This article will focus on how life science and healthcare companies can leverage the significant innovations in mobile devices, in memory computing, and realtime analytic technologies to drive down the cost of healthcare and improve the accuracy and availability of information for business users, clinicians, physicians, nurses, and patients. These innovations will enable the rapid analysis of vast amounts of data to deliver actionable insights that previously took hours or even days to achieve, thus enabling a competitive business advantage and a superior patient outcome.

1. Business Strategy
Analytics, Mobility and In-memory—Empowering Life Science and Healthcare
Companies with Actionable Insights at the Speed of Business
Andy De and Joe Miles
Joe Miles
Joe Miles utilizes his industry operations and software application experience from across the health sciences value chain to lead SAP’s
Health Science direction in North America. Whether working with companies on global regulatory compliance, supply chain operations
or improving patient outcomes, Joe has helped health science organizations enable key business processes to achieve their operational
objectives, global compliance mandates and/or strategic financial goals. This would include automating business processes that improve
corporate performance by reducing operational inefficiencies and, more recently, collaborating with organizations from across the
healthcare value chain to improve overall patient outcomes. Joe has a Masters Degree in Operations Management from Loyola University
of Chicago and a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.
Andy De
Andy De is the Global Head of Solutions Marketing for Health-sciences at SAP. In this role, he leads the go-to-market strategy and
planning, thought leadership, messaging and positioning, analyst, media and press relations, social media strategy and execution, sales
and demand enablement for SAP’s offerings targeted at Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices and Bio-Tech companies and Healthcare
Providers. Andy holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bombay, and a Masters Degree in
Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida. He has a Masters Degree in International Business from the Tel Aviv
International School of Management (TISOM) and has earned his MBA in General Management, with a specialization in Business Strategy
and Marketing, from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.
Disclosure: The authors are employees of SAP
Correspondence: joseph.miles@sap.com Citation: iHealth Connections, 2011; October [ePub ahead of print]
This article will focus on how life science and healthcare companies can leverage the significant innovations in mobile
devices, in memory computing, and realtime analytic technologies to drive down the cost of healthcare and improve
the accuracy and availability of information for business users, clinicians, physicians, nurses, and patients. These
innovations will enable the rapid analysis of vast amounts of data to deliver actionable insights that previously took
hours or even days to achieve, thus enabling a competitive business advantage and a superior patient outcome.
The global healthcare market is going through a time of tremendous 49 % in 2082.
volatility and change. Reimbursement mechanisms are getting • Federal spending on Medicare (net of beneficiaries’ premiums) and
revamped, reduced, or eliminated as governments look to reduce or Medicaid should rise from 4 % of GDP in 2007 to 7 % in 2025, 12 %
stop the growth in healthcare spending. Markets are changing in 2050, and 19 % in 2082.2
dramatically as patients are presented with newer and less expensive • A shift from a ‘pay-for-services’ to a ‘pay-for-performance’ model
means of receiving their healthcare products and services. that will base reimbursement rates on patient outcomes is predicted.
Furthermore, governments, organizations, and companies are
looking to the future to create innovative ways of leveraging new Ironically, the increasing cost of healthcare is occurring at a time of
technology, models, and information to improve patient outcomes tremendous innovation in information technology (IT) and personal
while reducing the cost of care. devices across the health science value chain. There are a variety
of new technologies that are poised to create tremendous
• Drug companies analyze 5,000–10,000 compounds, spend around innovations, including the following.
$1 billion over 12–15 years and leverage as many as 6,000 people to
develop one Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug.1 • The growth and use of smartphones continues; current estimates
• Total spending on healthcare is projected to rise from 16 % of gross predict that there are around 5 billion in use worldwide today, that is
domestic product (GDP) in 2007 to 25 % in 2025, 37 % in 2050, and almost one per person.
