Expletive Pharma Improves Productivity with a MATLAB-Driven Pricing System

“The SciEngineer team was very helpful. I am completely satisfied with their professionalism and their attitude towards me and the project.”

– Gabor Nagy, Expletive Pharma

Today’s always-on and always-connected world puts companies in a squeeze, forcing them to choose between higher costs and lower margins without leaving much room for error. Strategic pricing is at the heart of retail competition. In order to develop an infallible pricing strategy, companies have to integrate, organize and analyze a wealth of data. As the amount of data keeps growing year on year, manual analysis becomes difficult and time-consuming, often leading to mistakes. Automation offers a perfect solution that saves time, increases quality, and improves productivity.

Challenge

Previously, Expletive Pharma used a MATLAB-driven solution to price products based on inventory. This system required that the team manually input data in a time-consuming, rigid, and error-prone process. “We developed the algorithm in MATLAB®, but when it became too complicated to develop further, I decided to ask for external help,” says Gábor Nagy,  pharmaceutical director at  Expletive Pharma. He and his team wanted to maintain and use an existing solution for a wide range of products coming from multiple distributors but convert it into an improved, user-friendly, flexible system that could also function as a basis for additional advancements.

Solution

To transform an existing pricing solution into a user-friendly and flexible system, SciEngineer’ team decided to tackle the challenge in two parts: (1) modularizing the algorithm to enhance system flexibility, and (2) creating and adjusting the user interface to improve user experience and automate data integration workflow, with the ultimate aim of increasing team productivity.

Modularizing the existing algorithm to enhance system flexibility

The existing code was divided into several smaller modules. This decision helped to add flexibility to the preexisting workflow logic, which now can serve as the basis for additional developments and for adding more functionality when required. After utilizing MATLAB language features, the team also reduced the size of the codebase by 40%. Furthermore, with changes having been implemented in the refactored code, it became easier to debug and maintain the code while working on the user interface.

Creating and adjusting the user interface

To improve user experience and address the issue of eliminating as many manual tasks as possible, the team has created a user interface that suits and enhances the backend logic of product pricing. This allows the user to conveniently adjust the most important parameters and configure the assessment, reducing workflow time and increasing flexibility.

By addressing the main concerns of this workflow, the team has created a new tool that streamlines product pricing. By refactoring its codebase, we’ve made it more manageable for the future.

Close cooperation with Expletive Pharma over the course of the entire project allowed SciEngineer’ team to discover earlier unknown-yet-improvable aspects of the workflow that highlight opportunities for improvement.

Results

• Newly designed user-friendly interface. The newly designed user interface replaces the need for manual code editing, reducing the possibility of human errors and making the pricing process more understandable, hence more user-friendly.
• Simplified workflow and improved productivity. By adding more flexibility and reducing the time required for each product assessment cycle, the transformed pricing system is a reconfiguration of the previous, existing workflow.
• Maintainable and flexible algorithm structure.  The original codebase was reduced by 40%. The implemented code changes make it easier to introduce any additional developments as required.

Summary

Challenge

Transform an existing pricing solution into an improved, user-friendly and flexible system that could also function as a base for any further advancements

Solution

Eliminate current workflow limitations by reworking existing algorithms and wrapping code functions to facilitate potential future developments

Results

• Newly designed user-friendly interface
• Simplified workflow and improved productivity
• Maintainable and flexible algorithm structure

Featured products

MathWorks® products:

• MATLAB

Learn more about Expletive Pharma