Back in Healthcare RM with Crossix

After a hiatus of a few years doing CPG analytics with IRI, I am working again in Healthcare with Crossix Solutions

I am now VP of Product Strategy, leading development of targeting and measurement solutions for healthcare manufacturers and their agencies.

Looking forward to continuing the dialogue with you all.

Patients online finding, rating, scheduling doctors

Two websites that empower patients like never before have really taken off. 

ZocDoc lets patients schedule appointments with physicians, by linking directly to their office  scheduling systems.

HealthGrades enables patients to find a specialist near them, and rate the experience afterwords.

All about extending the convenience and immediacy of healthcare to patients, while providing access and promotion to talented capable physicians. 

Both are available across a growing number of major metropolitan areas, going national and perhaps beyond.

Think of this as a new entry channel for CRM systems.  Additionally in the future there should be a chance  to really perform analytics and understand the health consumption patterns across the country, by specialty.

Lessons from the ePharma summit

It was a pleasure to participate this month in the ePharma summit in New York, giving a lecture entitled, "Transform Your Organization through Interactive Selling." The messages of gearing your whole organization for iPad selling, segmented messaging and measurement were quite resonant.
Please feel free to contact me for a copy of this presentation.

There were other lessons as well.

* Mobile pharma applications are increasingly common, and vary from text messaging to full scale applications.

* Social media presence in pharma remains predominantly corporate, but content is reaching out to consumer submissions.

* Professional non-personal and multi-channel promotion has become manstream, and solutions are proliferating.

All in all, a dynamic marketplace for sure. Keep reading here for the latest. Or read The Bloc's latest on Convergent Times.

New Year's Resolution: Pilot innovative analytics

With the new year coming, companies are thinking fresh regarding innovative programs they will be running. Examples may be:

* multichannel marketing,
* digital interactive sales aids on iPads, perhaps with segmentation,
* social media presences, or
* online portals or communities.

With these efforts and the appropriate measurement planning, will come innovative data sources for your companies. Your new year's resolution can be: let's explore analytics for these new data sources, learn how to analyze, and discover what trends there may be.

The right analytics partner can help in translating your business objectives into analytics frameworks. Your partner or staff can also determine the approriate exploratory analytics software. The image posted here is one example of a data visualization and dashboarding tool called Spotfire, of which I have found valuable during yeras of use for detecting trends and bookmarking insights. In addition, I remain a frequent user of Netbase for social media, SAS products for data cleaning and statistics, and Angoss data mining software. There are more tools, a great resource to find them is KD Nuggets.

So, don't wait, make it your resolution to dive in and mine those behaviors.

High Stakes Business Analytics Across Industries

This Wednesday I had the pleasure of participating in the first Aberdeen Business Analytics Summit in Boston. It was a fascinating collection of business and I.T. speakers across industries: banking, packaged goods, semiconductors, auto, health, etc. These business leaders have critical jobs like forecasting customer demand, optimizing the supply chain, or monitoring efficiency and profitability at retail locations across the country. Having access to real time, insightful analytics is critical to performing these jobs.

I participated in a panel on how better alignment can be achieved between "business users" and the "I.T." community. There was a surprising statistic that Aberdeen found which as 57% of business user do not see the value of business analytics. What shocked me was that... the business users should be defining and driving the value in the first place!

At times it can seem like two very different environments: the world of data and technology on one hand, and the world of marketing, sales, and supply chain on the other. I've been fortunate in my career at General Electric, Pfizer, and even now at The CementBloc, to be part of a "bridge" department that spans both worlds.

However, in these days of convergence, the more each of us can understand the language and motivations of our collaborators, the better our companies will be.

I would love to hear comments from readers on your perspective!

Linked in Groups - redundancy and analytics

For those of you participate in LinkedIn, you may have joined a few groups. I must confess that my visceral reaction to LinkedIn groups is an optimistic one, hoping that they are useful for networking and solution finding, and even can recapture the old days in the 1980s of Usenet groups.

