When it comes to relying on real-time BI and business data visualization to power decisions, life sciences companies are no different than companies in other industries.
Gold in the Data; But Where to Start?
Big data points exist in the millions for companies in this growing industry. And the need to aggregate and visualize all of that structured and unstructured data is crucial to life science companies looking to derive value from this previously untapped data.
“Finding new insights through data discovery across enterprise transaction data and unstructured data such as social media activity, email, call center records and incorporating them into analytics processes will unlock new ways to personalize customer experiences and to drive innovation, growth and productivity,” says Rita Sallam, an analyst at Gartner Inc.
Wading Through Info Gluttony
The data sources, which include PubMed papers, press releases, SEC documents, NIH funding announcements and patent info are everywhere and disparate, causing life science executives to suffer from information overload. Gleaning insights from this gluttony of data assets make it difficult for companies to make strategic decisions on licensing opportunities, to identify industry thought leaders or to even conduct in-depth competitive analysis.
While a number of technology vendors have worked to solve this growing data problem, no single solution has been able to pull those millions of data points into a single, real-time BI and data visualization solution. Until now.
Relaying the Data in Real-Time
In order to help life sciences executives make actionable decisions from their data, Relay Technology Management (Relay TM) has selected the Spotfire analytics platform to power its turnkey life science-specific BI and visualization solution called Business Development Live (BD Live!).
According to Brigham Hyde, PhD and Relay TM’s co-founder and managing director, the Spotfire dashboards programmed into BD Live! help analysts and corporate strategists look at the data under “one hood” and ask questions that include: “Who are the best gram negative anti-bacterial researchers?” and “What’s the historical licensing trend for a given drug and what does it mean for how I should be structuring deals?”
“In just a click, users can drill into a visual presentation of the results to explore data sets in really intuitive ways, which lead to more insights and better decisions,” Brigham says.
Impact Has Been Immediate
BD Live! customers including Pfizer, Cubist Pharmaceuticals and Stromedics (acquired by Biogen Idec) are saving time and bypassing weeks of using spreadsheets to gain “answers” instead of more data.
By building on the capabilities of Spotfire (for the backend) and Attivio’s Analytics Engine (AIE), BD Live! delivers a “streamlined approach without having to build an intermediate infrastructure.” Users are able to perform free text queries in the actual documents and connect to R for statistics modeling. This combination is unavailable on any other platform. The result? Meaningful insights for customers.
