Customers

AstraZeneca

"In this highly competitive business sector, time-to-market dictates brand leadership and revenue generation. Business Objects business intelligence (BI) solution has enabled AstraZeneca to improve project management, cost control, and resource utilization and is helping us to achieve competitive research and development timescales."

David Scanlon
business manager
AstraZeneca

Reduce Time-to-Market

AstraZeneca has over 12,000 research and development (R&D) employees across six international sites. The company spends more than $3 billion on R&D every year - the same as over $10 million every working day.

Drug development is highly competitive - every day saved in getting a new brand to market can be measured in millions of dollars. Drug patents last 20-25 years, and it takes 8-12 years to bring a drug to market. The shorter the product development and clinical trial, the longer a company has to establish brand leadership and generate revenue before a competitor can bring generic products to market.

Reduced time-to-market depends on efficient project management, careful resource utilization, and cost control. Immediate access to one consistent view of R&D information is critical.

"To support our requirement to accelerate drug development, AstraZeneca requires fast and easy access to global R&D information," says Chris Saxby, IT consultant, AstraZeneca.

Global Information Platform

AstraZeneca developed the Matrix project management system to provide complete visibility of R&D information across the world. Matrix uses BusinessObjects to query and analyze global R&D information stored in an Oracle data warehouse.

Over 5,000 users across AstraZeneca's six international R&D sites can access and examine information on project schedules, costs, and resources. The company also selected BusinessObjects as its standard business intelligence (BI) solution and uses the suite across other areas of the business like manufacturing, finance, and marketing.

AstraZeneca uses BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager with Advizor Solutions technology to give senior management an at-a-glance view of key performance indicators (KPIs) across R&D.

According to Saxby, "Business Objects solutions are transforming the availability and accessibility of R&D project information within AstraZeneca."

Speeding Pharmaceutical Development

BI solutions from Business Objects let AstraZeneca track, understand, and manage the huge volume of project data it creates every day. Senior management, development teams, and therapeutic area teams have instant access to up-to-date R&D information to help them make quick, confident decisions.

Easy access to R&D information gives AstraZeneca a clear picture of new-product project costs, and helps the company improve project scheduling, budgeting, and resource allocation.

With BusinessObjects, AstraZeneca has a significant advantage over competitors. A fast development process helps AstraZeneca launch products quickly and secure early brand leadership and higher revenue.

"Immediate access to R&D information is a critical component in the race to be first to market in the pharmaceutical industry. With BusinessObjects we now have a platform to deliver this information globally in a flexible manner that supports constant innovation and change. As a result we aim to speed development, better manage costs, and ultimately reduce time-to-market. Productivity is the key industry challenge," says Scanlon.

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