Introduction: Enrich and the EAP

Enrich's mission is to provide analytic solutions to assist companies in strategically managing their own R&D project portfolios. They accomplish this through their Enrich Analytics Platform (EAP), a cloud-based business forecasting application that aids clients in creating project valuations and making decisions under uncertainty. The software was conceived by their founder, Richard Sonnenblick, who established the company more as a consulting firm. He came to understand that Enrich could create greater value for their customers by providing a tool that allowed them to more independently support the portfolio management process.

The EAP offers a wide variety of features related to reporting, valuation, and workflow. Here's a shortlist of what makes it the leading solution for companies in the medical devices and pharmaceutical industries:

  • Variance analysis and cloud-enabled portfolio reporting give clients instant information on the impact of any changes that are made, as well as a real-time look at their overall portfolio health.
  • Scenario analysis and project scoring allow them to consider various possibilities and rank projects in order to determine the best fit for their needs.
  • Data exchange with enterprise applications and integrated approval workflows help make the resource management process run more efficiently.
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The Challenge: Complexity and collaboration

Enrich serves companies that deal with large R&D efforts and which face uncertainty in managing their portfolios. In this type of environment, determining which projects to approve and which to reject is not a simple task. Before such decisions can be made, their clients must generate project valuations and look at different scenarios for each project. The results of this work are then viewed through the lens of company-wide requirements in order to prioritize the list of potential undertakings.

Creating a project valuation itself is a complex task which may contain plenty of changes. The more people involved, the more difficult it is to guarantee that the right information is being used across the board at any given time. When changes occur the task of correcting data typically falls on the shoulders of analysts. Rather than fully committing themselves to scrutinizing results and producing valuable insights, they end up wasting time on running after numbers and making sure that everything is up to date.

The Solution: A specialized analytics tool

Besides offering the ability to fully audit data points and assumptions, the EAP

  • eliminates inaccurate data by restricting inputs, verifying data sources, and standardizing calculations;
  • provides results in real-time, so the impact of any changes made are seen immediately; and
  • contains a great deal of analysis features that allow clients to compare their current data set and alternative data sets to each other as well as to the past.
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Handsontable's role in the solution arose through Enrich's need to modernize their software. The EAP was developed around the beginning of the new millennium, and after about a decade it became clear that an update was necessary. By that time, clients had gotten used to more modern technologies and easier to use web pages. They voiced their concerns to Enrich regarding the EAP's interfaces and overall user experience, and the company listened. In the process of redeveloping their platform, one of the major requirements was a modular, easy-to-use grid component that would give them the freedom to design their solution to meet very specific demands. Since their product usually replaced the usage of Excel, Enrich also wanted something that would provide an Excel-like experience to the user.

In their search for the ideal grid they reviewed almost every open source solution available on the market, as well as some closed source options. They chose Handsontable after realizing that it best fit their needs. The JavaScript component gave the EAP an Excel-like feel while allowing it to very rapidly generate pages with complex tables. The implementation of Handsontable also ensured that the platform remained highly customizable, giving clients the ability to perform the same essential tasks in their own unique ways. This is a crucial element of their business and thanks to Handsontable, Enrich is able to deliver.

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The Result: More efficient and productive efforts

Ultimately, the Enrich Analytics Platform promotes trust in the project valuations that are created by providing transparency and understanding of the assumptions and results. Analysis can then be done in a recurring and reliable manner. The result is that analysts focus on generating insights instead of verifying data. The final outcome is an increase in efficiency and productivity.

Since Enrich works closely with clients due to the need to tailor the EAP to their specifications, the company constantly receives feedback regarding its product. The comments are highly positive: clients are impressed with the capabilities of the platform and truly enjoy working with it.

Quote Our clients are happier and we get more of them, which is always a good sign that you're doing something right.

As for the business value of implementing Handsontable, it comes down to a major factor: time. They can't imagine how difficult and time-consuming it would be to achieve similar functionality if they had to develop and maintain their own tool.

Looking ahead to the future, the company says that they will continue to advance the EAP's functionality and add features that will help their clients be even more productive.

Ohad Berman

Ohad Berman

Associate Director
at Enrich