Empowering Global Innovation: Merck's Journey with Braineet

Merck - Pioneering pharmaceutical innovation

A global quest for excellence

Merck, a renowned pharmaceutical company, is distinguished by its commitment to patient-centered innovation and global reach. An executive shares, "The environment here is about growth and empowerment, with a focus on making a significant impact on patients' lives." This section will delve into the company's goals, challenges, and its mission to innovate in healthcare.

EMIAS - Accelerating commercial innovation

EMIAS, the Emerging Market Innovative Access Studio at Merck, operates as a commercial accelerator, fostering innovative ideas across Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Eastern Europe/Eastern Africa. "We're a team of 19, sitting across the globe, working closely with markets to improve patient access," reveals a department head. This segment will explore the structure, goals, and challenges of EMIAS.

The Braineet solution: A gateway to enhanced collaboration

Faced with the challenge of operating in diverse regions and capturing global learnings, Braineet was selected for its flexibility and capacity for co-creation. "Braineet stood out for its adaptability to our unique needs," an executive notes. This section will detail how Braineet provided a platform that catered to Merck's specific requirements.

Implementation and impact: A new era of efficiency

Streamlining processes and enhancing communication

‍The implementation of Braineet at Merck was characterized by its rapid execution and immediate positive feedback. "Braineet revolutionized how we document and manage projects," states a team member. This part of the case study will highlight the platform's role in breaking down information barriers and fostering a culture of shared innovation.

Expert analysis: Endorsements from the core

"Braineet has been pivotal in enhancing our project management and collaboration," shares a project manager, underscoring the platform's impact. Industry experts and Merck employees will provide insights and testimonials on the transformative effect of Braineet.

The interview with Merck

Tell me a little about your company. What do you love about working there? What are your company goals and main challenges? 

So we’re a pharmaceutical company as you know, and one of the things that I love the most is the environment, first of all, people here look forward to helping you whenever it’s needed. There’s a lot of room to grow here and it’s one of the best things that I’ve found, how empowering people your manager can be, to help you grow, to help you learn these tasks, they’re not worried about moving people from one area to another regardless of the knowledge because they know that if they have the skill they succeed in those type of positions as well. We’re very focused on patients, so making the best impact day to day is very big in our hearts. 

In challenges there are lots of them, especially for the team that I work in which is EMIAS. There are a couple regarding operations, one of which would be around how we establish our procedures. As we are a cross functional team we have people around the globe, we’re a high performance team, and it’s all virtual. Running projects in the three main regions, that’s something we have huge pride in, and the challenges are very different depending on the regions. Around the world the thing we’ve done with Braineet is to see how we’ve progressed, and it’s the one that’s going to be able to leverage our learnings. Back in the day it was something that wasn’t fully captured. You have projects in Mexico, Thailand, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, but then you don’t have that bank of information that helps you leverage learnings from all around the globe, and start creating common practices, best practices, and this is something that Braineet helps us to create, the solution that helps us capture all the work that was done.

Tell me about your department. How is it positioned in the company and how is the department structured? What other teams are you working closely with? What are the department goals and main challenges?

Sure, so EMIAS stands for Emerging Market Innovative Access Studio, and we’re a commercial accelerator for innovative ideas, we run projects around the three main regions in emerging markets. Which are Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Eastern Europe/Eastern Africa, so those are the three regions that we cover. Right now we’re a 19 people group sitting around the globe, we have people in Singapore, we have people in Indonesia, Spain, Dubai, Turkey, Columbia, Argentinian, Chile, Puerto Rico, Brazil as well, we also have some cross functional team members. And what we do is that we work closely with markets in order to come up with ideas around access to improve patients' lives. We’re an emerging markets organization which means that we’re not fully doing local work but more of an above market team. We’re very tied to our strategy, we’re very close to some senior leaders and we tend to align all of our processes and all of our work with those strategies that our senior leaders are targeting.

Tell me about your role. What are your goals and challenges?

So our main objective, we want to find an idea that can transform the way we work in terms of access. How we would like to do it is testing and learning. So we apply these venture capital innovations methodologies in the way that we work in our local market projects, in order to capture any opportunity we may find. The main challenge we have for our team surrounds the processes. This is a new team, it was built two years ago, but we changed the structure this time last year. We have to build this huge capability team to start focusing on innovation projects, but we also turned into scaling projects. Building all that capability around innovation and then scaling those successful ideas was a challenge that we ended up focusing on this year. Also developing people, it’s not a challenge but it is one of our main objectives. We want to develop the people better here in the team so we’ve come up with a plan to bring the right tools so everybody steps up in their position.

For me one of the main objectives was building a tool that could help us document all the information, that’s why I ended up working with Braineet, and also our team development plan. So we have these two main pillars in our priorities, the first one around the documentation, how do we make sure we’re capturing all the learnings that we have across our portfolio and how is it that we track our portfolio, how do we see what our successful ideas are, the ideas in progress, and then on the other side enabling the right tools for the PMs so everybody could get the best out of this experience and improve their skills, learn new skills, learn new processes.

The main challenge that we encountered is coming from a Latin America region into an emerging market where you’re broadening your scope. How do we step up to cover all these  regions? I think here we’re capturing things such as personal skill sets, and also people management in diverse culture teams. So I think those challenges are very important because at the end of the day we are project managers but we also would like to bring a little bit more value to the team. Not being the expert is the challenge that you personally are going to encounter if you come to a team like EMIAS. And around the multicultural part it’s something you can be anxious about because you don’t know how people are going to react, but at the end of the day you realize that the team you’re setting with is very open, they’re very good at making you feel relaxed, there’s a lot of learning exchange inside the team that can help you tackle that challenge.

