An omnichannel transformation across CEE & Baltics.

Even though we initiated this process in the early days of the pandemic, we were already determined to make this shift. With the launch of our 2025 Growth Through Innovation strategy, we had committed to evolving the engagement with our customers from the multichannel model to an omnichannel one in order to offer a better customer experience — one that would serve their needs and preferences in a much more efficient way.

Given the complexity of omnichannel planning and the historical gap in aligning brand planning with individual activity plans, we commissioned the CEX team to build a customised omnichannel planning solution. It would allow cross-functional teams to co-create the strategic omnichannel plan, translate it into tactical plans, and inform each customer-facing role to build their individual operational plans in every business cycle.

We also wanted the solution to allow monitoring of the execution and to give us the flexibility to adjust plans, with the objective of optimising our customer interactions.

We had been working for almost ten years with this team on a variety of projects: business strategy consulting, patient support programmes, commercial process optimisation, customised solutions to support digital and innovation. For the past five years we had been successfully using one of their solutions — Customer Excellence Expert (CEX) — as an end-to-end multichannel planning solution for each business cycle. CEX was widely used across markets in CEE. Given that existing collaboration, we decided to customise the solution to fit the new omnichannel model we wanted to shift towards.

We took a stepwise approach in evolving our OC planning:

1. Operational planning, implemented from Q2 2021 (V1 evolved the segmentation to support the new P,S&T framework and allowed us to plan frequencies for multiple channels).
2. Tactical planning, aimed for Q3 2021 (V2 connects the quantitative approach from V1 with the qualitative part of customer objectives, key messages, and content).
3. Strategic planning, finally landed in Q4 2021.

The new CEX360 supports the end-to-end planning part of the entire transformation. It helps us define the right customer segments (personas), the right objectives, key messages, the optimal channel and frequency mix, and the right sequence of customer interaction. All these elements are integrated and come together in clear, coherent omnichannel campaigns that match our customers' needs and preferences.

Starting in September 2020, we initiated the co-creation process, with an agile approach between AstraZeneca and the CEX team — design, development, integration with existing systems (CRM, Data Warehouse, BI), roll-out, training, change management, and refinement loops with a view to evolve solutions to our organisation's needs.

The CEX team had 12 people involved in the project, including roles like Product Lead, Solution Architect, Project Manager, QA, four senior backend developers and four senior frontend developers.

We were able to launch V1 (operational planning) on time, despite a very tight schedule. This way we achieved a critical business step across all CEE-BA markets, allowing all teams in all therapeutic areas to evolve their P&S&T and improve the customer experience with channel preference. The IBEX team was hands-on in the entire process. In doing so, they developed solid omnichannel capabilities, being able to drive and monitor the quality of business planning throughout the countries.

On top of the co-creation agile approach, the CEX team managed the complexity of the project in an impeccable manner — they structured and kept on track multiple work streams and different audiences (Core Team, Champions from all functions, Leadership, CommEx involved in solution implementation, and IT). The communication and co-creation between AstraZeneca and CEX teams were supported with modern tools: Zoom, Slack, shared docs and workspaces.

There are many things I appreciate about this team, but here are the things I personally find most impressive:

1. The competence and clarity they bring to the table. The CEX team has both the industry knowledge and the ability to connect client needs with innovation and technology. Their approach to aligning objectives and constraints on both sides is very transparent and efficiently communicated every step of the way.
2. Their versatility and dedication to delivering value. A big plus from all projects we worked on together was their focus on core competencies and ability to work in multi-vendor teams to deliver the desired success.
3. Their willingness to challenge assumptions early and surface trade-offs explicitly, rather than discovering them late in delivery.

There is always room for improvement, and hindsight is a great science. Looking back on the transformation curve, we analysed together what we could have done better and concluded that having an earlier and broader communication inside the organisation (with a strong top-down tone) would have eased the transformation pain on next steps.