1 © TOUCH BRIEFINGS 2011

2. Analytics, Mobility and In-memory
• ‘In-memory’ information processing is replacing disk with memory (e.g. a hospital, a plant floor, or a distribution facility), resulting in an
and is leveraging the power of the next generation of hardware that interaction unlike any previously attempted. It is the convergence of
uses multi-core architecture with massive parallel scaling across many these various technologies and capabilities that, when presented with
blade servers to dramatically increase processing power at a low cost traditional problems of ‘big data’ that sit inside or outside their
of entry. business systems, creates a tremendous opportunity for innovation in
• Next-generation devices, such as the Apple iPad, are providing driving new and improved methods for reducing the cost of care while
a significantly more compelling interaction through the use of improving patient outcomes.
high-definition video or interactive applications between a healthcare
practitioner and nurses or patients, in either ‘connected’ or In-memory
‘disconnected’ mode. The volume of data that organizations have to manage is growing at an
exponential rate. It is estimated that four exabytes (four million
Despite all the advances in technology and information, health terabytes) of unique information will be generated this year alone, which
science organizations still have tremendous challenges to face in is more than the previous 5,000 years combined. However, the time
improving organizational decision-making that optimizes decisions and businesses have to make relevant decisions is shrinking and the
results in a positive patient and/or business outcome: complexity of the IT infrastructure required to make those decisions is
becoming unmanageable. SAP offers an in-memory computing solution
• An Economist survey3 determined that only 20 % of business people that moves data from old disk technology to local solid state memory.
surveyed had the right information to make a decision, while 80 % SAP’s solution leverages groundbreaking innovations in software
said they had either too little or too much. Furthermore, 75 % stated and hardware so that massive volumes of data can be instantly and
that they made the wrong decision because they did not have cost-effectively managed and analyzed. In-memory enables
sufficient information. organizations to combine realtime transaction analysis with billions of
• Large pharmaceutical companies are challenged by patent expiry, historical records to dramatically improve existing business processes,
as the US alone will lose $133 billion in revenue of branded drugs4 with no impact on the response time and/or performance of the
from 2012 to 2016, and a constrained capacity for bringing new, enterprise system, to enable a new breed of innovative solutions
innovative blockbuster drugs to the marketplace while confronting (see Figure 1).
cannibalization by overseas generic competitors.
• The traditional sales and marketing models for life science companies Figure 1 highlights how SAP’s in-memory solution, SAP HANA, provides
are outdated and increasingly less effective in today’s market. New the perfect starting point for organizations that need to analyze large
legislation such as the 2010 US Sunshine Act to ensure transparency volumes of transaction and/or historical data in realtime.
in the manufacturer, physician, and patient relationship will have a Furthermore, SAP HANA can leverage existing IT infrastructure such
significant impact on these models and processes going forward. as data marts or data warehouses, and it can also go directly to the
• Healthcare reform has increased costs and reduced margins for source systems to avoid the time-consuming and costly effort of building
the healthcare manufacturer but has simultaneously provided a these structures.
tremendous opportunity for providers through a national healthcare
program that can potentially add tens of millions of patients into the In addition, by running in parallel to SAP Business Suite applications,
system who were previously unable to afford healthcare services. SAP HANA allows business users to query large volumes of data in
realtime without having to wait for scheduled reports to run or build
Clearly, these are just some of the numerous challenges that are changing traditional data warehouses to be populated with aggregated data.
the health science market and demand more innovative approaches to From a life science perspective, SAP is working with customers on a
solving the variety of illnesses. Physicians need better access to data, variety of business scenarios where SAP HANA can provide
patients need high-efficacy and cost-effective treatments, manufacturers tremendous value, including the following.
need to get products to market faster with greater understanding of the
impact of the therapy on a patient group, and, ultimately, the healthcare • Realtime Sales and Margin Analysis by Customer, Product, and
industry requires timely, accurate, and actionable insights to make better Region Organizations are continually trying to determine their
decisions, at a lower cost and a superior therapeutic outcome. level of success and understanding sales and margin performance
is critical to that success. SAP HANA can provide realtime or
Why In-memory, Mobility, and Analytics for the near-realtime sales, profitability, and margin analysis at a customer,
Healthcare Industry? region, or product level, delivered to any device including an iPad,
SAP, as a provider of enterprise applications to the life science smartphone, or laptop computer, and companies inside and outside
manufacturer and healthcare provider industries, has been providing life sciences see the value of this scenario.
