Track product flow and make informed decisions

"What in the past took [Pfizer] weeks if not months... now happens instantly," says Burbano de Lara about how Pfizer harnesses data. Sales representatives visit doctors to tout products, but how effective are their pitches? While Pfizer grabs lots of information, Burbano de Lara notes: "This data is difficult to analyze. There's so much information, but I don't really know where my products are going to, whether doctors are prescribing my products or not." 

Enter the big data. "If you don't measure something, you can't improve it," says Saenz, who goes on to say that before Pfizer had implemented its big data strategy, it couldn't reliably measure how Pzifer was  performing in markets – certainly not at the level tit does now. "To have this data warehouse allows us to do things in a very efficient way," he says. Saenz says that the warehousing solution provides "street-precision inventory (of our own products) by combining sell-in (what we sell to our wholesalers) and sell-out (what our wholesalers place on the market." Pfizer can measure the efficiency of its representatives and track competition.  Burbano de Lara says that by consolidating all the information Pfizer collects and analyzing it effectively, the company builds "very laser-targeted information, so they can make decisions really really fast." He likens the transformation to "going from riding a horse to going on a plane."