Analytical Wizards – Transforming Healthcare Analytics
There is a growing need in the pharmaceutical industry to understand the complexities and nuances of healthcare, to help design effective interventions to combat disease. From science to bedside, from research to diagnosis and prevention, knowledge of the complex and changing healthcare environment and the patient journey is necessary as we continue efforts to eradicate life-threatening and life-altering diseases.
Ten years ago, building market knowledge or an understanding of a disease and patient journey, was dependent on interviewing the appropriate stakeholders. This technique was riddled with bias, extremely time-consuming and prohibitive in terms of cost.
With the advent of digital information technology, we are now able to capture immense quantities of unbiased data on the healthcare journey, presenting vast opportunities for learning. With rapid advances in data science we can uncover precious business insights and gain market knowledge. Using AI/ML we can not only gain an unbiased prescriptive view, but even hope to predict future market changes, and physician/patient behaviours.
As COVID-19 has highlighted the need for innovation and adoption of technologies in the healthcare sector, businesses are in continuous search of a trustworthy data analytics solution provider that can accelerate their growth. Analytical Wizards is one of the leading companies in the healthcare domain that is transmogrifying commercial analytics. Behind Analytical Wizards’ long-standing success is a team of expert professionals led by Mr. Ram Sharma, CEO & Chairman at the company.
To become a successful entrepreneur, one should inspire and support continuous innovation and growth.
Ram Sharma
The Company:
Traditionally, pharmaceutical and biotech organizations have been hampered in their efforts to understand the patient journey, treatment continuum, or market dynamics by data assets that are aggregated and lack identifiers to allow cross-referencing. It required piecing together multiple analyses and reports. The result has been business teams buried in high volumes of reports that deliver few insights, are out of date, and lack mutual consistency. The focus has been on descriptive analytics (understanding what happened historically) as opposed to prescriptive (recommending what a team should be doing) or predictive (what is likely to happen next).
Established in 2015, Analytical Wizards was recognized by INC5000 in 2020 as being among the top 25% Fastest-Growing Private Companies in the US. The company is currently engaged by 3 of the top 5 pharma companies, 10 of the top 30 bio-pharma companies, and 4 of the top 7 Biotechs.
Charting the new digital paths of success:
With multiple awards and recognition, Analytical Wizards continue to add new clients and win new business. Central to their growth is innovation by design, an iterative approach, a strong emphasis on customer delight, ensuring their knowledge grows within the advanced analytic space, mastering the latest algorithms emerging from scientific research and practice.
Like most companies, the pandemic arrived bringing a level of uncertainty as to its impact on business. Once companies grasped the impact of COVID-19 and how to navigate within the pandemic-controlled work environment, it brought to light the urgent need for agility, and flexibility. Digital communications became critical to business continuity, and therefore increased the need for many of the solutions provided by Analytical Wizards.
Today, across the industry, you can feel the revolution. Change is taking place and those that harness digital and technology innovations will be the most successful.
Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.
Steve Jobs
Putting innovation on the table:
Analytical Wizards has developed two customizable platform solutions, WIZ and IZE. These platforms provide a data-agnostic approach that allows for multiple and disparate data sets to be ingested quickly for advanced analytics application.
Across the healthcare and retail industries, commercial analytics steers business decision-making across sales, marketing, access, and pricing. The past two decades have witnessed firms, large and small, entrusting this critical function to technology outsourcing companies. This has allowed firms to contain IT & Analytics expenditure but only at the cost of increased external dependencies. WIZ seeks to set in motion a reversal of this trend.
WIZ challenges the idea that marketers need to rely on an army of consultants to fulfil their need for analytical insights. Whether it is optimizing marketing investments across a portfolio of brands, customizing message content to induce higher rates of response, or testing a campaign to see whether it will fly, WIZ aims to put brand teams back in charge.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs
Machine learning practitioners gain huge efficiencies from scalable cloud infrastructure, point-and-click selection of algorithms, exportable data visualization, streamlined project management, and collaboration – all this without sacrificing flexibility or rigor. Analytics can now be embedded as a core function with analysts staying in close touch with business teams to deliver recommendations that are evidence-based, but also relevant and actionable.
AW’s IZE is a cloud-based engine that automates the process of finding answers to challenging business questions. IZE is organized into solution modules that make sense to AW’s pharmaceutical customers, covering every step of the commercialization cycle, including pre-approval and post-approval.
Performance 360 is an IZE module that focuses on gaining a better understanding of the patient. A pharmaceutical company will use IZE Performance 360 to uncover intelligence to guide business decisions by providing a much deeper insight into the patient journey in any given disease therapy, often uncovering patterns that could not be uncovered previously, due to the diverse and disparate nature of the data available.