innovations to the industry that have improved productivity, reduced • Complaint Tracking Life science companies are required to track any
costs, and increased margins for four decades. More recently, SAP’s complaint related to the products or drugs that they sell. This is
innovations in the area of in-memory, mobility, and analytic challenging because complaints can originate in a variety of areas and it
technologies have provided organizations with the ability to analyze may not be clear if a complaint has been previously analyzed
billions of records in sub-second response times and deliver that and resolved. A large medical device company saw an opportunity to
role-based analysis to any individual on any device and at any location use SAP HANA to connect directly to a variety of source applications,
iHEALTH CONNECTIONS 2

3. Business Strategy
Figure 1: SAP HANA Overview of enterprise data. Hence SAP HANA serves as a non-disruptive,
realtime attachment to the SAP suite of products.
Other applications SAP business objects
Mobility
Much of the world today operates in a mobile environment – and business
MDX SQL SQL BICS
is no exception. Business processes no longer require people to be tied to
their desktops or landlines. Operating at the ‘speed of business’ efficiently
SAP HANA and cost-effectively demands that business executives, managers, and
employees perform a variety of tasks anywhere, anytime and on any device.
Modeling For example, life science companies, like many industries, now depend on
studio
mobile technologies to complete from the most trivial to the most complex
of transactions. Whether it is a North America-based pharmaceutical
In-memory computing engine executive who is traveling through Asia and has to approve a spend
Calculation and Row & column requisition for their organization, or a customer service person, because a
planning engine storage medical device manufacturer receives an alert that their device is required
for an emergency procedure, life science companies need to operate in
realtime and need to manage their mobile devices, transactions, and
Realtime replication applications in a compliant, cost-effective, and secure manner. Specifically,
Data services
services
SAP’s Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) provides a mobile platform that
can transform the enterprise in a variety of interrelated ways including
the following.
• Delivering an enterprise mobility platform that supports and
SAP business suite SAP NetWeaver BW Third party
manages SAP and/or third-party applications on mobile devices. In
addition, SAP has mobile device management solutions to manage
corporate-issued or personal devices in terms of device and data
as well as existing enterprise data warehouses, to conduct text-based security. Delivering SAP mobile applications to our customers that
analysis of existing complaints to determine whether they had can be deployed quickly and easily, yet still enabling data and
previously handled anything similar. This process eliminates any time- business process integrity and security across end-to-end business
consuming effort and immediately directs users to the corrective action processes compliant with industry standards.
plan that was put into place to resolve the reason for the complaint. • Enabling a corporate mobile ‘app store’ that will allow users to simply
• Clinical Research A clinical research organization maintains terabytes and easily download mobile applications.
of clinical and protocol information and can take hours or days to run • Providing a secure device management environment that can wipe
simple queries against the data. SAP Life Sciences worked with a devices clean if lost or stolen while also providing ‘best-in-class’
clinical research company to merge two tables of 431 million records enterprise device management capabilities.
and 161 million records, respectively. A standard clinical query was
run against the data that had taken around 47 minutes to run and the Figure 2 highlights how SAP provides the most comprehensive mobility
SAP HANA application ran the query in just 1.78 seconds. platform that is built on the ‘4 Cs’ including the following.
In summary, SAP HANA enables the following. • Connect. The platform is optimized to connect not only with SAP
Business Suite but also with any other third-party applications
• Speed and power of in-memory processing—realtime insight into and/or data sources. Mobile applications should not be confined to
business operations without the delay. the application boundaries and need to provide people- and
• Flexible modeling and calculation capabilities—complete insight process-centric views of data to be successful. This platform enables
based on huge volumes of detailed information. a mash-up of application data, irrespective of source.
• Leveraging a variety of SAP or non-SAP data sources, eliminating the • Create. SAP delivers mobile applications and also allows partners
need to build complex and costly data warehouses, also providing or third parties to build applications that they believe add value to
the flexibility to connect to existing data stores if available. the organization. Furthermore, SAP’s mobile platform also provides the
• Flexible and detailed data to answer any query—lower total cost of ability for life science customers to build their own apps through the use
ownership (TCO) by reducing IT complexity. of the software development kit and design studio that are included.
