Collaborative sales planning is quickly becoming a key component in the ongoing transformation of leading life sciences commercial operations to leaner, more data-driven organizations, capable of shifting dynamically to capitalize on real-time market opportunities.

1. • Cognizant 20-20 Insights
Collaborative Sales Planning:
Adding a Dynamic Dimension
Executive Summary savings, improved data quality and access, a
more effective sales force, and greater top- and
Life sciences commercial operations are being
bottom-line benefits. While achieving collabora-
hard-hit by increasing cost pressures, growing
tive planning is challenging, it is not theoretical.
compliance requirements and demands for
Leading life sciences companies are planning
greater sales force effectiveness. These forces are
collaboratively today, with significant results.
also changing the nature of sales planning and its
role in transforming commercial operations. Collaborative Sales Planning:
In traditional sales planning models, planning Creating Business Opportunities
activities typically are based on a range of Collaborative sales planning makes commercial
disjointed and nonstandard business processes. operations more agile by making strategies and
That fragmentation creates longer implementa- plans dynamically responsive to changing market
tion cycle times, with resulting plans misaligned conditions. To accomplish this, collaborative sales
with real-time/unfolding market and regulatory planning builds on a range of innovative compe-
dynamics. Targets are not precise, data is difficult tencies and capabilities that unlock a variety of
to collect and distribute, and sales professionals new opportunities, including:
are not as effective as they should be.
• Dynamic brand/field allocation. Life sciences
Today’s market realities demand new agility companies can tie dynamism in brand strategy
in commercial sales planning. Processes to dynamism in resource allocation. As market-
must support the ongoing transformation of driven events unfold, they can more quickly
commercial operations in a world of smaller redesign alignment and targeting strategies
target populations and therapies. Sales and and adjust resources mid-cycle to recalibrate
marketing organizations must have the flexibil- and execute those initiatives. Commercial
ity, tools and processes to quickly create dynamic operations also can develop cross-business-unit
plans that can flex mid-cycle to take advantage of reporting relationships and create new terri-
the real-time perspectives and knowledge of sales tories that span multiple territories as events
professionals. Simultaneously, clear governance warrant.
and compliance boundaries, plus standardized • Localization. When field management is
and integrated business processes, must coexist empowered to make decisions based on local
— and even enable more agile responses to fast- needs and knowledge, the biopharma company
changing conditions. can base planning and strategizing more closely
on ground realities. Commercial operations can
These capabilities unleash the enormous poten-
also get real-time feedback on the impact of
tial benefits of collaborative sales planning: cost
cognizant 20-20 insights | march 2012

2. multichannel efforts and adjust strategies as • Lack of data and process integration: Dispa-
necessary for better results. rate and often disconnected systems manage
and support different parts of the sales and
• Cross-channelvisibility. Customer-centric,
planning workflow. This makes it difficult to
cross-channel visibility improves collabora-
tion across the sales and marketing organiza- quickly identify changing data and adapt neces-
tion and enables effective execution of brand sary processes.
and marketing strategies. Cross-team visibility • Poor enterprise visibility: With multiple
reveals all of the “touch- systems and data silos, sales professionals
Traditional sales points” the life science often cannot see the plans and activities of
support systems company has with a customer
or account so it can fine-tune
other sales teams and channels. This makes it
difficult, if not impossible, to achieve customer-
and processes often tactics such as the timing and centric views for more efficient and effective
stand in the way of content of sales calls. In turn, resource allocation.
achieving capabilities that marketing to improve
and
clarity enables sales
• Limited analytics-based decision-making:
Data trapped in silos across business units
that power product, resource and target
and disparate systems makes it challenging to
collaboration. allocations to reach brand deliver high-quality information at the point of
and sales objectives.
decision-making for sales professionals.
