Professional Achievement Essay

Our largest client (Johnson & Johnson) was seriously dissatisfied with our team’s efforts/deliverables to migrate their legacy vaccine database to a first-of-its-kind cloud-based storage platform.  With an impending inspection by the US FDA, the need of the hour was to completely turnaround the engagement’s trajectory – ensure 98.5% quality assurance (9,000 cases to be processed by passing through a 3-step process (27,000 steps) with only 45 associates in 6 months duration). In these trying circumstances, in light of my previous consistent contributions, our senior management entrusted me ownership of this critical project. I was assigned as a new project lead (point of contact) to the client.

To actualize the overarching objective, I realized that we needed to choose an analyses framework that was so comprehensive that it would pacify disgruntled client stakeholders. Therefore, I chose the Military Standard methodology for determining successful migration quality (in line with this algorithm, at least 400 cases had to be randomly selected for review. If 3 or more cases have errors from the 400 sampled (i.e. 3 or more cases with less than 100% accuracy), then the project quality review would be deemed ineffective and would be repeated. The project was complex and as a team we had herculean task ahead.

For each case/Individual Case Safety Report (ICSR), average 1000 fields (min 250 to max 15,000 fields) had to be checked 3 times whether they were filled correctly and if not they had to be amended correctly. Considering 80% of team comprised new hires, I had to not only train them but also make them fully functional and get quality work done. The stake of this project to be successful was very high as business (600 plus staff and $10M revenue) would have been cut to less than 50% had this project failed.

Initially, I conducted root-cause analyses of the problems and was able to determine the major factors leading to the sluggish development of the project. I discovered that there was communication gap between client expectations and understanding of team-members. To get the expectations right from the client, I scheduled quality remediation workshops with client. Here, I personally represented our team to ensure seamless coordination and disseminated all the learning to team-members so as to create enhanced awareness about the various loopholes of the project and their remedial measures. Further, to ensure that client expectations do not differ later on, I ensured that all learning were documented by creating a share-point which was mutually accessible to both client and to my team.

Moreover, given high attrition rates prevalent across the firm, there was an acute shortage of skilled employees. Therefore, I initiated a pioneering training paradigm, Key Research Outcomes (KRA), to train all new associates. This goal-centric effort accelerated the progress of the remediation project and increased the positive outcomes by 35.5%.

Next, to solve the persistent delays and reduce turnaround time, I conceptualized and created a centralized data-tracker of all terms submitted so that time can be saved for repetitive terms (drugs/side effects), thereby ensuring optimal productivity for each case at all steps. Additionally, I led daily calls with the client to assess customer experience and made recommendations to improve it. Subsequently, I collaborated with the Centre of Excellence/competitive intelligence team to conduct competitive benchmarking which proved to be immensely beneficial. This enabled me make subtle changes to the outcome variables in our database which further improved the entire process.