• Consume. Employees and customers want to use mobile applications
SAP delivers SAP HANA solutions that empower business users from the device of their choice. Our mobility platform makes it easy
at all levels to conduct immediate ad hoc data analyses and transaction to support a variety of devices so life science companies can pick the
processing using massive amounts of realtime data for expanded device that is best suited to their business process without worrying
business insight. SAP HANA frees up IT resources, lowers the cost of about whether they need to, for example, support an Apple,
operations, and provides a ‘game-changing’ capability in the analysis BlackBerry or Android mobile operating system.
3 iHEALTH CONNECTIONS

4. Analytics, Mobility and In-memory
Figure 2: SAP’s Mobility Platform
C
Create
Mobile SDK
Connect Eclipse Consume
Applications
Databases Partn and custom applications
Partner
J2EE connector
architecture
SA
SAP and Sybase applications
Web services
Software Unwired Mobile
applications platform services
Files
Management console Afaria
Control
• Control. Comprehensive security and manageability are critical for performance indicators (KPIs) with actionable insights and work flows
successful mobility strategies and SAP delivers best-in-class (e.g. time and expense approvals) to executives and line-of-business
capabilities so that organizations can manage their devices (LOB) managers for rapid, right-time decisions, thus improving
securely and cost-effectively. SAP’s Afaria product provides an enterprise performance; and
industry-leading mobile device management solution that helps • bringing all data in an enterprise within the reach of decision-makers
secure and manage mobile devices and applications. in seconds, enabling right-time decisions at the speed of business to
outperform the competition.
Specifically, SAP’s mobility solutions can enable value in the life science
and healthcare industry by: Analytics
The term ‘business analytics’ often conjures up visions of some sort of
• enabling employees to consume realtime relevant content anytime, reporting that informs about past events. Such reporting comes too late
anywhere, on any device; to make a difference and the data cannot always be trusted. These
• delivering relevant content from internal and external sources approaches are outdated and ineffective because they provide no
(e.g. IMS and POS data) for salespeople and executives to opportunity to initiate a change to prevent negative occurrences.
stay current with trends and competitive intelligence, thus
improving productivity; Conversely, SAP offers a much broader view of business analytics that
• proactively detecting, sensing, and responding to manufacturing, goes far beyond ‘reporting yesterday’s news’ to answer key questions,
service, and supply chain exceptions; such as: What is happening now? Why is it happening? What will happen
• alerting supply chain, manufacturing, and service personnel to often in the future? The ability of an organization to answer these questions in
unforeseen exceptions (orders, inventory, shipments, equipment realtime or near-realtime can be a competitive differentiator. Realtime
breakdowns, availability of supplies and qualified personnel), and analytics can be the difference between success and failure of an
enabling root-cause analysis and resolution to address these organization, and facilitate a company to understand, decide, and act
exceptions before they become customer issues; with confidence to enable their business to ‘run smarter.’
• empowering executives and managers with accurate, realtime
actionable insights at the speed of business; The first step to running smarter is to know your business. What does it
• delivering accurate, realtime, role-based analytics and key mean to know your business?
iHEALTH CONNECTIONS 4

5. Business Strategy
• Access all relevant business information – in any way, and anywhere. and faster’ than their competitors and lets them create processes
Access is a complex first step because the information usually comes that are truly differentiating in their ability to create a competitive
from many different sources internally and/or externally. advantage over the competition. Deployed across a common
• Trust the information that you have access to. SAP enables you to business process, organizations can leverage the synergies that are
view the quality rating of the information and where it is coming from. aligned across the in-memory, mobile, and analytic technologies.
