Impax Laboratories implements IBM's business analytics technology

IBM ( IBM) announced today that Impax Laboratories, Inc. (Nasdaq: IPXL), a technology-based specialty pharmaceutical company, is using IBM business analytics technology to gain stronger insights into their business and better predict risks and market opportunities.

In such a highly-regulated industry, pharmaceutical companies need a 360-degree view of their entire product development and delivery chain in order to best transform reporting information into business insights, and improve a wide range of critical functions. Prior to implementing IBM business analytics technology, Impax Labs was dependent on IT staff to produce critical line of business reports using information that was spread out across the organization. This approach created an overload of information requests that made it difficult for executives and managers to quickly recognize trouble spots or capitalize on new market opportunities. Once the information was delivered, it was usually out of date, and cycles would be spent trying to determine the accuracy of the data.

With IBM business analytics, business users can now build their own reports and analyses instantly, enabling them to quickly identify performance trends and adjust plans accordingly, forecast sales to ensure top and bottom line growth, and provide senior management with the reports they need to effectively manage the overall business.

Today, users across all departments -- including accounting, sales operations, and manufacturing -- have standardized IBM business analytics into their daily routines, optimizing critical functions such as product development, order fulfillment, inventory management, and long-term revenue planning. For instance:

• forecast managers can now quickly analyze current and historical product inventory levels within an 18-month forecast and shipment history, enabling them to proactively manage customer demand and internal inventory levels, as well as identify potential supply issues
• Sales and marketing executives can track net sales performance against corporate plans on a daily basis, granting them immediate visibility into whether corrective actions are required, such as negotiating specific customer treatments, to improve sales
• C-level Executive Committee can now easily pull together a single view of net sales, profitability and competitive market share information, helping them to determine whether to expand or decrease product production

By eliminating IT bottlenecks and empowering business users to manage performance directly, company executives estimate they have saved over a thousand hours per month in time that would normally have been spent chasing and authenticating information.

"We now benefit from quicker access to accurate performance data, which means management has greater confidence in the information and more importantly the decisions they make around resource allocation and overall corporate strategy," said Jonathan Retano, associate director of business intelligence at Impax Laboratories, Inc., who worked with IBM business partner ISA Consulting in developing the company's enterprise-wide business analytics strategy. "Business intelligence and analytics has crossed the threshold from a novelty to an integral, critical part of our business operations."

Using IBM's flexible dashboarding capabilities, Impax Labs also implemented a "4 in 4" program, where senior managers are now able to review the top four performance indicators that are key to their line of business or unit, in under four minutes. This helps them better manage their day-to-day operations and ensure that every decision they make is best aligned with corporate objectives.

Furthermore, the IBM analytics technology empowers Impax Labs to meet internal policy demands and minimize risk exposures. For example, the sales operations department generates comprehensive rebate backup reports that detail every indirect sale by product, wholesaler and pharmacy. This enables them to easily substantiate all customers' rebate requests before they are fulfilled, eliminating the risk of unnecessary cash outflow.

IBM business analytics and optimization is driving new innovation in information management as organizations transform the way they use information to better understand what is going on inside their business.

"Pharmaceutical companies face tremendous costs to support their research, development and sales and marketing initiatives. Effective business analytics solutions can eliminate the typical information blind spots that can interfere with a company's ability to act with speed and agility and make fact-based decisions," said Paul Hake, life sciences executive, business analytics and performance management, at IBM.