OpsModel Scaling Concept

Challenge

The rapidly growing data science department of our client, an international pharmaceutical corporation, faced several challenges. Firstly, the existing operational processes and responsibilities for end-to-end delivery of their analytics products needed to be renewed. Additionally, the related skills and role profiles had to be redesigned. Through the execution of various proof-of-concept projects, complex dependencies with internal stakeholders had developed, which could only be partially resolved with the existing operational model and role profiles.

Approach

Initially, the status quo was assessed through interviews and workshops. We conducted discussions with representatives from management and the workforce to obtain a comprehensive picture of the situation. From this, key challenges were identified and prioritized, forming the basis for developing the new departmental operations model. We collaboratively defined new central roles for successful end-to-end delivery, established best practices, and conducted benchmark analyses.

Applying the STATWORX Use Case LifeCycle process, we mapped existing skills onto future skill requirements for successful end-to-end delivery and highlighted relevant gaps. The results were consolidated into an operational model and jointly implemented.

Result

Collaborating with the client team, we established the strategic foundation for repositioning the entire data science team towards a customer- and product-oriented operational model. New customer-centric roles, such as a Customer Success Manager for analytics products, were defined to reduce the operational burden on existing team members and accelerate the turnaround for new requirements. The delineation of cross-departmental responsibilities between the business unit and the data science team, along with the development of an upskilling and role transition concept, completes the new operational model. This enables the efficient scaling of our client's data science initiative.