However, ever notice how much there is duplication across these groups -- they have similar sounding names, overlapping memberships, and similar content. Here are a few of my groups:

* AWA - Advanced Web Analytics

* Advanced Business Analytics, Data Mining and Predictive Modeling

* Analytics Executives Network

* Business Analytics

* CRM Experts

* Data & Text Analytics Professionals

* Digital Analytics Careers

Get the idea? Can you tell these apart by the names? And I only listed up to the "D's" Plus each of these send me E-Mails weekly (daily is optional too), and I rarely open. Those who are considering making another LinkedIn group, first check to see what is there.

However, there is an upside to LinkedIn group creators. As reported in the Mashable Blog, LinkedIn groups now have analytics dashboards. The new dashboards show displays with various demographics on membership, growth of members, and activity of posts.

For more details, you can also see the LinkedIn Blog.

So, let's keep this valuable networking resource user friendly.

Lessons from Industry Conference on "Next Generation"

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Several lessons were learned at last week's Next Generation Pharmaceutical Sales and Marketing conference in Philadelphia, at which The CementBloc had a panel and a booth.

The predominance of analytics and accountability was quite apparent, as several presentations discussed the need to measure effectiveness of initiatives. There was a start up company bringing dashboards across mobile applications. Another innovative vendor promoted multichannel analytics for "software as a service."

Representatives from BMS and sanofi-aventis discussed centralizing their closed loop marketing practices across categories.

Others emphasized the increased complexity of the pharmaceutical customer base, such as integrated delivery networks, and a resulting need for Strategic Account Management.

At The CementBloc, we emphasized our Convergent Branding across channels and in a panel marked by lively feedback. It was a pleasure participating.

Web analytics trends: more focused, less bouncing

A recently published study, reported on the KissMetrics Blhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifog, is The 2011 Web Analytics Review. The source of the data is traffic trends from hundreds of thousands of websites across the globe, which have participated in Google’s ongoing study of web browsing behavior.

The study shows year over year differences of a three month time period: Nov. 1 2010 to Feb. 1 2011, versus the same time period a year before. The findings generally show:

* lower bounce rates (leaving from the first page) at 47% on average now
* shorter time on website, at 4:50 average now,
* and fewer pages viewed, down to 4.5 on average.

These figures make good benchmarks for judging engagement of one's own website, although realize that results will differ by country, category, and media mix.

Yet, the trends above hold true worldwide, and also in the USA. There are results for other countries in the report as well.

What might explain these trends, over such a large sample? It can well be the benefit of targeted advertising, combined with improvement of website navigation to be more goal oriented. With this combination, a website has more qualified leads, people with interest and intent, who come to visit. Those interested visits are quickly led to a goal page, or to the information they need.

There are also results broken out by source of website traffic. The most efficient source of all? Cost Per Click paid search, with the lowest bounce rate, the shortest time on websites, yet the highest page totals consumed. This is consistent with the interest of a search initiated customer.

Analytics within a pitch: tying a bow

When a team gives a major presentation (often called a pitch), the analytics leader comes in at two places, typically:

* the beginning, to comment on market sizing or segmentation, and
* the end, to discuss how all that has been presented will "go to market" and be measured for success.

In the case of the mini-presentation at the end, I have received an allotment of anywhere from 2 minutes to 15 minutes to tie everything in a bow, and show confidently how we will execute and measure achievement of business goals.

But in this role one does not sit around and wait one's turn. Actually, I find I have to listen very actively, take copious notes of which of my colleagues has used which phrases and which examples. That way I can "back point" to my peers and show connectons and team chemistry. I am also continually reading the faces of the audience, to determine who is attentive and who is distracted. That helps me know where to direct eye contact at the end.

Thus, always be present in a critical meeting, even if you are bringing up the rear.

Long term consistency: harder than it looks

There has been lots of attention in the USA this past week spent on Derek Jeter of the Yankees getting his 3,000th hit. This is a measure of an expert artisan performing well at his draft for over 15 years, a model of consistency. Even as the game has evolved around him, and some competitors changed.

What does consistency mean in analytics? It means continually providing valuable consulting and insights, even as the promotional channels and the hardware platforms evolve. Even as the clients become more cost conscious than ever, and even as the marketplace for analytic services becomes more competitive. Consistency also means staying ahead of the curve on the prevailing technology trends,and the newest data sources and software tools.

