Case Study · Medical Devices

Seven Hours Down
To Thirty Minutes

How I rebuilt the entire regional marketing reporting and data pipeline at Sirtex Medical — across 11 countries in APAC — using only the tools already in place.

7hrs

Monthly task eliminated

30min

New process time

11

Countries covered

How I Turned a Seven-Hour Monthly Process Into 30 Minutes — From the Inside Out

IndustryMedical Devices
CompanySirtex Medical
RoleDirector of Marketing, Asia Pacific
WhenEarly 2023
Outcome7 hours → 30 mins; 90% reduction in event admin

Background

Before founding Headway Co, I was Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific at Sirtex Medical — a medical device company operating in a highly specialised clinical environment. It was here, in early 2023 — before AI strategy became a mainstream business conversation — that I first proved what's now central to the Headway approach: the biggest efficiency gains are usually hiding inside the tools you already have.

I didn't have a team of developers. I didn't have a budget for new software. I had a problem, a laptop, and Microsoft Power Automate.

Challenge 1: Monthly Sales Data — Seven Hours of Manual Work

Every month, I was responsible for collating sales data across the Asia Pacific business — spanning 11 countries. When I first inherited this task, every single data point came from one source: emails.

I was CC'd — not a direct recipient — on order form emails sent to the team inbox. If the sender forgot to copy me, that data was simply gone. I wouldn't find out until someone flagged missing data downstream, by which point the damage was done.

For every order, I manually opened each email and extracted six individual data points:

  • Hospital
  • Physician
  • Referring physician
  • Tumour type
  • Date of treatment
  • Dose calibration
Done entirely by hand. Entirely from emails. The whole process took approximately seven hours — and on a lean team, seven hours was time I simply didn't have.

It was only when I started investigating whether there was a better way that I discovered additional data sources existed. IT had a database tracking most order information. Customer services maintained a separate spreadsheet with additional fields. Neither was connected to the other, and neither was connected to me.

Even with these additional sources, the process still required manually cross-referencing order numbers across all three sources — leaving a 4–5 hour task riddled with manual steps and ongoing exposure to error.

The Fix

I'd never used Microsoft Power Automate before. I taught myself — using documentation, forums, and persistence — how to build a flow that automatically monitored the inbox and extracted key fields from incoming order form emails.

Because order forms were always structured the same way, Power Automate could reliably pull the order number and tumour type and write them directly into a spreadsheet. Cross-referencing formulas handled the rest — pulling data automatically from the IT database and customer services spreadsheet.

Result: seven hours reduced to 30–40 minutes, with significantly higher accuracy. The manual transcription steps that introduced most errors were eliminated entirely.

Challenge 2: Event Management — 200+ Registrants, All Handled Manually

Sirtex ran regular webinars and events, often attracting over 200 registrations. Because registrations were managed internally rather than through Zoom, every confirmation email, joining link, and reminder had to be sent manually.

For a single event, this meant:

  • Manually emailing confirmation details to every registrant at point of registration
  • Manually sending reminder emails in the lead-up to the event
  • Tracking attendance and managing follow-up

With 200+ registrants per webinar, this was an enormous and entirely unnecessary time drain — completely vulnerable to human error.

The Fix

Working with the IT team, I built an automated workflow in Power Automate that:

  • Triggered a confirmation email automatically the moment someone registered
  • Sent scheduled reminder emails at set intervals before the event
  • Handled the entire communication sequence without manual intervention

Result: approximately 90% reduction in event admin time. Hours of manual work per event reduced to near-zero ongoing effort.

What This Proved

Neither solution required expensive software, a development team, or a big budget. They required curiosity, persistence, and a willingness to learn tools already available inside the Microsoft ecosystem the company was already paying for.

This experience is what drives the Headway approach today: start with what you have, fix the biggest pain points first, and build confidence before investing in more sophisticated tools.

The technology has moved on enormously since 2023. What took weeks to figure out then can now be built faster and smarter. But the principle hasn't changed — the biggest wins are usually hiding in plain sight.

Outcomes at a Glance

Challenge Before After
Monthly sales data collation ~7 hours, error-prone 30–40 minutes, highly accurate
Event registration & comms Fully manual, 200+ emails per event Fully automated, 90% time saving
Data accuracy Prone to missing & incorrect entries Significantly improved
Tools required None (all manual) Microsoft Power Automate — already available
Lyndall Lohman is the Founder of Headway Co. She brings hands-on experience implementing automation and AI from inside complex organisations — not just as a consultant, but as someone who has done the work herself.

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