Case Studies

Pharmaceutical Company Enhances Marketing Strategy (Brand) Management with SharePoint

Project At a Glance

Our client defines the branding strategy for their global product areas each year. Their existing process was a time-consuming and error-prone manual process that inhibited collaboration and did not allow for proper management of important planning assets (document collateral). The solution involved leveraging the Microsoft SharePoint platform to craft a robust collaboration and collateral (document) management capability, providing the basis to greatly reduce preparation time and improve the accuracy of the planning process.

About Our Client

RDA's client is a global pharmaceutical company specializing in various consumer products.

 

Background

Our client was struggling with managing their yearly global marketing strategy (brand management) for their core product lines. For each brand category, our client captured key situational, strategic and implementation components into a set of four deliverable planning documents:

• Situation Analysis
• Strategy Development
• Execution
• Tracking Results

Their existing process relied heavily upon manual means to develop each planning document. This process was ineffective, inefficient, and extremely time-consuming.  Keeping the brand management assets (document collateral) accurate and valid posed a daunting challenge, as well as compiling and aggregating multiple sources/types of data and content into the planning documents. Our client also lacked an effective process for content  collaboration as well as version control for documents.

What they needed was a platform that enables collaboration, provides for content aggregation and management, and includes document management capabilities such as check-in/out, and version management. 

The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) platform was already in place in the organization and represented an ideal platform for developing the needed functionality.  Subsequently, RDA developed a brand management site with asset (document collateral) collaboration, generation, and management capabilities. 

 

Solution Detail

The solution involved the development of an asset management (document collateral) system that could serve their strategic brand management process. The solution was designed to leverage the SharePoint platform components to their fullest and only extend them where additional functionality was required. 

With document management a critical solution need, SharePoint was leveraged to provide document security along with change control and versioning. The development team focused on the specification of document properties and defining rules for the management of each planning document.

Key solution facets included:

• A dedicated SharePoint site to author and manage the planning documents, fostering collaboration and providing a central point to gather, find, and review content.
• Web-based forms that users fill out with key brand strategy information. The data from these forms is then used to automatically generate the planning documents outlined above.
• A dashboard view of the status, schedules and finalized plan documents across all brands for a fiscal year.
• An approval workflow for the plan documents that allows for successive approvals and automated reminders.  

Another critical feature was the automatic generation of the planning documents from the data entered on the Web forms into the documents. This functionality eliminated a laborious manual process for entering key business metrics and attributes in the planning documents, a process that was filled with error from typos to outdated information due to the challenge of updating the metrics while the business environment continually changed. The generation process allows the users to select the desired metrics, choose a planning template document, and then generate an accurate and valid document deliverable.

 

Benefits

The final solution provides a robust document management and collaborative environment for a strategic business process: global brand management planning.

Benefits to our client include:

• simplified, efficient process for updating documents and other assets
• improved accuracy of data and revisions
• additional capacity
• enhanced decision-making capabilities