Smartsheet R&D Portfolio Platform at an Indian Pharma R&D Organisation — 94% Faster Reporting, $1.9M Annual Cost Savings
Smartsheet implementation with Data Shuttle, Data Mesh, Dynamic View and Pivot Tables — unifying 8 project-tracking systems across research sites with reaction-tracking and portfolio dashboards.
MindMap OS · installed inside the customer's perimeter by forward deployed engineers · Managed Cloud · billed on the result
The challenge
The client — an Indian pharma R&D organisation operating multiple research-sites across regions — was facing significant challenges in its R&D portfolio-management workflow. The mechanical reality was that the R&D organisation was running siloed project-management with 8 different tracking-systems across the research-sites, with structural inconsistency in the per-project tracking-and-management.
The structural concerns were specific. Siloed project-management with 8 different tracking-systems; 23% of chemical-reactions had no consistent success-tracking; leadership lacked portfolio-level visibility into project-status; an average reporting-delay of 12 days for cross-site metrics; and duplicated research-efforts costing an estimated $2.8M annually given the lack of cross-site project-portfolio visibility.
The R&D leadership had aligned on the objective: unify the project-management across the research-sites with the structured-platform-foundation, provide the portfolio-level visibility that the R&D leadership required for the strategic-investment-decision-making, eliminate the duplicated-research-effort that the structural-siloing had been generating, and support the more-frequent-and-more-detailed reporting-cadence that the management-decision-making required.
The approach
MindMap deployed a multi-phased Smartsheet implementation composed of the Smartsheet Platform Integration (Sp) for the foundation, Workflow Planner (Wp) for the per-project lifecycle orchestration, Anomaly Detector (Ad) for the per-reaction success-tracking analytics, FP&A Forecaster (Ff) for the portfolio-dashboards layer, and a custom WorkApps layer for the scientist-friendly interfaces.
Phase one was the standardisation work. We created unified project-templates across the research-sites with the per-template appropriate-customisation for the per-site research-domain-and-workflow-pattern. The standardisation supports the cross-site project-portfolio-management workflow.
Phase two was the integration work. We connected the research-data with the centralised portfolio-dashboards using the structured-integration pattern. The integration consolidates the previously-fragmented per-site project-tracking-data into the unified portfolio-view.
Phase three was the automation work. We implemented the reaction-tracking with the success-rate calculations using the structured-data-handling pattern. The reaction-tracking provides the per-reaction-and-per-project success-rate visibility that the R&D leadership had been missing.
Phase four was the analytics work. We deployed Data Mesh for the multi-directional data-synchronisation across the research-sites and the QlikView integration for the advanced-analytics layer. The analytics support the per-project-and-per-portfolio strategic-decision-making.
Phase five was the optimisation work. We created custom WorkApps for the scientist-friendly interfaces that supported the day-to-day scientist-workflow without imposing the platform-administrative burden on the scientist-base. The WorkApps support the per-scientist productivity-and-engagement.
The pre-built building blocks
Rather than commission a ground-up build, the engagement leaned on MindMap's pre-built accelerator library — production-tested components that compress what would otherwise be a six-to-nine-month build into weeks.
Smartsheet Smart Hub →
Centralised R&D portfolio-management platform with Data Shuttle and Data Mesh
Workflow Planner →
Per-project lifecycle orchestration
Anomaly Detector →
Per-reaction success-tracking analytics
FP&A Forecaster
Portfolio-dashboards with QlikView integration
The architecture
The platform runs on the Smartsheet cloud-platform with the appropriate research-data-handling controls. The Smartsheet-based centralised portfolio-platform handles the unified-project-management across the research-sites with the structured-data-handling-and-access-control model.
Data Shuttle handles the automated imports from the lab-equipment systems with the per-equipment-and-per-experiment data-flow into the centralised platform. The automated-imports preserve the per-equipment data-fidelity with the appropriate-time-of-import metadata.
Data Mesh handles the multi-directional data-synchronisation across the research-sites. The synchronisation supports the per-site data-locality (where regulatory requirements demand) with the structured-cross-site data-sharing for the portfolio-management work.
Dynamic View provides the role-based access-controls for the sensitive research-data. The role-based access supports the per-researcher-and-per-leadership appropriate-data-visibility with the structural-protection of the sensitive research-IP.
Pivot Tables provide the advanced-analysis of the reaction-outcomes with the per-project-and-per-portfolio aggregated-analysis. The structured-analysis supports the R&D leadership's strategic-portfolio-decision-making.
QlikView integration provides the more-advanced-analytical-layer for the complex portfolio-analytics work that exceeds the Smartsheet native-analytics capability.
The custom WorkApps provide the scientist-friendly interfaces for the day-to-day scientist-workflow. The WorkApps support the per-scientist productivity-and-engagement without imposing the platform-administrative burden.
The audit trail captures every project-and-reaction-lifecycle event with the full context preserved for the research-and-regulatory-compliance requirements.
The numbers behind the story
Reporting time has reduced 94% from 12 days to less than 1 day through the structured-automation-and-portfolio-dashboards. The cross-site metrics that had previously taken structural-time to aggregate now flow into the portfolio-view in near-real-time.
30% more projects are now managed with the same number of project-managers through the structured-platform-foundation. The platform's productivity-uplift has supported the substantial growth in the project-portfolio without proportional growth in the project-management workforce.
Annual cost-savings of $1.9M have been achieved through the elimination of duplicated-research. The previously-invisible duplicated-research patterns have been surfaced through the unified-portfolio-view, with the duplicated-effort substantially eliminated.
Consolidation of the 8 different project-tracking-systems into the unified Smartsheet platform has been achieved. The previously-fragmented per-site systems have been replaced with the unified platform that the cross-site project-portfolio-management requires.
Customer-quote validation: 'Smartsheet has offered us the ability to integrate our platforms, information-flows and workflows in ways our existing-solutions could not. We've seen productivity-increases within our project-management organisation of 30-40%.'
An unexpected outcome: the platform has supported the R&D organisation's strategic-partnership-management work. The structured-portfolio visibility has supported the per-partnership R&D-engagement-management with the appropriate-structural-data-sharing that the partnership-engagement requires.
“Smartsheet has offered us the ability to integrate our platforms, information-flows and workflows in ways our existing-solutions could not. We've seen productivity-increases within our project-management organisation of thirty-to-forty per cent — ninety-four per cent reporting-time reduction and one-point-nine-million-dollars annual cost-savings through the elimination of duplicated-research.”— Senior R&D Director· Indian Pharma R&D Organisation
Why MindMap was chosen
The R&D organisation had previously evaluated two specialist R&D-portfolio-management vendors. Both proposed proprietary R&D-platform replacements that would have required the R&D-team to migrate off the existing per-site tracking-systems and disrupt the per-site research-workflow.
MindMap's Smartsheet-based accelerator-composition approach — bringing the Smartsheet Platform, Data Shuttle, Data Mesh, Dynamic View, Pivot Tables, the custom WorkApps and the QlikView integration around the existing per-site research-data-and-workflow patterns — was the structural differentiator. The approach delivered the R&D portfolio-management platform without requiring the per-site workflow-replacement.
Our embedded pharma-R&D expertise on the delivery team (two former pharma-R&D portfolio-management directors and a former chemistry-research specialist with multi-site-research-coordination experience) was the third factor. The R&D leadership valued the team's understanding of the pharma-R&D reality and the per-site-research-workflow patterns that the platform had to accommodate.
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