For large pharmaceutical companies, sales of prescription brand drugs are critical to profitability. To increase brand sales, they traditionally send out field reps to educate physicians about their products, leaving behind samples
and literature. For a sale to occur, the physician must prescribe the brand drug for the patient. Although the pharmaceutical company knows about overall sales for their drug, they do not know which doctors are prescribing which drugs. Brand managers have no way to tell which physicians do not prescribe their drug so they cannot target them for special sales attention. Data Meaning used their expertise with business intelligence (BI) tools to deploy a game changing solution to this challenge for one global pharmaceutical company.
Contents
Prescribing Habits
The Data Meaning client in this case is a global, innovation-driven, integrated pharmaceutical company. The company purchases market intelligence from a leading provider to the pharmaceutical industry that reports drug prescriptions for every physician in the United States. In 2003, a brand manager in the company realized that the external market intelligence data could be leveraged with internal data to unlock the secrets of physician prescribing and deliver a game-changing tool to boost brand drug sales. The solution required a BI tool that delivers report data to sales reps quickly and directly.
The Brand Opportunity Tool
The pharmaceutical company called this report the Brand Opportunity Tool and sought a firm with expertise using MicroStrategy BI tools to build the report. The brand manager wanted a rapid deployment in order to make an immediate impact on sales. They chose Data Meaning to build their game-changing tool for the following reasons:
- Data Meaning consultants are experts in developing BI with MicroStrategy tools. They offer particular expertise in delivering targeted reports and delivering reports directly into client portals.
- The company could start the project immediately.
- Data Meaning was able to deliver results in less than four months.
- The Data Meaning “expert only” approach to consulting involves lower overhead than larger consulting firms and is therefore less expensive
Game Changing Solution
The Brand Opportunity Tool captures external physician prescription data and then cross-references the data by the company’s sales rep territories. The power of the tool is that each rep can see the drug prescriptions in their territory by physician and target those physicians that are not prescribing the company brand. The focused attention on target physicians increases their prescriptions and boosts sales. The resulting sales effort is also far more efficient and direct than the previously used method. The Brand Opportunity Tool proved to be an important, game-changing solution for drug sales. Data Meaning delivered the tool within four months, used their BI tools expertise to customize the output for each sales rep and make it available quickly and directly through the company portal.
Custom Reports for 2000 Sales Reps
Data Meaning built the solution to deliver custom reports for all 2000 sales reps via the client’s internal portal. Data Meaning first used MicroStrategy BI tools to build report objects from the underlying database. They then used a tool called MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server to generate custom reports by sales rep. Configuring this distribution server technology required Data Meaning’s specialist MicroStrategy expertise.
Seamless Reports Integrated into Internal Portal
To make the reports seamless to users, Data Meaning integrated the MicroStrategy tools with the company’s internal portal. To accomplish this, Data Meaning used Visual Basic Analyst (VBA) code to customize Excel displays
so that users see the reports in a dashboard format. Company sales reps log onto the portal to access and query a custom report for their brand drug and territory using drop-down lists and drill-down tables. Delivering targeted data rapidly to each sales rep makes the Brand Opportunity Tool extremely responsive to events in the market.
Positive Business Results
Using the Brand Opportunity Tool, the company is able to target sales resources towards physicians that do not prescribe their drug brands. This has a dramatic positive impact on brand drug sales. Using Data Meaning expertise to build this important tool, the client now delivers reports quickly and directly in custom form to each rep via the corporate portal.
The Data Meaning Value Proposition
This project demonstrates how Data Meaning expertise delivers high value BI solutions requiring specialist tools at a reasonable price point in a rapid timeframe. The Data Meaning value proposition includes bringing expert resources to bear in building BI systems without compromises in performance and functionality. Data Meaning is able to provide this specialist expertise directly to clients or as part of a larger implementation team.
Positive Business Results
Using the Brand Opportunity Tool, the company is able to target sales resources towards physicians that do not prescribe their drug brands. This has a dramatic positive impact on brand drug sales. Using Data Meaning expertise to build this important tool, the client now delivers reports quickly and directly in custom form to each rep via the corporate portal.
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