Therefore you can choose how reliable the information is. Trust also Specifically, the inherent nature of the technologies creates these
comes from having a clear understanding of the current risk levels benefits, as summarized below.
and the compliance thresholds needed to be maintained and the
status of compliance programs. To truly know your business you • Leveraging the columnar data stores and the ability to manage
should know the risks you are taking as you are making decisions and extremely large data sets, SAP’s in-memory HANA application lets
taking actions. companies and their business users query huge data sets (dozens of
• Information must be delivered in context, regarding what you are trying terabytes) with sub-second response times to enable access and
to do at the moment you are trying to execute it. This is role- and subsequent iterations on data unlike anything that has been done in
industry-dependent. To have true meaning the information must be the past.
delivered in the right way, at the right time, quickly, and easily. • Market dynamics have reduced the cost of memory and processing
power that has correspondingly made this a very cost-effective
The second step toward running smarter is ensuring every person in your scenario that can add tremendous value to a business. For instance,
organization can decide with confidence. This means that individuals clinicians can review large sets of clinical data across the Internet
decide based on aligned performance goals and according to a plan without significant delays due to data size and/or access latency while
that will achieve success. reducing the time, cost, and complexity of creating views into simple
or complex data structures and sources.
• Deciding with confidence means you are deciding after you understand • Financial executives can understand, at the earliest point possible,
business impacts, leveraging sophisticated but easy-to-use ‘what-if’ the performance of their company in the areas of sales, margin, and
and predictive capabilities to predict future directions. profitability. SAP’s HANA analytic engine can analyze tens of
• Deciding with confidence also means a decision must be reached in terabytes of data in realtime, calculate appropriate metrics for profit
the light of any risk, balancing risks and opportunities. In other words, and margin at a product, customer, region, or contract level, and
access to the risk information and the potential growth opportunities, deliver the information to executives via SAP’s SUP to any device at
and the ability to compare them, is imperative. Companies that know any location in the world.
their businesses can assess the information holistically to create the
most accurate plans, minimize risk in the decisions they make, and SAP’s ability to deliver business analytics resulting from
maximize customer focus easily and intuitively. high-performance analysis of terabytes of data that can be delivered to
any individual using any device anywhere in the world is unmatched in
Finally, the third step highlights the need to act boldly – to do this the marketplace today and provides organizations with an opportunity
you must: to provide tremendous competitive advantages through greater insights
about their performance at the earliest point possible.
• respond instantly to events as they unfold – the moment something
happens you must know about it and respond instantly (e.g. in the event Promising Areas of Value Delivery with Analytics,
of a product recall, stock out, plane cancellation, terrorist act, etc.); Mobility, and In-memory in Health Sciences
• collaborate with your team and network to take coordinated action SAP is partnering with industry leaders in life sciences and healthcare to
on the best decision (e.g. decide the most efficient way to pull all toys deliver game-changing value through a combination of in-memory,
that contain lead, redirect flights because of adverse weather, mobility, and analytics that rapidly delivers deep business insights to
etc.); and executives and users anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Some of the
• learn from past actions and other best practices, constantly monitor high-value use cases and scenarios that these leaders are adopting are
risk levels, and adapt business operations accordingly. listed here:
Analytics, Mobility, and In-memory Together— Increasing Revenues and Margins—Improving Sales
Why Is the Synergy Game-changing? Performance with Predictive Sales Analytics
In the past, it has been fairly commonplace for companies to The Business Challenge
evaluate and appraise analytics, mobility, and in-memory as Vice Presidents of Sales at life science companies are challenged today
disparate areas of innovation. However, visionary leaders across by a lack of visibility into revenues and margins by customer, product,
multiple industries, including health sciences, now see the game- and channel. This impacts their ability to optimize customer and channel
changing synergies enabled by the combination of analytics, responsiveness, pricing and promotion, revenues, and margins. For
mobility, and in-memory. Deployed together, these three example, limited and/or delayed visibility into the sales impact from new
technologies will not only accelerate business processes but will product launches at a territory and sales rep level prohibits organizations
drive actionable insights in realtime to any device, at any location, from realigning sales territories, if needed, to maximize the window of
and to any individual. This enables organizations to ‘run smarter profitable opportunity from a new product.