Yet, just like a base hit to the opposite field, some principles of analytics endure: synthesize the right data, reduce the dimensionality, show the insights that are directly linked to business decisions and actions.

Statistical modeling for medication adherence

Patients not adhering to their medication regimens has been shown in multiple studies to yield sub-optimal health outcomes as well as decreased sales opportunities for pharmaceutical companies. Various CRM efforts over the years have tried to address this. Now a new tool may be avaialable.

There was a fascinating article in the NY Times Health Blog recently about Fair Isaac (FICO)creating a logistic regression style "medication adherence score" much like their credit score, that predicts likelihood to adhere based on demographic, financial, and transactional variables. For example: Are sixty-something
middle class Midwestern grandparents with low net worth particularly non-adherent?

If a score comes up as such, would a pharmaceutical company target them with a an extra adherence mailer, kit, or a premium adherence pill bottle? Or call center support? Since these are expensive resources, targeting using a validated model score seems attractive.

Of course, these resources could be offered to anyone, but could be promoted selectively.

I think likely the modeling score was validated on historical data. It will be fascinating to see how accuracy is tracked moving forward. Also, whether pharmaceutical firms or communications agencies will adopt it.

Invest a Bit to Measure

When investing millions in a new major promotional campaign, or a new selling technology, think about this: how will you be accountable for that investment? How will you know if that investment in advertising, communications, and technology is actually paying off? In today's corporate environment, answering those questions is paramount.

The Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) cleverly remarked in rhyme: "Door Meten tot Weten:" Through Measurement is Knoweldge.

Yet I often see clients, and agencies, omit the small proportion of the budget required to measure, which insures understanding of success, and the ability to optimize and improve. I would say 8% to 10% is a good minimal requirement benchmark for a measurement budget -- others would go much higher -- see this ClickZ point of view.

What does measurement look like? Especially with new technologies like multichannel, closed loop marketing, RM, iPads, QR codes, etc?

Ultimately, you want linkage between your promotional investments and incremental sales.

However, there are other critical evaluations that should be performed, on how the marketplace is behaving and how perceptions are being changed. Some call this "engagement." I like to think of it as: "are my stakeholders behaving the way I intended?"

Measurement is in large part the comparison of actual behaviors to what you expected when you set up your mutli-channel program, or your sales force automation system. Are the sales reps detailing as you intended? Are the physicians or consumers interacting with the media you have placed? Is navigation on websites achieving to goals that move your brand?

Therefore, when investing in promotional platforms, give some thought as to the expected marketplace experiences. And save some funds for measurment to confirm or optimize your plans.

promotional planning on rainy days

Sometimes rainy days come unexpectedly, and one must rapidly determine how to respond. This weekend was a great lesson for me and thousands of others in Blacksburg Virgina. At the Virginia Tech graduation, the initial ceremony in the large football field was curtailed as lightning and rain approached. However, spirits remained high. Some wondered if the ceremony should have been moved indoors, meaning more safety but far fewer attendees. Anyway,the next day grads got diplomas, the sun stayed around for photos, and then the rain continued off and on. At a barbecue were wetness made it seemed lost, a group of us pressed on and served up a happy lunch repast in celebration.

In business, rainy days can mean a quarter or two of disappointing product sales, and businesses should keep two things in mind:

* dig deeply into your analytics dashboards as to what the root causes are. Which customer segments are performing better than others, and in which channels? Which promotions and media are more effective than others.

* plan for efficiency in promotion, and invest where the highest sales leverage is.

* use quality and six sigma frameworks to trim the inefficiencies. However, by all means, keep investing in what has been working.

A thought-provoking, whirlwind 48 hours

After some hiatus from blogging due to vacation and burnout, I return to writing the blog. The reason: a stimulating, but all too short trip to the PMSA conference in Miami Beach.

Many lessons were learned.

First, I was still in the wake of The CementBloc Agency of The Year Win from Med Ad News. Lesson learned: winning makes the toil and long hours of entrepreneurial agencies turn from bitter to sweet.

