Sales KPI

Sales is an important revenue source for a company. Sales in pharma is usually very aggressive and the KPIs help them quickly look at the areas of improvement. The KPIs also let them know what is working and what is not working. The other KPIs which are looked at are as follows:

• Analysis of physician segmentation with respect to specialization, geography, number of prescription, KOL mapping (helps to do right messaging)
• Budget versus target and over time (month on month, quarter on quarter, year on year, current month versus last year same month, current quarter versus same quarter last year)
• Revenue performance breakup with respect to country, zone, region, and area (understand performance across multiple geographic dimensions)
• Product/brand performance breakup with respect to country,zone, region, and area (helps plan product strategies)
• Margin analysis across time/geography/brand/therapeutic area(understand profitable and unprofitable products and invest more in successful areas)
• Market share analysis and competition analysis (analyze competition and plan action for areas needing improvement)
• Primary sales versus secondary sales and over time (help prevent dumping of stocks and check for a healthy ratio)
• Secondary sales versus tertiary sales and over time (helps understand actual sales)
• Top and bottom performing distributors/stockists
• Top and Bottom performing MRs
• Call/visit analysis of MRs, call effectiveness analysis, comparison of number of existing prescription and new prescriptions (360 analysis of MR )
  
• Total calls versus productive calls (helps plan future visits)
• Percentage of coverage by MR (understand if need of more or fewer MRs)
  
• Number of prescriptions versus competition (understand competition and plan right messaging to physicians)
• Number of new prescriptions over a period of time (helps increase market share)
• Discount Analysis and what-if analysis (improve profitability)

Marketing KPI

Marketing has budgets allocated and they need to spend the money wisely for various campaigns and promotions. Considering the diverse channels for marketing, the marketing function is often an avid user of BI. KPI for Marketing department which matter are:

• KOL mapping and activity ROI (understand if sufficient efforts are taken to map key influences)
• Physician loyalty analysis (helps focus on loyal physicians and plan marketing strategy)
• Social media feedback (Sentiment analysis)
• Campaign expenditure analysis (details analysis on campaign spends)
• Campaign ROI percentage across channel/time/geography (helps invest in successful campaign in future)
• Patient demographic analysis (understand patients better and plan specific campaign for demographies)
• Performance after new product launch (analyze success of new launch)
• Percentage of doctor awareness versus unawareness (about the drug of the company)
• Competition analysis (understand market standing with respect to competition and plan strategies in weaker areas)

Supply Chain KPI

Supply chain is an important function that manages the procurement, logistics, and production. For  supply chain the KPIs which are important are as follows:

• Cost variation of raw materials across vendors/geography/time (understand buying pattern across dimensions and improve buying decisions)
• Vendor wise QA analysis (vendor analysis helps buying decisions)
• Vendor wise spends (understand spends better)
• Inventory trends across products/time/geographies (important to plan production and plan promotions in case of excess inventory)
• Inventory turns (understand over or under stocking)
• Logistical cost analysis across vendor/channel/time/geography (analyze logistics costs across parameters)
• Labeling and compliance reporting (direct statutory impact)
• What-if and forecasting (helps plan pricing strategy and plan future)
• Contract compliance reports (helps compliance with respect to contracting)

Plant Operations

Companies do not look at using BI in plant operations early on. The plant operations is involved in actual production activities and they can contribute to the profitability by  improving efficiency and reducing wastage. For them, they may look at various KPIs, such as:

• Analysis of machine efficiency (understand effective utilization and  helps planning jobs)
• Actual run times versus standard run time comparison (another parameter to help understand utilization)
• Analysis of machine audit (helps to monitor health of machines)
• Analysis of production across shifts (understand shift utilization and plan production better)
• Staff performance across shifts (plan workforce across shifts)
• Analysis of downtime (understand impact of downtime and factors causing downtime)
• Analysis of open versus completed work orders (helps to plan future orders and impact on current orders)
• Scrap analysis in percentage (wastage analysis and cost impact)
• Work in progress cost reports (helps understand cost better for job in progress)

Finance KPI

Finance needs KPIs which tell them the overall financial health of the company. Some of the KPIs they may want to look at are as follows:

• Account payable analysis over time/vendor/geography (understand outstanding payments across parameters)
• Account receivables analysis over time/distributor/geography (understand expected payments across multiple parameters)
• Profit and loss analysis over division/time/geography/products/business division/therapeutic area (helps understand profitable and unprofitable business areas)
• Expenses analysis, GL wise (analyze expenses across general ledgers)
• Trial balance (understand balances gl wise)
• Working capital reports (understand financial health of company)
• Asset deprecation (important parameter effecting balance sheet)

R&D KPI

Research and Development is a function which helps pharma companies to expand their foot print in market. Like marketing, R&D too has budgets allocated and they need to monitor some of the key KPIs such as:

• R&D cost allocation analysis (helps to understand cost allocation across drugs)
• Budget versus actual expenditure over time (understand expenditure and variance with budgeted values)
• Expenses per drug (helps in pricing the drug)
• Product life-cycle development reports (helps understand 360 view of drug development)
• Expenses as percentage of sales (helps to understand profitability and plan pricing)
• Percentage of success versus failures (helps to plan future investments and focus on areas of success)
• Drugs comparison with respect to therapeutic areas and competition(understand position in market with respect to competition and plan strategies for deeper market penetration)
• Drugs in various phases of development (helps plan go to market)

Clinical KPI

Clinical functions do trials before drugs can be launched and they too have to manage several KPIs. Let's look at some of them:

• Compliance reporting (analyze compliance readiness across parameters)
• Regulatory reporting (analyze regulatory requirements )
• Trial comparisons (compare trials and understand various aspects for success)
• Serious flags (understand items needing immediate attention)
• Proportional reporting ratio (understand side effects across various parameters)
• Drug safety reports (understand safety)
• Gap analysis (understand gaps between actual and desired values)

Information Technology KPI

Information technology is a supporting function to all the other business functions. BI is one such support which IT gives to the other functions. They are technology enablers and the KPIs which matter to them are:

• SLA (Service level agreements) management report (understand quality 0f service provided)
• Cases analysis (open, pending, and priority)
• (KPI helps to understand support performance and important criteria as it impacts customer satisfaction)
• IT audit and compliance reports (understand compliance from various aspects and readiness for audits)
• Analytics usage reports (Monitor adoption and usage of application)
• Project performance analysis (analyze projects across multiple dimensions)
• TCO analysis across projects (How much is spend to own and maintain projects)
• ROI analysis across projects (How much returns do i get from my investments on projects)
• IT expenses; budget versus actual (Monitor expenditure and compare with budgets)

Human Resources

Human resources (HR) looks at KPIs which enable them to analyze optimum recruitment, employee costs, attrition and several others. Some of them are mentioned as follows:

• Attrition rate analysis (analyze how many people are leaving and helps plan strategies if attrition rates are high)
• Training effectiveness report (understand which training are useful and which arent. Helps to plan future trainings)
• Training ROI (are the investments in training yielding good results?)
• Ratio analysis of lower/middle/senior management (helps maintain proper balance and plan succession)
• Employee composition by age, gender, and tenure (understand if company is having right mix of people)
• Cost per employee analysis (understand expenditures on workforce)
• Time to recruit analysis( how soon is a recruitment request getting satisfied)