5 iHEALTH CONNECTIONS

6. Analytics, Mobility and In-memory
The Value Delivered by In-memory, Mobility, and Analytics margins. Most of all, getting life-impacting drugs and devices safely and
Deploying SAP’s in-memory, analytics, and mobility solutions enables securely to hospitals, pharmacies, physicians, and patients would drive
life science companies to aggregate and analyze large volumes of higher customer satisfaction and patient safety and bolster brand
sales, point-of-sale, prescription, or forecasted demand data by customer, reputation and equity.
product, and channel, as well as to determine what, if any, impact they
have had on cost and margin. The ability to simulate scenarios and Enhancing Patient Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Safety
run what-if analyses on very large data sets enables testing of multiple through Proactive Complaint Management
pricing and contract discount/rebate models before execution. These The Business Challenge
deep insights can potentially enable higher volumes of sales at optimal Patient safety is paramount for the FDA, biopharma companies, device
price/discount/rebate structures and deliver higher revenues and margins manufacturers, patient advocacy groups, and, most importantly, the
while maximizing the window of profitable opportunity for new drugs patients themselves. Complaints handling not only provides direct
and devices. Delivering these insights via mobile devices to sales leaders feedback to manufacturers about product safety but also helps them
empowers them to make right-time decisions in response to unforeseen improve their products and services over time. In the US alone,
events such as changes in demand, competitive product launches, non-compliance penalties include individual fines in excess of $100
changes in prescription behavior, etc., while meeting their sales targets. million annually, and often pertain to lack of complaint handling
procedures and processes, including inadequate handling of complaints
Enhance Customer Service, Patient Safety and Supply and failure to submit reports properly.
Chain Efficiency—Enabling Reliable Order Promise
through Accurate Demand and Inventory Visibility The Value Delivered by In-Memory, Mobility, and Analytics
The Business Challenge Deploying SAP’s in-memory, analytics, and mobility solutions in
Supply chain leaders, demand and supply planners, and sales leaders in conjunction with a complaint tracking system can help life science
life science companies are often challenged by an inaccurate picture of companies proactively monitor, detect, sense, analyze, and respond to
the finished goods inventory by product, channel, and distribution center. customer complaints. The ability to aggregate and analyze large
This minimizes their ability to consistently make order commitments to complaint data volumes can ensure that patterns and trends are
their customers or take advantage of unforeseen demand opportunities monitored, detect root causes and their financial and product safety
(inability of competitors to fulfill orders, disease or pandemic outbreaks, implications, and trigger corrective and preventive action (CAPA) and
etc.). Also, the lack of near-realtime demand or the ability to replan adverse event management work flows and processes to alleviate these
demand on a daily basis (versus weekly, monthly or quarterly ) further complaints before they become significant issues or invite penalties and
exacerbates these challenges. Life science manufacturers often carry fines. Rich analytics enable deep insights into historical complaints data,
huge inventory buffers to compensate for this lack of accurate visibility quality and risk analysis, and their sales impact. Deploying a rapid
into demand and supply and cannot sense and respond fast enough response complaints management system would help life science
when unforeseen events happen, resulting in lost revenues and, more companies improve customer loyalty and retention and have a positive
importantly, the inability to deliver life-saving drugs and devices to impact on the company’s brand while assuring high levels of patient and
patients who need them. It is not surprising that life science companies product safety.
carry 100–300 days of inventory on average, tying up billions of dollars of
working capital that is by far the largest of any industry. Value Delivered by SAP’s Innovation in In-memory,
Analytics, and Mobility—A Customer Success Story
The Value Delivered by In-memory, Mobility, and Analytics The advent of the Apple iPad as a tactile touch-sensitive content
Deploying SAP’s in-memory, analytics, and mobility solutions to consumption mobile device is significantly impacting the way sales reps
augment current supply chain planning solutions delivers deeper, deliver content, presentations, and data to doctors, clinicians, and
faster, and more accurate business insights that are not feasible nurses. Not only is the content delivered in a more compelling manner
with today’s demand-planning tools. Leveraging the columnar data via the iPad (and similar tablet devices), but it also improves the
structure and running queries on large data volumes in-memory productivity and efficiency of the sales rep. A leading medical device
can speed up computing and planning processes by as much as company was challenged with improving sales productivity while
100 times. Faster and more accurate demand plans, realtime what-if leveraging the significant investment that they had recently made in the
scenario analysis, and the ability to make reliable order promises Apple iPad. The organization had begun to see the positive impact of
(available-to-promise/capable-to-promise) anytime, anywhere, on mobile the iPad but they needed an enterprise-level mobile platform to develop
devices of choice, become eminently feasible for life science companies. and manage mobile applications on all their enterprise devices while
Integration with financial data, also in realtime or near-realtime, would maintaining appropriate access and security in a cost-effective manner.
