Case Study: Macfarlan Smith achieves fast, secure self-service operational insights with Tableau Software

Pharmaceutical researcher, Macfarlan Smith improves operational performance insight with Tableau Online

Macfarlan Smith, a Johnson Matthey subsidiary and long-established pharmaceutical manufacturer of opiate narcotics, faced slow, manual reporting and fragmented data sources. Operational, quality and commercial data lived in ERP, legacy SQL/Access systems and spreadsheets, creating multiple versions of the truth and CAPA reports that once consumed hundreds of hours each month.

The company adopted Tableau Online — a SaaS analytics platform hosted in Dublin with enterprise security (SSO) and rapid deployment — to deliver self-service visualizations and trusted data sources. As a result, dashboards can be produced in under an hour, CAPA reports now take minutes instead of days, up to 200 users access timely insight, and analytics are being extended to finance, supply chain and sales.

Macfarlan Smith

Liam Mills

Head of Continuous Improvement