IBM Cognos Services team helps sanofi-aventis efficiently implement a comprehensive BI and planning solution

sanofi-aventis Canada Inc. (sanofi-aventis) is the Canadian affiliate of the sanofi-aventis Group, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. The company is headquartered in Laval, Quebec and employs 950 people across the country.

As a leading Healthcare partner, sanofi-aventis provides and develops innovative medicines for treatments in several therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular disease, thrombosis, oncology, metabolic disorders, the central nervous system and internal medicine. The company also plays a role in investing in activities that improve health and quality of life in its communities.

Challenges Faced
The Planning and Controlling department recognized that a replacement of their previous planning tool was required, as it did not meet the ever-changing needs of the organization, and required manual processes to compensate for the lack of integration. “The reporting process finally reached a breaking point, so we began looking for a system that would provide a higher level of flexibility in terms of report generation and reducing planning complexity,” says Tony Fraschetti, IS Director at sanofi-aventis.

Strategy Followed
sanofi-aventis evaluated several options to meet their business intelligence (BI) solutions. The company had been using the IBM Cognos Impromptu® reporting product at the time, and decided to evaluate IBM Cognos 8 BI and IBM Cognos 8 Planning – including the Report Studio, Query Studio, and Contributor modules – based on its overall satisfaction with IBM Cognos Impromptu. Ultimately, sanofi-aventis selected the IBM Cognos solution based on a couple of key factors. According to Fraschetti, “The IBM Cognos team came to us and presented a demo of their solution. We immediately liked the flexibility offered by the tool, but more importantly, we felt it would meet our reporting and planning requirements, which were extensive in nature.”

In terms of the implementation, it was crucial that sanofi-aventis work closely with IBM Cognos Professional Services to ensure continuity of resources. An IBM Cognos Support manager spearheaded the implementation, making sure sanofi-aventis focused on building the right applications to support its planning processes. sanofi-aventis had set a tight time-frame of only six months to complete the implementation. IBM manager worked closely with senior management, including the CFO, on a weekly basis providing status reports, giving direction and tackling issues in real time.

Due to the extensive support from the IBM Cognos Professional Services team, sanofi-aventis was able to meet its aggressive time-line, and rolled out IBM Cognos 8 BI and IBM Cognos 8 Planning products during the first quarter of 2008. In addition, according to Fraschetti, the company developed a support model on-site to make sure knowledge transfer continued on a regular basis. “I think at this point, at the beginning of 2009, we can sit back and say the environments and applications have reached a level of maturity and stability. Now we are at a place where we can move on to other phases.” Fraschetti attributes much of the success of the implementation to the IBM Cognos Professional Services team. “I think what was very important and what really made this successful is the fact that the participants from the IBM Cognos Professional Services team were fully dedicated and committed. They fostered a collaborative environment and ensured that we were always following appropriate guidelines when it came to documentation and project design.”

In terms of its IT environment, sanofi-aventis runs on Microsoft® XP® and uses Oracle 10 as its main production database. The IBM Cognos team works in conjunction with sanofi-aventis’ SAP enterprise resource planning application.

Benefits Realized
Since implementing the IBM Cognos solution, sanofi-aventis now has an integrated BI and planning application in place which allows its users throughout the organization to input their budgets and generate reports directly.

“There’s a much quicker response time to different requests that come from customers and management. Overall, with the IBM Cognos solution, there is a greater level of flexibility in terms of answering financial questions and distributing those answers back to their respective business groups in a timely fashion,” states Pat Papillo, Senior Director of Controlling, Pharma Operations at sanofi-aventis.

In addition to realizing a greater level of reporting flexibility and quicker response times, the IBM Cognos system has helped make life easier for both customers and financial controlling. sanofi-aventis has gained efficiencies throughout the organization, which have allowed the company to eliminate a lot of “non-value work” and manual input. Papillo attributes this success to the up-front work that was done by the IBM Cognos Professional Services team. From a forecasting perspective, users are able to go on-line and track their spending level and budgets on a real-time basis. Using the IBM Cognos system helped the company to come in on budget this past year, which has pleased the senior management team.

sanofi-aventis is currently going through another organizational change and, according to Fraschetti, the company will look to build on its IBM Cognos solutions and services during this transition time. “We’re looking at an IBM Cognos solution to help us add greater efficiencies and reduce some of the complexities of how we’re working internally. Ultimately, we feel we have the right tool in place to provide us with the type of agility that is needed in order to move in step with our organization as it continues to evolve.”

About IBM Cognos BI and Performance Management
IBM Cognos business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions deliver world-leading enterprise planning, consolidation and BI software, support and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. IBM Cognos solutions bring together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers an open, adaptive and complete performance solution. Over 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries around the world choose IBM Cognos solutions.