Bayer Pharmaceuticals Drives Digital Transformation and Sales Growth with Coursera
- Industry:
Life Sciences
- Location:
Germany
- Size:
99,000+ Employees
- Topics:
AI, Tech and Data, Skill Insights, Learning Program Management, Measurement & Outcomes, Learner Engagement
Overview:
Global healthcare leader Bayer empowered its teams with data analytics through Coursera, helping them spot sales opportunities faster and make smarter decisions across the business.
The Challenge:
Like many global companies, Bayer faced a pressing challenge: their employees across all departments needed to work with data to make better decisions, but most weren't data analysts by trade. Traditional training was expensive and focused only on technical teams. Bayer wanted an affordable way to help all employees – from marketing to operations – understand and use data in their daily work to make better decisions for the business. Their need prompted a partnership with Coursera to understand how to leverage different levels of knowledge.
The Solution:
Bayer partnered with Coursera, leveraging it as a tool through which every employee could gain the knowledge they need when they need it. They started with training 20 employees in Pharmacovigilance and expanded to over 200 in Data Science and Customer Insights, including non-data roles. In total, they provided access to over 7,000 courses in Data Science, Business, and IT.
For the learners, the professional certification stood out as an attractive proposition, attracting many staff for continued career development. Knowing that motivation can be a challenge, Bayer created an "Expert Learners" community where peers led cohort-based training programs to fuel learning adoption and celebrate learning milestones. That helped them achieve active participation from employees in Japan, the US, and EMEA.
The training was tailored for specific roles like Commercial Analytics Translators and Commercial Data Stewards. Bayer’s Data Academy used Coursera’s "Designing, Running, and Analyzing Experiments" course to enhance the "Advanced Statistical Literacy" path, engaging learners in practical coding exercises with real data.
The Results:
From July 2022 to June 2024, Bayer employees completed 319 courses and certifications, achieving an 83% course completion rate. Engagement metrics showed 84% applied their learning at work, 89% felt it helped their career, and 100% would recommend it. Employees reported productivity gains averaging 1.6 hours a week immediately and 8.5 hours a week long-term. 90% of learners said it led to them being more efficient, likely to stay at Bayer, and a positive performance review.Â
During this period, employees started feeling more comfortable with the technology. They started creating new customer engagement dashboards, utilizing Python and completely new visualization tools.
Bayer’s Data Academy used its Python and machine learning skills to develop a Customer Engagement Dashboard. This dashboard now enables sales teams to analyze data and tailor strategies, leading to quicker, more effective sales actions.
Following the usage of Coursera, retention rates within the organisation have improved. Over 200 data scientists within the team have continued growing and developing in their roles, which has increased the continuous learning experience predominantly.
Impact Snapshot
90%
of learners said it led to them being more efficient, likely to stay at Bayer, and a positive performance review.