Using technology to automate parts of the process, IZE is able not just to dig deeper, but broader and faster, giving companies a competitive edge at helping patients. IZE has been a work in progress over the past several years, launching early in 2020. Currently, in use by several of the top 10 pharma companies, IZE is proving its mettle as an engine with very specific gains in rare disease initiatives for pharma customers.
Analytical Wizards’ products are designed to be flexible on the front end, while scalable at the back end, allowing for easy customization to mee client needs. They are constantly evolving their products to meet market demands.
Technology taking over traditional business ways
Technology enables scale, efficiency, and speed to insights including the ability to tell a story by visualizing data. When the pandemic hit, it became even more critical for healthcare firms to adapt quickly to new circumstances. For instance, adapting to reduced access of medical representatives to physicians for face-to-face interactions which earlier may have comprised the most impactful component of promotional messaging.
Technology enables real-time analytics and delivers three main competitive advantages –
- Data readiness for on-demand analytics which includes consolidation of big data (claims, EMR/HER, lab, etc.), promotional activity (marketing, salesforce, etc), descriptive data (segments, customer information, etc), and advanced analytics feedback (channel propensity, messaging impact, promotional cadence impact, etc.) into an analytics ecosystem that is well beyond a data repository.
- Deploying platforms and analytic engines to drive advanced analytic scale. This is the natural next step to transition scheduled, point-in-time analyses into real-time insights that shape marketing and sales initiatives. This allows for consistency of recurring analytics while freeing time from advanced analytics resources to solve new business needs.
- Linking analytic outputs to CRM platforms to ensure Actionability. Most companies are using static business rules for promotional delivery which are already dated by the time they are deployed. However, data readiness, as well as scaling of advanced analytics, allows for real-time inputs on segmentation shifts, promotional impact, promotional affinity, messaging impact, and channel cadence & frequency. This information allows for true personalization of how we engage with our customers (HCPs, patients, caregivers, and pharmacists) along their journey.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs
The Driving Force:
The unmatched leadership at the company believes that the company is nothing without committed employees who live your mission and embrace your values. Together, as a team, we can change the world. Analytical Wizards thrives on a diverse and inclusive environment and welcomes all. Data Science is possibly one of the fastest evolving disciplines today, which demands constant learning to stay ahead. The company encourages employees to continue learning through different online applications and internal training.
The team stays connected through virtual interactions and encourages virtual social events. They acknowledge the challenges working from home (WFH) has caused their team members, especially those in India who were less likely to have home environments conducive to WFH. They share news of growth, news of new hires, and hold quarterly town halls. They have continual feedback from all managers to their team including formal mid-year and year-end reviews.
Mr. Ram Sharma – A leader revolutionizing the analytics landscape
Mr. Ram Sharma, CEO and Chairman at Analytical Wizards, prides himself with a great leadership team. With the experience of more than a decade in the analytics field, he has marked his place in the global analytics business landscape. He completed his degree (B. Tech – Operations research and Industrial Engineering) at IIT Kharagpur and followed with a PhD. from the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked in many industries including Life Sciences, Consumer / Retail, Insurance, Telecommunication, Banking & Financial.
Mr. Sharma says, “Many of our customers continue to stay with us as we grow, while new customers are enlightened with what they can accomplish with innovation, AI/ML-based platform & speed to insights. The best moment with customers is when we deliver the product and they have the excitement over their new knowledge, and the speeds at which they can have business questions answered that ultimately help them to serve patients better.”
Harnessing vast amounts of disparate data is critical to business success. It allows for an improved understanding of the patient journey, diagnosis obstacles, treatment behaviours, and a vast amount of information that can lead to improved business strategies.
We are designing for change. We are not satisfied with the status quo but aspire to find ways to improve efficiencies including time, costs, and productivity. We use scientific methodology (AI/ML, advanced predictive analytics) powered by technology for speed to insights.
Ram Sharma
Mr. Ram Sharma admires Steve Jobs the most. He says, “Like Apple, our product is never finished. We continually refine and improve our products as well as our models, based on feedback and usage opportunities. What you see today may be very different than the tool you used last month. We aspire to evolve the industry, enlighten our customers to what can be achieved. This requires diligence, perseverance, and resilience.”
Considering how to continue healthy growth and culture, Mr. Ram Sharma explains, “Constant vigilance is a need and a strategy at the same time. Change is evolutionary. It never stops. Nor does the need to pay attention, think about what could be, and make it happen. We love what we do. We are all equally inspired to make a difference and dedicate every day to that goal.
Honestly, we do not feel like it is a rat-race. We encourage all our employees to take time for personal care, for family needs, and their health. We do not have rigid time rules. Instead, each employee focuses on what they need to accomplish, each realizing that they are an important part of the mission and their contribution matters.”
