Shionogi Europe Increased Speed-to-Market with Accelerated Business Insights

Shionogi B.V. (known as “Shionogi Europe”) is the European headquarters of Shionogi & Co., Ltd, a leading global research-driven pharmaceutical company based in Osaka, Japan.

Shionogi is committed to putting patients first by developing innovative, high-quality medicines which address unmet needs and improve the quality of their lives. Shionogi’s R&D efforts focus on therapeutic areas including infectious disease, hematology, pain, CNS disorders, and women’s health.

Shionogi’s commercial success across multiple therapeutic areas depended on their ability to get business insights fast so they could make effective go-to-market decisions. Veeva Nitro, the data science and analytics platform for life sciences, enabled meaningful comparisons at a regional level instead of a country-by-country basis.

Veeva Nitro is fast and easy. It works globally, regionally, and locally. It integrates extremely well with Veeva’s other products and does not require extensive configuration. That gave us a competitive advantage during lockdown because we really understood what was happening. – Dan Atkins, Vice President of Digital Innovation and Insight, Shionogi Europe

Veeva Nitro Enables Shionogi to be Agile and Data-Driven

Dan Atkins, Shionogi’s vice president of digital innovation and insight, wanted a platform that would immediately deliver actionable insights after a product launch, allowing them to be more proactive in executing their commercial strategy. The platform also had to automate analytics, eliminating the time and effort spent by field teams on repetitive, manual reporting every cycle.

Veeva Nitro was selected because it met five criteria:

1. Provides a single source of truth for Veeva and third-party data
2. Enables agile decision making, with detailed Pan-European and affiliate reporting
3. Surfaces insights through Tableau for management and Veeva CRM MyInsights for field teams
4. Minimizes analysis time to allow field teams to optimize their engagement strategies
5. Scales rapidly and efficiently to accommodate their expansion into new regions

Four Steps to Implementation

Atkins assembled a governance and best practice team responsible for defining the solution vision and the phased implementation approach. Advance planning and cross-region collaboration were critical factors in the program’s success. Implementation included the following steps:

Phase 1: Analyzed internal and external data sources.

Phase 2: Collaborated with teams from three countries (Italy, Spain, and the UK) to establish key performance indicators for both field and management teams.

Phase 3: Designed custom dashboards for each user group that delivered precise, relevant information.

Phase 4: Ran a validation exercise to compare Nitro’s data with results from traditional analysis to ensure accuracy. The validation helped secure buy-in, ensured users trusted the data, and drove product adoption.

Quality Engagement with Actionable Insights

With Veeva Nitro, Shionogi seamlessly integrated sales and field activity data from Veeva CRM, content data from Veeva Vault PromoMats, and third-party data. This single source of truth allowed senior management and franchise heads to analyze data in the analytics tool of their choice (Tableau). Sales managers and field reps accessed insights at the point of need using Veeva CRM MyInsights.

Atkins said, “Veeva Nitro is fast and easy. It works globally, regionally, and locally. It integrates extremely well with Veeva’s other products and does not require extensive configuration. That gave us a competitive advantage during lockdown because we really understood what was happening.”

As Shionogi shifted to a multichannel digital engagement strategy during COVID-19, Veeva Nitro helped them understand the effectiveness of their outreach activities to drive higher levels of HCP engagement. Through Nitro analytics, Atkins learned that the average virtual call lasted 15 minutes compared to between 10 and 12 minutes for face-to-face meetings.

Future Vision

Atkins is using the Salesforce Lightning interface with Tableau to create dynamic dashboards that show real-time information fed from Veeva Nitro. Shionogi also plans to utilize Veeva CRM for key account management. Dynamic dashboards, combined with accurate customer data and real-time insights, will allow their commercial teams to engage with key opinion leaders and customers more quickly.

Because Veeva Nitro stores ten years of data, and because Shionogi segmented that data, the company has the systems to adopt artificial intelligence. Having that capability was a welcome benefit. “Veeva Nitro is more than a data warehouse,” said Atkins. “It works in a very straightforward way to create a seamless user experience. And, it keeps getting better over time.”