Customer Story

How a Global Biopharma Company Modernized Market Access Analytics on Databricks

What we did

Turned complex provider, payer, patient services, contract, and third-party data into business-ready reporting and governed self-service analytics through Power BI, ThoughtSpot, and Spotter, enabling Market Access teams to explore access barriers without unmanaged Excel workarounds.

Built and advanced a Databricks-based Market Access analytics foundation that supports core use cases across provider and account strategy, patient access analytics, payer and contract performance, and field team enablement.

Industry

  • Healthcare

Technologies

  • Databricks
  • ·
  • Power BI
  • ·
  • ThoughtSpot

Key Life Sciences Use Cases that Improve Visibility

Provider and account strategy, patient access analytics, payer and contract analytics, and field team enablement

Databricks Foundation – Market Access Analytics at Scale

Analytics8 modernized and operationalized the company’s Databricks environment into business-ready analytics for provider, patient, payer, and contract insights

15+ Years Embedded HLS Analytics Partner

Analytics8 has supported this global biopharma company in a style capacity, helping prioritize and advance Market Access analytics over time

The Challenge

For biopharma companies, Market Access teams play a critical role in helping patients gain access to treatment. Their job is to lower the barriers between a prescribed therapy and a filled prescription, from payer coverage and reimbursement hurdles to provider access, patient affordability, and formulary positioning.

At this global biopharma company, the Market Access team felt pressure to move faster. Leaders saw peers advancing their commercial analytics capabilities and knew they needed a stronger data foundation to keep pace. But the team depended heavily on a centralized corporate IT function that moved slowly and lacked the day-to-day business context needed to support market access decisions.

The issue was not just access to data. It was access to usable, connected, business-ready insight. Market Access needed to understand provider relationships, payer dynamics, patient access barriers, and contract performance in a way that reflected how the business operated. Waiting on corporate IT was slowing that work down. To move at the speed the business required, the Market Access team decided to take greater control of its own data and analytics environment. They needed a partner who could help them build on Databricks, connect complex healthcare and commercial data, and turn that foundation into insight the business could trust to drive revenue and serve patients.

The Solution

Analytics8 helped the Market Access team modernize and operationalize its Databricks-based analytics environment, turning fragmented healthcare and commercial data into an enriched, business-ready foundation for reporting, self-service analytics, and ongoing Market Access analysis.

Key Market Access Analytics Use Cases:

  • Analytics Foundation Modernization: We built a scalable data foundation that connected complex provider, payer, patient, contract, and third-party healthcare data across fragmented systems. This gave the business a more flexible and extensible environment for reporting, self-service analytics, and ongoing market access analysis. The work included:
  • Scalable data foundation on Databricks
  • Integration of fragmented healthcare and commercial data sources
  • Business-ready data modeling and provider mastering
  • Migration from legacy Qlik reporting to self-service analytics through Power BI, ThoughtSpot, and Spotter
  • Provider and Account Strategy: We helped the Market Access team build a more complete view of provider, practice, health system, and payer relationships so the business could better understand which organizations influence access and how those relationships connect across the market. The work included:
  • Provider mastering and account affiliation mapping
  • Provider, practice, and health system hierarchy analysis
  • Identification of key payer and provider decision- makers
  • Improved visibility at a territory level support outreach and account planning
  • Patient Access Analytics: We built analytics and reporting that helped the business understand the patient access journey, including where patients encountered reimbursement or affordability barriers after a prescription was written. The work included:
  • Patient journey and access reporting
  • Prior authorization and reimbursement visibility
  • Copay assistance and patient support program tracking
  • First-fill time and therapy initiation analysis
  • Identification of patient access barriers and drop-off points
  • Payer and Contract Analytics: We helped the Market Access team create a more consistent, data-driven view of payer and contract performance so the business could better evaluate reimbursement dynamics, deal effectiveness, and contract outcomes over time. The work included:
  • Pre/ post deal contract performance analysis
  • Payer reimbursement and formulary visibility
  • Ongoing contract performance monitoring and evaluation
  • Field Team Enablement: We provided the data and account visibility field and account teams needed to prioritize outreach, understand provider relationships, and make more informed engagement decisions. The work included:
  • Enhanced account intelligence and targeting
  • Improved field prioritization and outreach planning
  • Greater visibility into provider and health system relationships

Business Impact

Unlike the rotating contractor models common across large pharma organizations, Analytics8 developed deep business and domain context over time. Stakeholders relied on the team not just for technical delivery, but for trusted guidance, faster answers, and continuity across complex Market Access initiatives. Analytics8 became a trusted extension of the Market Access team.

Our embedded, Data Team as a Service (DTaaS) style partnership helped this global biopharma company realize more value, faster, from its Databricks investment by extending the platform into practical Market Access analytics, Power BI reporting, and governed self-service exploration through ThoughtSpot and Spotter.

Our client realized the following benefits:

  • More control over analytics: Market Access reduced its dependency on centralized IT and gained a faster path from business question to trusted reporting.
  • Better provider and account visibility: Provider mastering, account hierarchy analysis, and affiliation mapping helped the team understand how doctors, practices, facilities, health systems, and parent organizations connect.
  • Stronger access barrier analysis: Patient access analytics helped the team track delays across prior authorization, reimbursement, copay support, patient assistance enrollment, and first-fill timing.
  • More objective contract evaluation: Pre/post deal analytics gave the team a clearer way to compare how major payer and pharmacy contracts were written against how they performed over time.
  • Governed self-service exploration: ThoughtSpot, Liveboards, and Spotter gave users a safer way to ask follow-up questions and explore data without exporting Power BI tables into unmanaged Excel reports.
  • Faster, more trusted answers: Because Analytics8 understood the data environment and the Market Access operating model, stakeholders could bring the team complex questions and get reliable guidance without starting from scratch each time.

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