We have seen before in this blog: the mad rush of pharmaceutical companies to develop sales force selling "detailing" materials on the iPad. A nice perspective on this is provided by Eye for Pharma The appeal in terms of cost, ease of use, and the flash factor is irresistible. The initial wave has been primarily in the guise of developing nice visual detail presentations. The CementBloc is one agency that is developing iPad based selling capabilities
The first wave of iPad based selling has been divorced from other sales functions.
But what about more complete sales force automation (SFA) systems? Since the iPad is so new, and not directly compatible (yet) with traditional pharma infrastructure and databases, it is not surprising that SFA would be delivered via cloud computing. What is cloud computing? -- internet based servers, using software as a service rather than infrastructure investments. The WSJ has a nice overview of cloud computing, or for more technical, see Infoworld.
A case study from cloud computing developer Veeva, on Millenium Pharmaceuticals sites a sales rep solution, to save IT costs. But this was using more traditional PC based clients.
The latest, according to Medical Marketing and Media, iPads will in February be enabled with sample signature capture using aVeeva systems new sales platform called iRep. The company reports it is compliant, and that several pharma companies have already signed on for the February launch.
Once sample signatures are solved, the rest of SFA on iPads in the clouds will not be far behind.
What is equally exciting about this new offering from Veeva is that it has built-in support for displaying edetails! No additional software required (Exploria, Proscape, Skura.) Veeva's iRep content viewer supports HTML5, PDF, images and video content.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points, Hope. Thanks! This could shake up the software landscape that existed on Lenovo tablets.
ReplyDeleteSignature capture is a must in the U.S. because of PDMA regulations. And actually, the sample signature issue has already been solved – by Cegedim Relationship Management – who also has a solution for medical inquiry requests. And, the really nice thing about Cegedim’s CRM for iPad is that its APIs are CLM agnostic. This means a company can use whatever CLM system they want, and if they have already invested in CLM, their investment will not go to waste. Or, if they like, they can use the solution that comes with Mobile Intelligence for iPad. Choice is good. Cegedim also offers identical online and offline apps.
ReplyDeleteanyone tried storydesk ? Its aimed at pharma and small business.
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