Mid-sized pharmaceutical company
The client is a mid-sized pharmaceutical company.
The Challenge. The client was growing at 30% per year. As the company moved from being a small firm with only a few products and customers to a medium-sized company with many product lines and a complex network of customers, senior executives were finding it difficult to get timely access to key performance measures. The periodic reports produced in Finance, Operations, Marketing and Human Resources were becoming too voluminous to digest and the travel schedule of senior executives made review of this important information difficult. Senior executives complained that there was no easy and efficient way of requesting additional detail information from report producers. The client asked us to help identify key performance measures and design & develop a Web-based system for publishing these measures.
Capgemini approach. The project was executed in two phases. During the first phase, we helped the client identify the performance measures most important to the Executive Management Team. This was accomplished by holding a one-day brainstorming session with the report producers. We took the results of the brainstorming session and created a paper mock-up of a Web page system. The client sponsor (the CFO) used the paper mock-up to gather feedback from the Executive Management Team and we refined the paper mock-up several times until the executive team was happy with the design.
During the second phase of the project, we designed and built the Web-based Executive Information System. The initial content and structure of the system was developed using MS FrontPage. A system for updating content was developed using Adobe Acrobat, MS Internet Assistant and MS Excel Macros. We worked with the client to define policies and procedures for using the publishing software to keep the Web site current.
We used a modified version of the Accelerated Systems Development methodology. Since the scope of the development effort was quite small (approximately two man-weeks) the Solution Hub Development and the Timebox Development phases were merged. The iterative cycle of plan changes, prototype, conduct review, and reflect on leanings was used successfully to compress the actual software development time.
Value delivered. Design, development and implementation were accomplished on time and on budget. The client now has a software tool that enables the collection and analysis of data critical to executive decision-making.