Success story in focus
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories
About
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, a major Indian pharmaceutical company, aimed to streamline its bid management processes by implementing a cloud-based solution with mobile access. They sought a partner to harmonise processes, transform experiences and achieve business goals through a next-gen platform.
The goal was to enhance the experience for sales managers, head office employees and finance teams by eliminating manual tasks and creating an efficient and automated system. They also wanted a comprehensive view of the bidding process for their India business. This included the first MuleSoft end-to-end implementation and Salesforce CPQ setup in the domestic pharma market. Deloitte India and Salesforce collaborated closely on the proposal and product demo, overcoming product limitations together.
Problem
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories aimed to enhance the bid and order management process for sales managers, head office employees and finance teams by eliminating manual tasks and creating an efficient and automated system. They sought a comprehensive view of the entire bidding-to-ordering process for their India business.
Challenges:
Limited customer view:
- Lack of visibility into pending contract renewals, historical discounts, sales and pending approvals.
- Lack of an integrated system:
- Fragmented data systems are causing integration challenges and data inconsistencies.
- Manual updates of contracted rates in the ERP system.
- Limited data-driven insights for decision-making.
Compliance issues:
- Incorrect billing and a high number of credit notes.
- Limited traceability of quote updates.
- Approvals obtained over email without a record system.
Experience challenges:
- Lengthy quote-building process with Excel-based data sharing.
- Delays due to multiple back-and-forth approvals.
- Manual processes for common quotes and group-level contracting, leading to multiple contracts across locations.
- Individual contracts are created based on specific products and accounts within the CQ system.
Inadequate API-based integration framework:
- Gateway timeout issues with legacy middleware.
- Inadequate alerting and data transfer limitations.
- Improper SAP user authentication.
Solution
The solution aims to use Salesforce capabilities to develop an integrated platform for automating bidding, contracting and ordering processes across various verticals.
- Market research: Engaged in primary and secondary market research, involving industry SMEs to interview field sales teams from DRL and competitors. Provided recommendations on B2B bid management best practices based on findings.
- Business process discovery: Identified gaps and pain points in existing business processes to design a personalised solution for the pharma client.
- CPQ system implementation: Streamlined quote and contract creation, product maintenance and price approvals by implementing the CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) system. Developed a unified quote and order management system to track historical discount trends and provide a 360-degree view of relevant information, optimising discounts and margins.
- Third-party system integration: Integrated third-party systems to streamline price updates for invoicing and transferred customer, product and employee data to Salesforce.
- Salesforce Mobile App: Implemented the Salesforce Mobile App to enable quick notifications and real-time actions on approval processes and other updates.
- Best practices adherence: Followed Salesforce and MuleSoft best practices and design guidelines, ensuring coding standards and optimal solutions.
- Alerting systems: Implemented functional and technical alerting systems integrated with Microsoft Teams notifications, alerts and automated email notifications for seamless communication and real-time updates.
- Reduced turnaround time: Achieved faster quote creation and approvals, streamlined contract generation and enabled single-click price updates in the billing system for invoicing.
- MuleSoft enablement: Implemented a centre of enablement approach for MuleSoft, significantly improving business processes, scalability and reusability. This resulted in annual cost savings of up to 40 percent, including savings on server licenses, maintenance costs and the total cost of ownership.
- Salesforce Mobile App: Streamlined daily updates and assignments for users, especially field service agents, making it easier for them to stay organised and on track.
- Improved visibility: Provided users with a 360-degree customer view.
- High data quality standards: Ensured high data quality standards while defining the future roadmap for implementing value-added features such as order management and advanced analytics.
- Approval compliance: Achieved 100 percent approval compliance with guidelines through a tightly integrated pricing approval process aligned with audit recommendations.
- ERP integration: Integrated ERP systems with Partner/Vendor Management System, Incident Management System and Quality and Approval Management System, ensuring seamless partner and vendor onboarding, faster customer interactions and streamlined quality control and approval processes.
- Secure session logging: Implemented a secure session logging process for business users, enabling seamless transfer of large data sets up to 30MB.
Impact
This implementation aims to enhance operational efficiency through various strategic enhancements.
Anne Greenwald