Continuing in the entrepreneurial spirit, on the plane ride to Miami, I grabbed a copy of Fast Company Magazine. I had forgotten how good this was; especialy because of the plethora of business growth ideas across all industries: sports, consumer goods, energy, environment, autos, etc. Lesson learned: do not swim in your own bathwater, do not read trade press only from your clones -- get stimulating ideas from elsewhere.

Then the conference itself. Lots of thought provoking talks and meaningful exhanges.

Christian Schuler, Partner and Head of Life Science, of Simon-Kucher & Partners, gave a nice tutorial on pharmaceutical pricing and manged markets contracting. The lessons learned were about value-based pricing, and one of its foundation, the preceptions of innovation. Additionally, a wealth of market research techniques on finding acceptable prices for stakeholders.

The opening pleanry session by Jeffrey C. Bauer, Ph.D., Health Futurist and Medical Economist was thought provoking, touching on technology, personalized medicine and health economics as fundamental waves of the future. Lesson learned: we are in an exciting times for quantiative analytics types in healthcare.

At the vendor fair there was an onsite independent bookseller from Miami called Books and Books, selling technical books for the audience. Including my textbook, and many more pop-culture, yet lower priced. It was fascinating to see people's reactions. Even autographed and sold a few. Plus, Raquel of Books and Books had a wealth of information about the publishing and bookselling industry. Lesson: you can learn from everyone and every situation.

Team Chemistry - Sports and Analytics

Late March is as good time to speak about teamwork. For basketball teams, the right group chemistry is essential, and this on display in the winners of the NCAA tournaments. You can also see how fragile team chemistry can be, in the shift that results when an NBA team adds a "superstar" yet changes their whole approach to playing. The coach has to decide how to best leverage the new individual talents while still maintaining a winning framework.

If you are growing or leading a sales or marketing analytics group, you have choices to make:

- the mix of hands on analysts versus consultants

- whether to staff in house or outsource, or even offshore

- having people steeped in your industry as well as other categories, for a fresh perspective


Then of course, the coaching and training are critical. Analytics is rooted in mathematics and algorithmic techniques which have been around for decades. Yet there are innovative digital, multichannel methods. Thus a leader must find the right mix of setting standards, yet delegating and allowing the group to develop some new innovative thinking.

Nerds on TV -- the right way -- IBM Watson and Jeopardy

As a computer scientist, trained in artificial intelligence myself, I am delighted to see the development of the IBM Watson parallel computer competing on evening TV Jeopardy! episodes. See this Google search for the plethora of results on the Jeopardy shows.


Heck, as a parent, I love it that my kids are running to me with how awesome the smart computer is doing on their favorite quiz show!

See this great PBS News Hour video to find out more about Watson, Jeopardy,and the artificial intelligence background.

When are computers really "intelligent?" People have been pondering this for at least 100 years. Alan Turing developed a "Turing test" of the computer responding to a person's questions and having the answers be undecipherable from that of another human being. Then in the 1980's came the chess playing machines. First with algorithms, then with brute force statistics, and finally Deep Blue beating grand master chess champions by the turn of the century.

But now having smart computers compete on glitzy evening game shows and educating the world about parallel intelligence of computers? Love it.


See a great write-up by James Taylor on the Smart Data Collective community as to what the IBM Watson episodes mean to Decision Management and Analytics. In essence, computers can now make decisions on the fly leveraging large databases, and continually get smarter in our results.
This is after all what people do in decision making.

Think about that the next time you are creating your marketing and sales analytics systems. Rapid feedback loops, shorter decision cycles,and continual optimization.

Social Dashboards of Web Dashboards? Cut to the business

Website analytics has been an area I have been practicing for over 10 years now, back when this was an active software area of many startup companies (with colorful names like WebsideStory) outdueling each other for the most strking visualizations and most insightful path analyses. Nowadays, I have first found it surprising to see the rise in use of the free but spartan Google Analytics over the more mature and visually robust Webtrends and Omniture (now part of Adobe site catalyst). Those two have gobbled up many of the aforementioned startups.

