Cipla Pharmaceuticals improves sales performance with data-driven insights

The Challenges

Cipla deploys a large team of sales representatives across various regions to ensure the efficient distribution and promotion of its diverse range of pharmaceutical products. Frequent sales reviews, occurring nearly every week, are held to guide representatives based on factors such as product performance, sales trends, competitor activity, and peer benchmarks. The effectiveness of these reviews is crucial, as they directly impact overall sales.

Cipla deploys a large team of sales representatives across various regions to ensure the efficient distribution and promotion of its diverse range of pharmaceutical products. This team is integral to Cipla's ongoing success and its position as a leading global pharmaceutical company.

Frequent sales reviews, occurring nearly every week, are held to guide representatives based on factors such as product performance, sales trends, competitor activity, and peer benchmarks. The effectiveness of these reviews is crucial, as they directly impact overall sales. To enhance the quality of these reviews and boost sales, Surekha, the Director of Cipla Respiratory, sought to incorporate data-driven insights. However, she faced several challenges in doing so:

The necessary data for these reviews is dispersed across multiple systems, requiring coordination between various teams. Moreover, the data exists in different formats and databases, making it difficult to compile and organize without significant expertise. While Cipla has several custom-built dashboards and applications from different vendors, their availability and data accuracy are inconsistent, adding another layer of difficulty.

Speed of data compilation is another critical issue. Collecting the necessary data currently takes weeks, which is impractical for the frequent reviews that demand timely decision-making. In conversations with Surekha, she noted the difficulty of compiling this data daily and emphasized the need for on-the-fly data during discussions, which is not always predefined. She highlighted that quick access to data would significantly improve the quality and direction of these discussions, but achieving this seemed nearly impossible.

Although Cipla uses QlikSense for data analysis and reporting, the platform poses additional challenges. Even minor adjustments to reports or dashboards require weeks of work due to its complex workflows. Additionally, QlikSense demands specialized expertise to operate, which makes it difficult for non-technical users to quickly generate or modify the required data. This reliance on technical skills, combined with the long turnaround times for changes, slows down decision-making and impedes the effectiveness of data-driven discussions. The inability to quickly adapt the system to meet evolving needs further limits Cipla's agility, hindering its competitiveness in the rapidly changing pharmaceutical industry.

The Results

Since its launch, Colrows has become the go-to data platform for every team within the organization. The impact on productivity, data-driven decision-making, and speed has been immense. “With Colrows' conversational interface, the sales and marketing teams have become data-independent, improving the effectiveness of sales reviews and driving overall sales performance.” says Surekha Jadhav (Associate Director Cipla Respiratory).

Cipla experienced a rapid 70% company-wide adoption rate, with employees actively engaging with the platform. This marked a significant increase in user engagement compared to their previous BI tool. Colrows made sales and marketing teams data independent.

One of the most notable outcomes of implementing Colrows was a 75% reduction in report requests that had previously overwhelmed the data team. This not only streamlined operations but also freed up analysts to focus on more strategic tasks and innovative data science projects. Both the sales and marketing teams can now independently access insights, making data analysis an essential part of decision-making across the organization.