manager, added: "We are fully satisfied by the work done. The Unisys and StayinFront team has delivered as promised: on time and on budget. Unisys has turned out to be not only a systems integrator, but also a strategic partner, which will surely help us in the achievement of our future objectives.”
About Sanofi-Aventis OTC Italia
Sanofi-Aventis Group provides millions of patients around the world with primary care, oncology, internal medicine and cardiovascular solutions. The company is the second largest pharmaceutical group in France, the seventh in Europe, and among the top 20 in the world. The Italian OTC Division is the largest Sanofi-Aventis unit in Europe and is ranked fourth in the Italian OTC market with first-class products and recognized brands, such as Enterogermina, Lisomucil, Tegens, Foille and Magnesia S. Pellegrino (2001market data).
