Quota setting for the pharma business unit of a leading global vision care organization.

The challenge

Aurochs was engaged via a professional services partner to deliver quota setting for the client's pharma business unit. The unit faced several unique problems:

• Ownership of glaucoma eye drops was transferred from a leading global pharmaceutical organization in mid-2021.
• Product promotions were suspended during the transition, leaving a gap in market presence and trajectory.
• A quota-setting strategy dilemma: whether to treat the product as a launch or as almost mature, as the historical sales history fit neither.
• Historical sales were impacted by the lack of promotion, showing a downward trend in most territories.

The client engaged Aurochs to access end-to-end automation of the quota-setting process with change agility and responsiveness, and to incorporate local guidance and knowledge to improve quota quality and provide flexibility for scenario modeling.

Objectives

• Agility and flexibility to test different permutations and combinations of historical sales and potential parameters for quota allocation.
• Define markets at a granular level and incorporate factors like demographics, patients, physicians, and spending.
• Allocate configurable quotas through a user-friendly system allowing simulation of various scenarios without technical expertise.
• Use sales and non-sales-based parameters, considering local knowledge for quota allocation.
• Implement rule-based quota refinement accessible across hierarchy levels with pre-configured restrictions.
• Analytical visualizations and statistical summaries to assess fairness and performance alignment of set quotas.
• Customize historical periods and add caps and floors to handle outliers and align distribution with company goals.
• Define scenarios using different forecast scenarios.
• Deploy an integrated quota management platform with backup support and service operations, achieving high automation and repeatability.

The solution

Quota Manager platform rollout

• Data collected from various sources, primarily an in-house data warehouse, then sanitized and ingested automatically using the proprietary Data Manager.
• Aurochs Quota Manager configured to accommodate various scenarios including historical performance data periods, different sales factors, caps, and floors.
• Testing scenarios configured to assess methodology quality by allocating quotas across different historical periods.
• Summary calculation workbooks and reports designed for quota communication.

Approach

• Aurochs developed a comprehensive approach to ensure high-quality and repeatable quota allocation.
• Analyzed historical sales with and without promotions to determine key factors influencing quota allocation.
• Segmented territories by size (small, medium, large) based on historical product volume and sales performance trends.
• Observed significant variations in behavior among territory segments, with some showing higher downward trends in volume and market share.
• Identified potential factors for different territory segments and incorporated them into quota allocation.
• Simulated several scenarios using different factors and associated weights to refine quota allocation.
• Utilized in-built analytical visualizations to identify bias in quotas for different segments and align with strategic business objectives.
• Implemented caps and floors to ensure fair consideration of outliers and avoid bias.
• Project duration of approximately 6 weeks, with weekly touchpoints to discuss findings and results.

The results

• Project completed within 6 weeks.
• Comprehensive quota cycle management instilled high stakeholder confidence.
• Achieved end-to-end automation of the quota allocation process.
• Ability to leverage diverse sales and non-sales-based factors.
• Facilitated easier identification of bias in quotas linked to geographical performance trends.