Planet Overview

Project Management | Financial Planning & Budgeting | Team Collaboration |

Planet Platform Unifies All R&D Program Management Functions

Data Form's Planet is holistic platform that optimizes pharmaceutical R&D program management. It's the universe used by hundreds of people involved in the R&D process to provide and receive definitive information about all aspects of every R&D project. With Planet, individual R&D projects are tightly managed from inception to the handover to the commercialization team. Planet systematically provides multiple levels of control over the quality and accuracy of plans and budgets through the use of approved templates for project types (including standardized critical paths), pre-established work rules, an understanding of project dependencies and automated coupling of tasks and allowable associated costs.

With so many concurrent R&D projects underway and the value of time to market being so high (consider that the value of expediting a new drug valued at $500M annually by one week is nearly $10M), resources - money, people and time -- cannot lay idle. Pharmaceutical R&D program managers are always looking for opportunities to "put and take" among the projects based on the actual project plans and budget relative to forecasts.

Planet provides all the functionality needed by any stakeholders in the R&D process including project managers, financial analysts and department managers (e.g. from toxicology, clinical trial management, chemistry manufacturing and controls or regulatory affairs).

The Planet Platform integrates four critical functional modules, each of which is essential for R&D program management excellence:

1. Project Planning and Management,

2. Resource Budgeting and Forecasting,

3. Team Management and Collaboration and

4. Analysis and Reporting.

Project Management

Planet Project Planning and Management Automates Resource Allocation and Schedule Maintenance

Because it's linked through the Master Catalog to all other modules, such as financial planning, project planning templates reflect that expenses for which resources have been allocated, and vice versa. Planet's automation features expedite plan updates (such as for changes that impact multiple projects) and allow managers to do "what if" scenario modeling.

Master Catalog - the Master Catalog is customized for each client and contains the building blocks and controls for plan development and maintenance. It contains:

Multiple templates with critical paths that are specific to the type of R&D project being undertaken (e.g. distribution of a drug for a new indication requires a different template than developing a new drug altogether;

A "dictionary" of thousands of tasks and notations that may be used to construct an individual R&D project plan and;

Rules about what can be done in plans or with other related files.

The Master Catalog has two major benefits. First, it expedites the development and upkeep of project plans. Second, it enforces uniformity and consistency in metadata across projects and over time, which is crucial to analysis and reporting.

Automated Change Management - R&D plans are subject to hundreds of required changes over the development life cycle. The steady stream of changes - from country-by-country regulations for approvals to the addition of a clinical trial or changes to company processes - are systematically incorporated into plans and budgets. If a requirement changes, Planet will automatically update all plans that are impacted.

Scenario Analysis - Planet enables R&D program managers to quickly and reliably assess the impact of real or potential changes to the plan. This provides an environment for scenario construction and evaluation and identification of best alternative actions in a very fluid R&D environment.

Roll Back Capabilities - users can select a previous date in time and view the plan as it was at that time to understand original assumptions and changes.

Financial Planning & Budgeting

Planet exceeds the capabilities of other available Financial Planning and Budgeting packages because it is linked by the Planet Master Catalog to the Project Management module. This means that budgets and plans reflect only the project elements that are approved and underway. Its automated, customized template development and integration with other financial systems eliminates time-consuming and error-prone manual processes.

Dynamically-Generated Template for Data Input - Planet dynamically generates a web-based forecasting template based on tasks in the approved plan in the Planet Project Planning and Management module. This prevents people from budgeting for tasks that are unplanned.

Roles-based Budgeting and Forecasting system - Users only see the data that pertain to them.

Supports activity based costing - Activities are identified and costs are assigned according to the actual consumption by each so that the team can more precisely estimate the cost of individual tasks, the cost to achieve milestones, the overall costs and profitability of projects or even therapeutic areas in aggregate. This helps support strategic decisions such as pricing, outsourcing, identification and measurement of process improvement initiatives.

Integrates with underlying financial management system (e.g. Oracle, SAP, etc.) - All actuals and forecasts are presented along with plan data and can be synchronized multiple times daily.

Quickly Identifies Available Moneys - If tasks in the project plan were contingent, those moneys are flagged for scrutiny and possible reallocation.

"Point in Time Analysis" - Similar to its "roll back" capabilities, Planet allows analysts to go back in time to review the financial forecast and actuals at any point to better understand assumptions and changes that impacted outcomes.

Supports Risk Analysis - by identifying budget, forecast, variability and activities within the development timeline that are committed or contingent, the R&D program management team can assess project risk.

Team Collaboration

With people rolling on and off projects, Planet's Team Management and Collaboration capabilities make it easier to track and communicate with team members throughout the life of a development initiative.

Integration with SharePoint - Integration with SharePoint puts Planet utilities at peoples' fingertips, making it convenient to use the system while taking advantages of SharePoint's document sharing and collaboration capabilities.

Resource Tracking - Planet helps keep track of roles and resources

Generate Project Team Lists - Planet creates and maintains team lists, which facilitates group communication.

Work Management - Planet helps keep track of individuals' work through the roles-based views.

Analysis & Reporting

Tracking and reporting on budgets and project status is often a time-consuming, manual process. Since Planet contains or has access to all resource and project-related information, its automated and custom reports save time and resources and put time-critical data at your fingertips.

Track Key Performance Indicators - At a glance, people can see how well projects are performing in any number of dimensions (e.g. time, resource utilization, costs, etc.)

Project Scoring - Using pre-established rules, each project is scored according to criteria such as percent complete, dependencies, financial criteria or other risk factors.

Quick to Set up Reports - It's very quick to generate reports and add rows or calculations to existing reports. There's no need to spend days or weeks manually cutting and pasting data from multiple systems into spreadsheets.

500+ Custom Data Fields Offers Unlimited Options - With more than 500 custom data fields to choose from in the Master Catalog, there's no limit to the ways managers can view and analyze data for status checks and critical decision making. Managers can generate reports regarding financial data, project data or a combination, such as the remaining forecasted spend for all projects that are approaching a certain milestone within the next 12 months.

Ad Hoc Capabilities Supported - In addition to reports created by Planet Power Users, individuals may also explore the data to generate their own reports.

Planet Data is Easily Integrated with Third Party BI Tools - In many cases, data contained in Planet is also integrated with other tools to create an executive dashboard, for example.

Answer Big Questions ( Child of Analysis and Reporting)

Answer All the Common Multi-Dimensional Questions with Ease

Consider for a moment some additional commonly-asked questions that if not for Planet, would require people to manually construct answers using data from multiple systems.

1. "What's our actual spend on this project compared to forecast? How are these amounts different from what we believed would be the case when the project started?"

2. "What is our aggregate spending on a specific category (rolled up)?"

3. "Can you show me the cascading goals for this project? For this team? For that person?"

4. "What is the financial and time impact of a new regulation for POCs conducted in an early development stage? A late development stage?"

5. "What can be learned from past R&D projects that resemble this one?"

A primary advantage of the Planet Platform is that it was designed as an R&D program management platform from the ground up, so financial planning is linked with project planning, which is linked to resource allocation, which then ties to team member collaboration and ultimately, reporting. This not only makes project and financial plans more accurate, it makes multi-dimensional questions easier to answer.