• Account-driven strategies. Visibility into
• Operational inefficiencies: Many manual,
account-level hierarchies and affiliations
disjointed and non-standard processes delay
enables commercial operations to adapt
commercial operations’ ability to identify and
quickly to launches of accountable care orga-
adapt to changing conditions, resulting in
nizations and other emerging managed care
longer cycle times for new initiatives and less
entities. Companies can capitalize on existing
ability to seize on market opportunities.
touchpoints and relationships with decision-
makers for more effective penetration of these • Poor data quality: Lack of standards and
accounts. Other tactical opportunities include non-uniform business data exchanges across
targeting specific accounts by creating a new, business units create data inconsistencies that
multiple product portfolio spanning multiple undermine plan effectiveness. Operational costs
territories. also increase because managing poor-quality
data is time consuming and labor intensive.
• Field visibility for analytics. Making analytics
available at decision points makes customer • Inflexible business rules management: While
interactions more effective and planning frameworks are required for governance and
decisions more information-based than intu- compliance, often these are too rigid to easily
ition-driven. It offers more substance for adapt to market changes and are not aligned
effective collaboration between the field and with local needs and realities.
home office, while making the field accountable
• Limited eco-system integration: Commercial
for alignment and targeting decisions. operations rarely can present a correlated and
consistent view of data across their ecosystem,
Overcoming Common Challenges to including human resources, training, sales
Collaborative Sales Planning operations, analytics, SFA, incentive compen-
Traditional sales support systems and processes sation, etc. Internal and field users often must
often stand in the way of achieving capabilities navigate many interfaces and applications and
that power collaboration. Instead of dynamic correlate data themselves from these disparate
agility, many existing sales tools are built on more systems. The lack of integration makes it chal-
static, less flexible processes that create issues lenging to treat analytics, sales planning
and obstacles. They include: and incentive compensation as interrelated
components, slowing initiatives and innovation.
• Complex reporting relationships: Sales repre-
sentatives with multiple product portfolios often Overcoming these obstacles begins with clarity
must meet an array of reporting requirements about where, when and how to derive the most
that lead to less correlated, less visible data value in moving to collaborative planning.
that in turn makes business and compliance Solutions supporting collaborative sales planning
management more complex. must include the following components:
cognizant 20-20 insights 2

3. • Consolidated platform and workflow of sales strategies and sales professionals more effective.
planning processes integrating data from Here’s one real-world example:
all applications and systems: Such integra- Challenge: A top-five global pharmaceutical
tion enables users both in the home office and organization with 9,000-plus users, 15 business
in the field to see the entire ecosystem from a units and 24 selling teams faced long cycle times,
single interface. Further, the whole ecosystem inconsistent data, frequent manual interven-
should be refreshed as data is collected and tion, rigid business rules and a general lack of
created. That means relevant data is available data transparency to the field. These challenges
to any authorized audience when and as it is generally stemmed from data being trapped in
needed, from field leadership to field managers a variety of silos, multiple systems performing
to sales professionals. Integration also makes different workflow tasks, and no regular updating
it easier for commercial operations to adopt of ecosystem applications.
new processes and alignment with greater
automation. Key collaborative innovations: The company
implemented a cloud-based comprehensive work-
• Efficiencies and effectiveness and getting flow to execute end-to-end processes, including
more and better data when and where it needs a standard integration framework to integrate
to be: This improves cycle time by driving data- upstream and downstream systems and stan-
driven decision-making. Uniform data standards dardized some of the key sales planning business
applied across integrated workflows improve processes. The solution offers dynamic product
quality data and ensure that compliance and and resource allocations; analytics-driven deci-
governance standards are met; yet greater sion-making; built-in compliance and targeting
automation alongside more visibility enables rules; and flexible alignment models. Other tools
use of more flexible business rules. include a maps-based graphical user interface
• Flexibility to support innovations: Applying field used to make changes visually, and a robust
industry best practices in optimizing and imple- home-office governance and business rules
menting solutions across mobile computing framework.
platforms continues to gain power, social media Results: The company achieved complete visibility
continues to gain credibility, and consumers into its business processes while gaining the flex-
will likely be increasingly important as targets. ibility to handle different resource alignment
Collaborative sales planning tools must be as scenarios based on market realities and merger
adaptable to these trends as they are to current situations. It reduced the sales planning cycle
developments. time by almost 60% while achieving a 100% ROI
• Cloud-based delivery: Collaborative planning on its initial solution investment, with savings of
delivered as a service enables a life sciences approximately 50% on the ongoing support costs.
