Executive Summary

A leading global Contract Research Organization (CRO) revolutionized its territory planning and resource allocation by implementing causaLens’ Digital Worker Platform.

The Sales Territory Alignment Digital Worker automates the entire planning workflow - from ingesting Healthcare Professional (HCP) data to generating optimized, client-ready territory plans - replacing manual, static tools and costly third-party software.

By removing dependency on legacy SaaS systems and repetitive human labor, the organization achieved $500K in annual savings. Human-in-the-loop functionality enables regional managers to quickly review and adjust plans based on real-world field conditions.

The result: smarter HCP allocation, faster decision cycles, and optimized resource deployment - delivering measurable business value across the organization.

 

Client Overview

This global Contract Research Organization partners with pharmaceutical companies to deliver insights and analytics that improve drug promotion and healthcare engagement strategies.

As part of its operations, the CRO supports field force planning and optimization, helping clients design effective sales territories that maximize engagement with high-value doctors.

Given the scale of its client base and diversity of markets served, the company needed a system capable of producing optimized territory plans rapidly and at scale - without the cost or rigidity of traditional SaaS planning tools.

 

The Challenge - Static Tools, Suboptimal Outcomes

Before adopting causaLens, territory planning was manual, time-consuming, and error-prone. Each plan required multiple data preparation steps and static analysis within inflexible software environments.

Key obstacles included:

• Labor-Intensive Process: Territory designs were created manually using spreadsheets and exported data. Each iteration required days of coordination between analysts and managers.
• Lack of Algorithmic Optimization: Legacy SaaS tools relied on rigid parameters, preventing nuanced optimization around doctor value, geography, or travel constraints.
• Rigid Workflows: Adjusting plans for real-world constraints - like travel time or workload balancing - required extensive manual rework.
• Suboptimal Outcomes: Territories were frequently uneven, with overloaded representatives or misallocated high-value HCPs, leading to reduced coverage efficiency.

The combination of manual effort and static tools resulted in inefficiencies and significant operational cost.

 

The Solution - Smarter Territory Alignment

The CRO implemented the causaLens Digital Worker Platform to create a fully automated, end-to-end territory planning solution.

• Smarter Allocation: The Digital Worker predicts doctor buying propensity and automatically prioritizes high-value HCPs, ensuring even and strategic distribution across sales representatives.
• Optimized Planning: Advanced optimization algorithms minimize travel time, maximize value coverage, and dynamically account for constraints like geography, workload, and exclusions.
• Interactive Visualization: Results are presented through interactive maps, allowing managers to review optimized territories visually and make quick, informed adjustments.
• Seamless Integration: The system runs end-to-end - from data ingestion and processing to CRM updates and client-ready plan generation - requiring no manual intervention between steps.
• Human-in-the-Loop Oversight: Managers can adjust plans in real time based on field feedback, combining AI precision with human expertise for maximum adaptability.

This automation replaced the organization’s previous territory planning SaaS, eliminating manual exports, configuration overhead, and maintenance costs.

 

The Future Impact

The adoption of causaLens’ Digital Worker has produced measurable impact across cost, efficiency, and performance dimensions:

• $500K Annual Cost Savings: Achieved through the elimination of third-party SaaS licensing and manual labor costs.
• Accelerated Planning Cycles: Territory plans generated in hours instead of weeks, enabling faster campaign launches and resource deployment.
• Optimized Field Performance: Balanced territories ensure equitable workloads and improved engagement with high-value doctors.
• Scalable Automation: A single Digital Worker instance now supports territory planning for multiple clients and geographies simultaneously.
• Enhanced Decision Quality: Predictive insights and interactive visualizations allow teams to make faster, evidence-based adjustments.
• Foundation for Expansion: The CRO plans to extend automation into adjacent workflows such as rep performance optimization and HCP engagement forecasting.

By embedding AI-driven automation into the heart of its operational model, the CRO has established a new standard for speed, efficiency, and strategic precision in territory management - demonstrating how Digital Workers can transform legacy planning processes into continuously optimized, intelligent systems.