What was going on at your company that led you to us? How serious was the problem?

Before even talking to you guys we’d done a bunch of projects, 20 to 30, but we didn’t even have an Excel file that captured the right information for our projects. We didn’t have KPIs, we didn’t even have a list of what the names of the project we’d run were. We just knew some of them in our heads. So if we were going to manage a portfolio we needed to have the information, and not only for us but in order to tell our senior leaders about the work we’ve been doing, our achievements. And coming to Braineet the main purpose was to have a portfolio tracking tool, a place where i could see how I was doing, what were the projects I’d run, the projects I’m currently running, what was their stage, but when we started to implement the tool we realized we could use it for documentation as well. As we realized that you guys had a few more options in terms of powerpoint files, linking documents to the platform, it could also help us check what was done during the project, who was responsible, and we ended up using Braineet for ALL our documentation processes. And a fun fact is, we came up thinking about including all the information around our projects, but now we’re thinking also towards expanding this and documenting our own internal processes inside Braineet. For example, if I were going to run a sprint, how can I do it? I can make a process map in Braineet that says I need to align with senior leaders and so on, so right now it’s not something we’re only going to use with our projects but also with our own processes so future PMs can come in and say, “Ok I have no idea how to run a sprint”, you can go into Braineet and see all the documentation. And when you get to know the tool a little bit more you realize there are more options that you can use, not only for the projects themselves. 

We’re also planning to use Braineet for automation around powerpoint, to have a deck built in the tool and the PM just has to update the KPIs, the custom fields, and then it pops out into the presentation, and that’s something that’s going to save a lot of time. We’re very excited to see that.

What was the impact on the business not to solve it ? Any idea about the cost of not solving it?

First is going to be time. A quick example, back in the day when we had a presentation for our leadership team and they’d say “Alright so how many projects have you done, what came up?” and we would need to go and check for every project we had. Right now in Braineet if anybody has a question we just need to go into Braineet and if they say “How many have succeeded?” we just apply the filter. It has saved quite a lot of work. Another example, the other day we were having a discussion around what should we do next, and a bit of context, back in the day we worked on vaccines and oncology, and then we only focused on oncology. Right now we’re expanding again, we’re coming back to vaccines. And one of the questions that we had was, “ok what do we do with vaccines, what are the challenges going to be”, and one of the questions someone had was “what was the outcome for the first sprint we ran?” What were the projects we were getting? What we did was we just looked in Braineet and we filtered for our vaccines projects, and it was very very easy to see who was responsible, when we started, what was the main learning, and it was very straightforward. We didn’t have to check files, folders, we just opened Braineet and searched through the filters and that was it. So we managed to complete a task in 30 minutes. We would’ve needed to check files and that could’ve taken 2 days before Braineet.

Having this tool that helps you not only gather a list of projects but also the learnings, it’s something that’s very useful for everyone. For example we’re 19 people and we’re sitting all across the globe. If someone in Asia Pacific has a question she can’t ask me directly, she could just go to Braineet, see the work we’ve done, and take a decision from that. It helps us be faster, be agile with our work. We’ve come up with a plan to update it every month and a half or less, and the feedback that I’ve received is that it’s very straightforward, very friendly, you notice it’s very easy.

What alternatives did you consider before choosing Braineet?

Before coming to Braineet we were talking to our procurement team and they said “Hey the France team has used this tool, why don’t you go give it a try?” and we did and it worked!

How did you communicate to your teams about Braineet to adopt it? Did you have to face some change management challenges to implement Braineet ? How did you overcome them?

So the way we work is we have 3 sprints throughout the year, each one is 12 weeks. The only time where we don’t work that hard is June to September, everybody is going to be on vacation. From June to September there was no sprint, so we built most of our capacity on Braineet during those 3 months. That’s the time where we decided to establish the platform. On the first sprint from September to December, we established some key days where people would have to update information in Braineet. At the very beginning the challenge was (people saying) I don’t know how to use this. What we did is we scheduled training with Sarah and the team, and we showed the basic way the platform works, and we separated into two main roles. The first one is the basic portfolio manager role, which is, you get into Braineet, you create your project, your KPIs, you upload the data in order to document your developments and your progress. And there’s another role which is mine and my boss, and it’s about “How are we going to make it work for everybody? Who’s going to establish KPIs? When are we going to include that?” So it was more of letting the team get to know the tool by doing, but not necessarily giving them visibility and responsibility for making sure that all the files are there. It’s like you’re just going to be focusing on your project, you complete that and that’s it. So what I would do is you know if there’s anything missing I would need to check in with the PM. So we said deadlines, roles, responsibilities, and of course there’s still a lot of follow up.

What advice would you have for others considering Braineet?

Leverage Braineet support. You not only give us the tool because you also have a lot more to offer, and it’s around experience. You’ve all the companies work with Braineet, you’ve sene how it is they establish their processes, the KPIs they use, the way they sell their stories, so if this is something that’s new in your company, don’t believe that Braineet’s just going to be a tool, because there’s a lot more value than just the technology. You guys have knowledge, you guys have experience, so having questions for Sarah like “Hey how do I do this?” She says ok “We can do A, B, and C” but if she doesn’t have the knowledge she can reach out to Jonathan or Pierre to ask. So that’s something that can benefit everybody, because if this is new there’s experience that can benefit everybody.