company to gain powerful new capabilities, while Data quality was improved in the sales operations
eliminating capital investments and making eco-system through standard data interfaces,
operating costs predictable. Cloud solutions while robust validation rules led to reduced work
easily scale, are often easier to integrate with related to validation and quality control, resulting
existing applications, and inherently are more in significant bottom-line improvements.
effective at delivering data to and collecting data
from smart mobile devices, Web-based sources Collaborating Sales Planning: Meeting
and other cloud providers. Cloud solutions Commercial Operations Challenges Now
delivered by an experienced third-party service Gaining bottom-line results from collaborative
provider offer end-to-end management so sales planning can be achieved in months, as
that life sciences sales professionals can focus long as the commercial operations organization’s
on their core competencies of strategy and implementation methodology:
execution — not on technology management.
• Defines project priorities and scope.
Collaborative Sales Planning in Action: • Creates a phased implementation roadmap.
A Case Study • Establishes pilot programs.
Leading pharmaceutical companies already are • Manages ongoing data and services integration.
using collaborative sales planning to transform • Integrates collaborative planning with analytics
commercial operations by reducing expenses, and incentive compensation.
improving dynamic decision-making and making
cognizant 20-20 insights 3

4. Balancing speed of innovation with cost savings Collaborative sales planning is quickly becoming
and effectiveness is critical. A third-party service a best practice for adapting to and thriving under
provider with substantial life sciences consulting emerging market and regulatory forces. It is
expertise can help determine an optimal route to also a key component in the ongoing transfor-
collaborative planning. The benefits of customer- mation of life sciences commercial operations
centric views, faster information flows and to leaner, more data-driven organizations able
dynamic shifting of tactics and strategies are to shift and flex dynamically to capitalize on
gained even more expeditiously when the service real-time market opportunities. Given that it can
provider delivers collaborative functions as a be delivered relatively quickly and cost effective-
software service. ly, with minimal capital investment, life sciences
companies must make collaborative planning
core to their commercial operations today.
About the Author
Dhiren Patel is a Principal with Cognizant’s Enterprise Analytics Practice, leading the Collaborative Sales
Planning Solutions Practice. He can be reached at Dhiren.Patel@Cognizant.com.
Manav Malhotra is an Associate Principal with Cognizant’s Enterprise Analytics Practice, working within
the Collaborative Sales Planning Solutions Practice. He can be reached at Manav.Malhotra@Cognizant.
com.
About Cognizant Life Sciences
Cognizant’s Life Science Practice partners with 27 of the top 30 global pharmaceutical/biotech organi-
zations, in addition to serving companies in the medical devices, CRO and life sciences product sectors.
Whether it’s driving process improvements to your clinical operations, increasing sales and marketing
effectiveness, meeting regulatory requirements or enhancing drug safety, Cognizant is redefining the
way companies benefit from and experience global services. We enable business transformation by
delivering consulting, analytics, IT and business process support to fuel innovation and competitive
advantage.
Cognizant’s Enterprise Analytics Practice (EAP) combines business consulting, in-depth domain
expertise, predictive analytics and technology services to help clients gain actionable and measurable
insights and make smarter decisions that future-proof their businesses. The practice offers comprehen-
sive solutions and services in the areas of sales operations and management, product management and
market research. EAP’s expertise spans sales force and marketing effectiveness, incentives management,
forecasting, segmentation, multi-channel marketing and promotion, alignment, managed markets and
digital analytics. With its highly experienced group of consultants, statisticians and industry specialists,
EAP prepares companies for the future of analytics through its innovative “Plan, Build and Operate”
model and a mature “Global Partnership” model. The result: solutions that are delivered in a flexible,
responsive and cost-effective manner.
About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process out-
sourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in
Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry
and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50
delivery centers worldwide and approximately 137,700 employees as of December 31, 2011, Cognizant is a member of
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