enable business users and executives to immediately understand the
financial implications of missed orders, changes in demand and supply, Furthermore, the sales analytics information was distributed across a
and inability to fulfill as planned what is clearly not feasible today. These variety of source systems and integrating the data into a cohesive and
business insights would then empower their sales executives and supply integrated view was extremely difficult, if not impossible. Much of the
chain and manufacturing leaders to not only sense and respond to information was siloed, lacked any business context, and had lost a lot of
unforeseen changes at the speed of business but also exploit revenue its value given the time it took to assemble, aggregate, and distribute
opportunities faster than the competition without compromising on the reports.
iHEALTH CONNECTIONS 6

7. Business Strategy
The medical device company needed to improve the quality and by the company.
timeliness of the ‘sales briefcase’ information so that their sales team • It provided a robust, actionable view of sales and service information
could drive revenues and improve productivity. Information needed to that not only drives revenue uplift but also enables greater flexibility
be current and comprehensive and reflect the multifaceted view of in deploying resources across the service environment.
hospitals, physicians, and patients so that they could have a holistic view • SAP’s SUP enabled the users to run in a connected or disconnected
of their customers. Also, this medical device organization had patient model that was critical for their organization, owing to the lack of
registration information associated with their implantable medical access to the Internet for most of their hospital customers.
device product lines. Incorporating the patient registration data into the • It provided an integrated view of the inventory across the sales and
day-to-day sales briefcase would significantly improve sales force service processes while also enabling improved visibility into future
productivity and effectiveness. demand through what-if and scenario analyses.
• It enabled greater visibility and understanding of complaints and/or
SAP worked with the IT and business users at the medical device service requests, positively impacting customer satisfaction and
company and developed a comprehensive solution for their sales, loyalty while mitigating risks associated with product safety.
service, and analytics requirements, with measurable benefits. • Further development in the foreseeable future will provide the
ability to integrate the patient registration information with the rest
• Time taken, complexity, and cost were significantly reduced by of the sales and service information to better understand the roles
leveraging the SAP HANA application to connect with the various and impacts of the various primary care, referring, implanting, and
source systems to analyze the large data sets in sub-seconds and follow-up physicians that this medical device deals with, across the
provide role-based actionable insights in the form of KPIs, metrics, many thousands of hospitals, with an anticipated positive impact on
and analysis, delivered to the Apple iPad, for the sales and service sales and service personnel productivity.
areas of the business.
• SAP’s SUP provided a mobile platform that not only enabled an app Ultimately, the combined power of the SAP in-memory, mobility, and
store for downloading applications but enabled a comprehensive analytic applications created tremendous value for this leading medical
process for managing any device used by the organization that device manufacturer to transform their sales and service processes. This
ensured the safety and security of the organizational, customer, and transformation will drive revenue growth for the organization, enable
patient information. The platform provides the ability to ‘turn off’ a greater responsiveness to customer demands, enhance employee
mobile device and prevent access to sensitive data in the event of productivity, and create competitive differentiations that will separate
loss or theft of the device, or if an employee leaves or is terminated them from their rest of the players in the space. ■
1. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Drug Discovery & Development: Understanding the R&D Process, 2007. Available at:
www.phrma.org/sites/default/files/159/rd_brochure_022307.pdf (accessed October 4, 2011).
2. The Long-Term Outlook for Health Care Spending, Congressional Budget Office estimates. Available at: www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/87xx/doc8758/MainText.3.1.shtml (accessed October 3, 2011).
3. Economist Intelligence Unit: Enterprise Knowledge Workers, Understanding Risks & Opportunities, 2007. Available at: http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/SAP_InfoWork.pdf (accessed October 4,
2011).
4. Critical Outcome Technologies, September 29, 2011.
7 iHEALTH CONNECTIONS