Apr 29, 2010

PMSA Conference to Emphasize Change, Innovation, ROI

Readers are strongly encouraged to attend this year's Pharmaceutical Management Science Association Conference next week in Savannah, GA. The overriding theme is how analytics can help companies adapt to the changes forces of the industry:

* Greater need for promotional ROI
* New payer landscapes
* Increased digitizan and non-personal professional promotion

Also, come check our our poster from The CementBloc on "Professional Relationship Marketing: Strategies and Measurement"

Apr 22, 2010

Reinventing Web Analytics on the Sales Tablet

Brand and business goals remain the best way to measure impact of a promotional tactic. However, this truism is not always applied with new technologies

Many pharmaceutical companies are now selling with digital tablets, where almost every click the sales representative makes can be measured, and time tabulated. These tablets generate sequential data streams, which are sometimes measured with basic KPIs like time spent, and the order of tablet slides used.

This is reminiscent of the early days of website analytics ten years ago, where the metrics often cited were page views and time on website. Back then, those were used as KPIs because they were reportable in the elementary "web log" systems.

However, whether it's websites or sales tablets, the objective of engagement within a channel is to achieve a business goal. Therefore on websites, we now measure funnels to goal pages like CRM registrations, and consumption of segmented content areas.

The same should hold for sales force tablets. Think about your brand goals,and what particular sections of the tablet presentations are most aligned toward achieving those goals. Measure consumption of those sections as a valuable indicator of success.

Apr 11, 2010

Increasing engagement to increase compliance

Further innovation from Bayer Diabetes to encourage diabetes youngsters to test their blood glucose levels. Called Didget, the glucose meter directly interacts with a Nintendo game boy, in principal to make this critical patient tracking more fun and less onerous for children and teenagers.

Looking forward to tracking uptake of this new level of engagement, and any studies down the road of increased compliance and health benefits.

Increase in generics, Decrease in Big Pharma Reps

The almost concurrent newswires underscore the continuing shift in branded Rx and promotional channels.

A recent IMS 2009 Rx report points out that now 75% of all U.S. prescriptions are generics, up from 54% in 2004.

While shortly thereafter, both sanofi-aventis and Abbott have laid off hundreds of U.S. Sales reps.

IMS's Murray Aitken, SVP healthcare insight, inoted that “While the 32 innovative products launched last year brought important new treatment options to patients in a number of disease areas, including cancer, thrombosis and atrial fibrillation, they drove only a limited increase in drug spending."

As generics become more prevalent in chronic diseases, and newer branded launches are in specialty areas, there may be a decreased volume of sales representatives required to call on primary care physicians. Furthermore, those sales reps that remain must present a meaningful value proposition to healthcare professions.