Mosaic Solutions Group
Single-Source-of-Truth Commercial Data Operations

Although results vary across surveys, there is a clear consensus that managing commercial data operations remains a near-universal challenge. Pharma sales and marketing teams have a driving need for data and access to a rapidly expanding portfolio of data sources and assets. These data hold the promise of competitive advantage, and great effort is devoted to translating the data into meaningful insights. Unfortunately, this effort is often hostage to ineffective data operations. The challenge is, in some ways, more pronounced for pharmaceutical companies who must connect data from many external sources to a unique customer record. Effective analytics in pharma requires effective integration of data from syndicated sources, wholesalers and distributors, 3PLs, CRM systems, expense management systems, specialty pharmacies and patient hubs, a range of marketing programs, and internal data sets such as alignments and rosters.

The complexity of pharma data is coupled with an infrastructure problem—most commercial teams lack the ability to consolidate their data assets in a single data management environment. Fragmented data creates inefficiencies and frustration as operational teams spend time integrating data required to meet operational and analytical needs. Analysts commonly admit they spend most of their time cleaning and organizing data, leaving little time for developing useful insights or deliverables.

A growing number of companies offer solutions to meet this need, including Atlanta-based Mosaic Solutions Group. We spoke briefly with Rob Kime, a founding partner at Mosaic. According to Kime, Mosaic offers some unique advantages. Mosaic does not build a data warehouse for its clients since development projects generally focus on a current, static set of data assets. “That’s not efficient or realistic,” says Kime. “Inevitably, the requirements change, often before a project comes to completion, and the model has to be refactored, which is expensive and time-consuming.” Rather than building a data warehouse from the ground up, Mosaic leverages a proven, flexible model capable of assimilating each client’s commercial data assets into a client-specific, cloud-based, data warehouse. The model is designed to house all of a client’s commercial data and feed all downstream data consumers; a single-source-of-truth or SSoT. Mosaic advocates this single point of application for all business rules and logic as a way to eliminate operational inefficiencies and discrepancies in business intelligence.

This approach allows Mosaic to establish core data operations in a few weeks. The accelerated timeline further reduces client costs. Kime draws another distinction between Mosaic and SaaS type solutions with structured interfaces through which a client loads data into a fixed data model. He says, “Our clients are looking for someone to do the operational work so they can focus on using the data. Configuring the data model and managing data operations is an essential part of the service we provide. Our model is designed around the certainty that the operations team will be asked to implement a significant change. Our model is designed to adapt to that change quickly and economically.”

Mosaic provides automated, cloud-based, single-source-of-truth commercial data operations and customized business intelligence using their highly scalable, modular infrastructure to meet clients’ constant need for change

Mosaic’s focus on SSoT is rooted in a fixation on customer master data management. According to the company, SSoT does not work without the right approach to master data management. Mosaic points to the seamless integration of customer master data operations as a unique strength of their offering. “Our system creates, and maintains, a link between a single unique customer record and any external identifier from any external record introduced into the system,” adds Kime. This cross-reference is central to Mosaic’s approach which includes linking customer entities such as hospitals and other purchasing entities in wholesaler data, with the same entity in a syndicated source. “You can’t rely on a programmatic match,” he says. “Often, the identifiers are not correct, and they change over time. Fuzzy matching is unreliable. Programming can usually take us about 80% of the way.” To bridge the inevitable gap, Mosaic relies on a team of customer master data curators, focused on maintaining the integrity of each client’s unique customer master. Data curators play a significant role in building customer hierarchies, many clients need to roll up data from HCPs into facilities or other higher-level customer entities. In the Mosaic system, they can see and maintain the hierarchical relationships between customers.

Initializing the master is just the beginning. “We see systems where users can make changes in the customer master without being validated. Even in validated systems, we see a lot of duplication. That can’t happen in the Mosaic model,” asserts Kime. The Mosaic system places the validation function outside of the core master data set. Hundreds of tests on incoming customer data identify potential changes or exceptions which are queued for resolution by a curator. Mosaic sees customer-facing teams as valuable sources of accurate customer data. Its platform includes a web interface through which users can see and manage the entire customer master. The commercial team uses this application to submit change requests for validation or interact with curators.

For most members of the commercial team, data operations are unseen and unknown. Generally, the manifestation of effective data operations is business intelligence deliverables. “Every client is different” says Kime. “Some want to use an application like Tableau to generate reporting and dashboards. We build and maintain the data marts they need to support that activity inside their warehouse. Most of our clients want customized reporting deliverables, whether PDF or Excel, that get generated in our business intelligence platform and pushed automatically to different user groups. We have a strong development team that translates a customer’s vision into production deliverables.” Mosaic also provides a suite of applications to support data access and analytics across a range of skill sets common to commercial teams in pharma. “We have clients who want to write SQL code, and they have direct access to their warehouse. More often, we see clients taking advantage of a drag-and-drop interface we created to let an average commercial user generate very complex queries and extracts in just a few minutes,” adds Kime.

“Certainly, technology and method are important. We think we offer some unique advantages,” says Kime. The Mosaic team takes an obvious pride in their unique background and entrepreneurial history. “There’s no question clients benefit from our many years of experience in client-side operational roles and even field sales. We have built our company on that first-hand understanding of our client’s challenges. Combining that perspective with our nationally recognized technical team creates a definitive advantage for our clients,” he concludes.