Data maturity assessment and data roadmap design for a leading Biotech company

Our client, a leading biotechnology company in Belgium, partnered with Madison.Partners to enhance its data-driven capabilities across the organization. Despite significant investments in the development of numerous reports & dashboards over the past few years, the organization still faced challenges with the end user adoption and stakeholder alignment across departments & countries. Recognizing the need for a more cohesive and strategic approach, the company launched a transformation to improve its data maturity by focusing on both technology and people and processes.

Data Maturity Assessment as solid starting point for this transformation

Our client contact, responsible for International Commercial Business Analytics, expressed it this way: “To maximize our chances of success, we needed a neutral perspective. The urgency for a benchmark of our current data and analytics landscape was clear. Conducting this Data Maturity Assessment provided us with a realistic view of our organization and served as a solid foundation for introducing new initiatives. This was the first step we took together with Madison.Partners.”

The objective of the Data Maturity Assessment was two-fold: Firstly, our client wanted to evaluate the robustness and future-proofness of its existing data architecture. Secondly, they aimed to identify potential gaps in their operating model and data-driven processes.

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“The results and recommendations from the analysis conducted by Madison.Partners were a real eye-opener for us. You might think you’re doing well, but stepping back to view the bigger picture allows for a better understanding of where we need to adjust our strategy.”

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Our report highlighted that this biotech company could make significant progress in its data maturity by:

• Ensuring strategic alignment on its objectives and use cases
• Addressing data architecture challenges
• Focusing on the implementation of minimum data governance practices
• Enhancing stakeholder adoption of the delivered data products, across the whole organization

“This approach worked well for us. The data strategy canvas, which outlines these foundational elements, provided the leadership teams with a good understanding of the ‘as is’ situation and the direction we needed to move towards."

Modernizing the data architecture, while working on stakeholder alignment and end-user adoption

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"The in-depth analysis and accompanying recommendations we received from Madison.Partners immediately inspired us to better outline and subsequently develop the proposed opportunities."

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That’s why the organization launched a strategic initiative (supported by IT & Business leadership) to modernize the data architecture, ensuring it scalability and future-proofness. Madison.Partners translated this objective into an implementation roadmap aligning existing and required technologies with the competencies of the workforce. Additionally, they assessed how data & reports were managed and eventually used by the end-users on a global scale.

The proposed roadmap had the objective to tackle following challenges:

1. The existing technology did not sufficiently support the organization’s objectives and ambitions. Furthermore, the data architecture was not scalable or future-proof.
2. The biotech company was only engaging employees at HQ level in becoming more data-driven. Thus putting insufficient focus on the adoption within the countries and eventually across the whole organization.
3. Employees lacked awareness of what data was already available for consumption, how to request the ingestion of additional data sources and most important, how to interpret/understand the data.

These findings and proposed recommendations were compiled into a final report and presented to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) & Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). The recommendations highlighted opportunities to fully embrace data-driven practices, specifically tailored to this organization. The report also prompted a review of other business units within the company, to determine whether they faced similar challenges.

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Managing the implementation of a future-proof data platform and defining the framework for self-service reporting

Following the execution of the initial data maturity assessment and design of the roadmap, our client requested Madison.Partners to continue the collaboration and guide the initial execution of this transformation journey.

One of the first actions we initiated was the search for of a future-proof & scalable data platform. Madison.Partners supported this client during the selection phase (assessing different technologies & vendors) and eventually took up the role of Program Manager. “Madison.Partners supported the design of the data architecture, managed the organization-wide implementation and ensured sufficient focus on people & processes (over technology).” Our Program Manager acted as the crucial link between various internal and external stakeholders, from senior management to end-users, ensuring a clear structure and comprehensive understanding of timelines, budgets and expectations. This approach helped lighten common barriers to change and made the process smoother.

In parallel, our client wanted to tackle its challenges related to ‘end user adoption’ and expressed the desire to evolve towards a model of ‘self-service reporting’. Madison.Partners conducted interviews & workshops to determine what was needed for employees to independently create reports based on (not yet) available data. In first instance, requirements were gathered from various sales managers & representatives (across Europe) to ensure a clear understanding of needs. After that, the team mapped out the necessary technology- & training requirements and established a framework to facilitate this process.

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‍Strategic guidance and clear deliverables, immediately leading to success  

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“We immediately seized the recommendations from the prioritized initiatives on the roadmap and started working on them. In the past, initiatives were selected and executed without a clear understanding of the value they were supposed to bring, and then things would stall. This time, it was different. The stakeholders received such practical and tangible recommendations that it was natural to keep building on them and improving the deliverables."

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As a result of this collaboration, our client achieved several key successes:

• Enhanced collaboration: Business stakeholders and IT teams now work much more closely together in pursuit of organization-wide goals.
• Future-proof & scalable technology landscape: The organization successfully transitioned to a future-proof data landscape, increasing the accessibility of insights & data for business stakeholders. On top of that, end users are now able to create their own reports, manage their data and share it with stakeholders.
• Improved (internal) customer understanding: They gained a better understanding of internal customer inquiries and are now able to respond in a fast way. “With one click, an answer is provided through analysis and reporting.”
• Increase of end-user adoption: Taking the time & effort to collect requirements and implement them accordingly, resulted in the fact that data products are now actively used by the end-user community. “We identified a drastic increase in adoption, not only at HQ level but also across the countries.”

As our customer summarized this collaboration:

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"Madison.Partners was capable to collaborate with both technical and business stakeholders, while blending a technological focus with strategic insights. They are transparent in discussions, structured in project timelines and strategically focused. The numerous quick wins and long-term gains from the various projects provided us with valuable tools to handle data more consciously and make smarter decisions. This was all made possible through the transformational guidance provided by the Madison.Partners team."

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