Astrazeneca engages in the discovery, development, and commercialization of prescription medicines. The company markets its products through distributors and local representative offices.

​

I - Physician conferences

​

Challenge

Industry regulations and corporate policies require healthcare companies to be transparent about how they conduct their business, especially how they partner and collaborate with physicians and institutions in efforts to educate the healthcare community and to conduct scientific and medical research, a process most often conducted through the organization of physician or ‘medical’ conferences. These types of conferences typically represent 20-25% of Astrazeneca’s marketing spend and thousands of such meetings are organized yearly. Getting a handle on these conferences from an organizational, documentation, notification, approval and audit perspective was imperative to comply with governmental reporting guidelines.

​

Solution

eBA workflow management forms and related approval processes were implemented to record, approve and report information on which physicians were invited and spoke at what conferences on behalf of what topics, as well as tracking the payments and transfers of value to physicians. The types of payments and transfers of value being reported include consulting fees, speaker fees, meals and travel in association with contracted services or in conjunction with a product or informational discussion, educational items, research and development, royalties, license fees, and ownership or investment interests.

​

Time to Implement

> 160 hours

​

Result

Besides greatly reducing the administrative process and automating the manual steps involved in organizing these meetings, eBA allows Astrazeneca to provide complete insight into the physician conferences required from both internal and external audit bodies, allowing them to be in compliance with national and international regulations and reporting guidelines.

​

Campaign price approvals

​

Problem

Medicines no longer protected by patent approval require more active campaigns and promotions against generic alternatives, for example Nexium (“the purple pill”). Approvals for campaign pricing was a manual process and central documentation on price history was absent.

 

Solution

A price approval form and process was developed in eBA workflow management to request campaign prices and receive approvals based on pre-set rules and process flows. By putting this process on eBA a history of price requests and approvals is documented and saved by the eBA system.

​

Time to Implement

< 40 hours

​

Result

A faster and more agile pricing approval process combined with greater control and visibility into a drug’s pricing history, improving productivity.

​

II-Recurrent policies acknowledgments

​

Challenge

On an annual basis, AstraZeneca requires its employees to review, acknowledge or update a “conflict-of-interest” form in-line with the corporation’s policies. This yearly reoccuring process was manual, paper-based, time-consuming process and hard to properly audit.

​

Solution

An eBA conflict-of-interest approval form and process flow, integrated with master data from the company’s HR application, was created that automatically sends employees a notification on a yearly basis to review the corporate policy and update the company on any changes that may have occurred.

​

Time to Implement

< 40 hours

​

Result

A manual, time-consuming process was completely automated saving Astrazeneca operational costs, speeding-up the process, reducing risk and strengthening corporate and industry compliance.

​

​