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Veeva · Life sciences

Eight hundred organisations. The right one was never at the top.

Field teams at a life sciences platform needed to understand how hundreds of health care organisations connected to each other, and which people inside them mattered for a given plan. Before this tool, they worked from static exports and one-off reports. There was no way to explore a large hierarchy directly, or to narrow it down to the people who actually mattered.

818 → 91Organisations, after one filterOne health system
3+Predefined hierarchy views, plus custom onesShipped
2Separate filter sets, one for organisations and one for peopleShipped
Scale818 direct organisations in one health system, narrowed to 91 with one filter
PlatformWeb and iPad, embedded through SSO into Veeva CRM Online or an internal portal
RoleSenior UX and UI designer
UsersField teams, territory and compensation planners
The diagnosis

Every project turns on one question: is the obvious explanation the right one?

What everyone assumed

The problem was visibility. Give people a tree view of the hierarchy, and they will find what they need.

What was actually wrong

Visibility alone does not help at this scale. One health system has 818 direct organisations. A tree of 818 organisations is not more useful than a spreadsheet of 818 rows, because the user still has to know where to look. The real problem was narrowing the list down, not showing all of it. When the same system is filtered down to organisations with neurologists, the list drops to 91, about a ninth of the size. That drop is the whole argument. The tool's job is not to display the hierarchy. It is to collapse it down to the part that matters for the question being asked.

Nobody needed to see all 818. A rep planning around neurology needed the 91 that answered the question in front of them, and needed to get there without knowing the structure in advance. That made narrowing, not display, the design problem.

Hierarchy Explorer › Atrium Health Carolinas Medical CenterReal screen, parts rebuilt in code
Hierarchy Explorer open on Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center, showing 818 direct HCOs in a table with HCO type, HCP roll-ups split into direct and total, class of trade, specialty and Veeva ID.The same table after filtering: 91 direct HCOs, with the active filters HCP Specialty, 13 selected, and HCP Medical Degree, 2 selected.
818 organisations, then 91. The filters that did it were on the people inside each organisation, neurology specialties with an MD or DO, not on the organisations.
The calls I made

Keep organisation filters and person filters separate

The Active Filters dialog splits organisation-level filters, like corporate name, state, HCO type, city and class of trade, from person-level roll-up filters, like HCP type, relationship type, specialty and medical degree.A user filtering for neurologists is answering a different question than a user filtering for HCOs in one state. Splitting the dialog into two groups keeps those two questions from turning into one long list of checkboxes.

Split every roll-up count into direct and total

Every HCP count in the hierarchy is broken into two numbers: how many professionals report directly to this organisation, and how many report to it once every indirect affiliate is included.A compensation or territory decision needs to know which number it is using. Collapsing the two into one count would hide that difference and make the math downstream wrong.

Let people switch between exploring organisations and exploring people

Inside one hierarchy, a user can switch between an Explore HCOs view, with child organisations and roll-up counts, and an Explore HCPs view, with every health care professional, their specialty, and which organisations they are affiliated with.These are different jobs. One is about structure. The other is about finding a specific person. A toggle keeps each view readable instead of merging them into one dense table.

Make export a first-class action

Selected HCOs or HCPs can be exported straight to Excel from inside the widget.The real decision usually gets made downstream, in a compensation tool or a territory plan. Export exists because the widget's job ends at giving someone the right subset of data, not at replacing every tool they use after that.

Hierarchy Explorer › Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center › Anmed Health AdminReal screen, parts rebuilt in code
The filtered list of 91 HCOs with Anmed Health Admin expanded: its direct HCP roll-up is 0 and its total is 14, and the organisations under it are listed beneath it.
Direct 0, total 14. Every roll-up is split, so the organisation that looks empty shows where its people actually sit. One tab turns the same hierarchy into the people: 206 in total, 56 connected directly.
What shipped
Active Filters dialogMixed

One long listorganisation and people filters, mixed

HCO filtersthe organisationsHCP roll-up filtersthe people in themCorporate nameHCP typeStateSpecialtyHCO typeRelationship typeCityMedical degreeClass of trade

Organisation filters and person filters, kept apart instead of one long checklist.

Every roll-up count split into direct and total, so a territory or compensation call knows which number it is using.

HCP roll-upsOne row

Anmed Health Admina health system, 0 direct HCPs

Anmed Health AdminHealth systemDIRECT0TOTAL0looks emptyAnmed Health Medical CenterCMS teaching hospitalAnmed Health Neurology ConsultantsGroup practiceAnmed Health Women and Childrens HospitalHospitalDana L Wiley MDGroup practiceDr Teague Julius MDGroup practice··· and the organisations under themHCPs affiliated belowTwo numbers, one rowWho reports here, who rolls up.
818 direct HCOsUnfiltered

Every organisation818 direct HCOs, nothing narrowed yet

1 dot ≈ 10 organisations9 dots · 91 organisationsNeurology · MD818, then 91It needed narrowing, not showing.

The argument redrawn: a dense, undifferentiated cluster fades down to a small, countable one once a filter actually narrows it.

Hierarchy Explorer › Alamance Regional Medical Center › Summary ViewReal screen, parts rebuilt in code
The Summary View of a hospital in Hierarchy Explorer: its parent organisations on the left, the hospital with its HCO and HCP totals in the middle, and its child HCOs and HCPs by level on the right, joined by arrows.
The whole structure, then the slice you take away. The summary view lays out every level with its counts, and claims relationships can be switched on beside ownership. The rows you pick go out to Excel, where the territory or compensation work actually happens.
If this sounds familiar

When a hierarchy gets large enough, showing it is not the same as making it useful. Before you build a better viewer, check whether the real ask is a better filter.

Have a problem like this one?

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