iPharma Connect conference: interactive selling and patient advocacy groups

There were some very active conversations at the iPharma Connect conferences in Philadelphia this past week. Two in particular caught my attention:

Several examples of case studies of interactive selling with iPads, including a joint presentation by Novartis Vaccines and The CementBloc on iPad deployment and organizational change, and a nice presentation and moderated discussion from Jim Currie of PamLab.

Here are some eyebrow raisers:

* many of the District Managers who must train the sales reps on iPad usage have in fact never used a tablet or iPad for selling themselves

* physicians may be so impressed with iPad details they presume virtually unlimited information is magically available to show

* decisions on rolling out measurement vary across the industry

* some corporate boards are skeptical of iPad selling impact v. the investment

Another fascinating conversation was during a panel on "Patients Speak Out" where patient experts asked for pharmaceutical companies to provide more openness and transparency, even as they build relationships with patient advocacy groups.

For more of the tweets and reactions, see here:

There were

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.

Convergent Times

Check out some great healthcare, multidisciplinary thinking on the new website: Convergent Times There are articles on ipad selling, managed markets, consumer experiences, and much more.

Let us know what you think... join the convergent conversation!

Cloud Computing and iPad based selling

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.

Apple IPhone and Company Sales Forces

The Wall Street Journal notes this week that Apple IPhones are increasingly being used by businesses, including the Bausch & Lomb Inc. salesforce of 1200 people. Some corporate I.T. departments are now supporting Iphones at similar numbers as Blackberries. This is due largely to enhanced security features, as well as employee demand.

This may be a significant turning point.
There are already consumer IPad applications available: for patients to manage chronic conditions like diabetes and their associated medications.

I am occasionally engaged in consulting projects on PRM and sales force tablets, and am asked about new platforms like the Apple IPad for professional selling. As soon as we see more sales force related applications, and with assured information security, this is likely to come to pass within the next two years. Which sales force automation companies will lead this development? And which pharmaceutical sales clients will be the first in the field?