Customer Success Story Of
AstraZeneca
Conference Activity Management
Industry regulations and corporate policies require healthcare companies to be transparent about how they conduct their business, especially how they partner and collaborate with physicians and institutions in efforts to educate the healthcare community and to conduct scientific and medical research.
This process is most often conducted through the organization of physician or ‘medical’ conferences. These types of conferences typically represent 20-25% of AstraZeneca’s marketing spending and thousands of such meetings are organized yearly. It is imperative to get a handle on the details of these conferences from an organizational reporting point of view in order to properly comply with governmental guidelines surrounding such matters.
- Reporting on physician speech details such as conference name(s) and topic(s) was unavailable
- Needed a system for tracking and managing physician speeches
- Was unable to track payments and compensation to physicians
#eba
Solution
+eBA workflow management forms and related approval processes were implemented to record, approve and report information on which physicians were invited and spoke at what conferences on behalf of what topics
+Detailed tracking of payments and transfers to physicians were set up
+The types of payments and transfers of value being reported include consulting fees, speaker fees, meals and travel in association with contracted services or in conjunction with a product or informational discussion, educational items, research and development, royalties, license fees, and ownership or investment interests.
Time to Implement
160
Hours
Result
1
Greatly reduced the administrative processes
2
Automated the manual steps involved in organizing meetings,
3
Enabled AstraZeneca to provide complete insight into the physician conferences and report on this data
Required by both internal and external audit bodies, allowing them to be in compliance with national and international regulations and reporting guidelines.
Campaign Price Approvals
Medicines no longer protected by patent approval require more active campaigns and promotions against generic alternatives, for example Nexium (“the purple pill”).
- Approvals for campaign pricing was a manual process
- Central documentation on price history was absent
- A digital and centralized system was required for effectively tracking campaign activity
#eba
Solution
+A price approval form and process was developed in eBA workflow management
+To request campaign prices and receive approvals based on pre-set rules and process flows.
+A history of price requests and approvals has been set up to be documented and saved by the eBA system.
Time to Implement
<40
Hours
Result
1
A faster and more agile pricing approval process has been built as a system
2
Greater control and visibility gained into a drug’s pricing history, improving productivity.
Acknowledgement of Recurring Policies
On an annual basis, AstraZeneca requires its employees to review, acknowledge or update a “conflict-of-interest” form, in accordance with the corporation’s policies.
This yearly recurring process was manual, paper-based, time-consuming and hard to properly audit.
- No system for the employees to use to create the required forms.
- Employees could not adequately track and store the required forms they filled
- Inability to report on the employee activity regarding form completion.
#eba
Solution
+An eBA conflict-of-interest approval form and process flow, integrated with master data from the company’s HR application, was created
+Automatically sends employees a notification on a yearly basis to review the corporate policy and update the company on any changes that may have occurred.
+A history of price requests and approvals has been set up to be documented and saved by the eBA system.
Time to Implement
<40
Hours