Lately this month I have stumbled across new developments: software that take Google Analytics output and create new dashboards. One is Unilyzer software for dashboarding social media trends out of your Google Analytics output. The other are actual Google Analytics post-processing apps. I'll bet there are more that post-process in this way. I myself often take "G.A." output and visualize in my favorite dashboard prototyping tool, Spotfire. Tell me ones you know!

How to learn about the best choices for dashboard design, cost aside?
Much has been written over the past two decades about effective display of visual information in dashboards.
The work of Edward Tufte is foundational, and there are excellent texts like
Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few, reviewed in UX Design.
One can even read about dashboards in other original areas for inspiration: see this
blogger on automobile dashboards

However, don't forget the main purpose of your dashboard should be to drive business decision making. Therefore be business focused. Create the dimensions that matter to your application domain and to your clients. All data miners say that data processing to get clean,insightful KPIs is up to 80 percent of the project. Do not push that off by merely re-displaying the raw feeds. Make sure you get right to the drivers of your business.

IMS acquires SDI: the data firm nesting continues

The news that IMS Health is acquiring SDI (see IMS press release here) is a jolt to those of us who have worked in the pharmaceutical data industry for ten years or more.

Both companies declined to discuss the acquisition beyond a joint statement released last Friday afternoon. Unnamed company sources told Ed Silverman, who first reported the deal on his Pharmalot blog, that as much as 15% of SDI's staff could lose their jobs as a result of the acquisition.

Gary Gatyas, an IMS Health spokesperson, declined to speculate on timing for the completion of the deal, citing pre-merger notification requirements with respect to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976.

SDI itself was made larger by the acquisition of Verispan in 2008. Verispan was in fact a conglomerate formed by the 2002 combination of multiple data vendors like Scott-Levin, SMG, and Kelly Waldron. This reminds me of the Russian nested doll pictured here, the matryoshka.

Why have there been so many combinations in the data, and informatics consulting business? Driven in part by profitability issues, intense competition, adn the mergers of the pharmaceutical manufacturers themselves,

If this deal goes through, With this latest IMS acquisition there will come a short term hassle for major pharmceutical clients in 2011 as the landscape gets sorted out. Then longer term, there will be less competition for information sources, and perhaps slow down the rate of innovation.

Quality Time: when to be there in person

Working for a marketing and sales consulting agency, where some of my clients are hours away by plane, I think keenly about when to travel for an expensive face to face meeting, and when to conduct a phone call, perhaps with a Webex or Netmeeting presentation.

Here are some guidelines I've determined:

Need to be in person when:

* Creating relationships
* Major milestones
* Significant decisions made
* Building of trust
* Showing new creative concepts
* Discovery gathering, or knowledge engineering
* Creating consensus as a group

Over the phone or webex is sufficient for:

* Updates to presentations or analyses similar to those seen before
* Direct transfer of orders among people who have already met.

I have seen poor decisions made on both sides: consultants giving up a major trip and taking a phone call when in fact consensus was needed, or when their client relationship was shaky. I've also seen clients insist on face to face meetings continually even for matters where a phone call is sufficient.

The best account directors will think through the scenarios and consequences of each fly vs no-fly decision.

Teamwork Triad and the Digital Campaign Launch

What is the benefit of working in a small, focused agency without walls? Multi-disciplinary teamwork and relentless focus on high performance.

My department has three components: analytics, campaign management operations, and media services. All of these are both consumer and professional. In larger agencies, these functions are in different departments, even different divisions or buildings. For The CementBloc, all these functions sit together, literally in the same workspace on the same floor.

The benefit of this has become really apparent to me this year as we launch our series of digital campaigns, complete with media promotion and operations.
Take a look at a few of them:



* Professional diabetes
* Consumer cosmetic dermatology
* Consumer social community for breast cancer

As campaigns like these are prepared, the disciplines work together to prepare promotional planning, insure smooth operations, and design for measurability. Once we are up in market, the energy is palpable. Folks literally running to each other's computers, hovering around the same screen as the hourly results come in. How did the email blast go? What are the search click throughs? Which banners are getting highest response rates? Most importantly: how can we keep optimizing!?!

Nothing like it.