CRM and BI systems Improve Pharmaceutical Companies

PLIVA, one of the most successful pharmaceutical companies in the market, is headquartered and Croatia and is the leading pharmaceutical company in Central and Eastern Europe. The company has over 1200 products and works with hospitals, pharmacies, and other medical care institutions. The company is very dependent on their sales teams to work with customers; the problem was that the sales teams in different countries were using different software and business tools, which created difficulties within the company. Igor Haralovic, the CEE Region Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Director said, “The flow of information from the sales teams to the head office was slow and marketing and sales people were unable to access the right information they needed to make the right decisions” (1). The slow flow of information reduced the companies effectiveness in the market, negatively affected costs, and made sale goals difficult to reach because of the lag time in information.

Another challenge the company had to overcome dealt with their infrastructure – the sales force only had old hardware and software, along with slow Internet connection, which made it difficult to work online. By reading about the sales force at PLIVA, it is clear that they needed to improve upon their systems in order to better the effectiveness of their sales teams, which they so heavily depend on. For a solution, Haralovic said, “One of the key requirements was cost effectiveness of the solution. We were looking at a number of solutions, including market leaders in CRM solutions for the pharmaceutical industry” (1).

Their solution in the end was add.PHARMA by the company ADD, which was designed specifically for the pharmaceutical industry that includes both Business Intelligence and CRM functions. The CRM supported their marketing and sales personnel and offered many functions, including cross- selling, sales support, and marketing campaign execution. The information gathered was constantly updated between the users and office, which allowed the company to keep better track of their sales team’s performance (1). It is clear that the CRM function really improved upon the effectiveness of their sales teams to gather more accurate data, which ultimately helped PLIVA provide better and more specific products for their customers.

The new Business Intelligence system was used to reduce time to provide sales reports and allowed for data to be refreshed more quickly. The company used it to analyze sales data and get information from a number of different data sources, which allowed them “ a comprehensive overview of the market and gauge their sales on the ground” (1).

There are so many benefits from the add.PHARMA solution that is was the best decision for the company to implement it. The most important benefit being that the CRM application allowed the sales and marketing departments to link information, which enabled the company more control over the sales force (1). In my opinion, this solution was definitely the best because it allowed for the flow of knowledge to circulate throughout all departments, which ultimately enabled the company to better their sales force, which they deemed most important in the company. It also allowed them more and accurate information on their customers so they could better fit their needs. Overall, PLIVA made their company much stronger in the market by adding CRM and BI systems.

References:

(1)"Leading Pharmaceutical Company Uses CRM and BI to Drive Business Results." NGP: Next Generation Pharmaceutical. ADD D.o.o., 5 Aug. 2009. Web. 16 Mar. 2010. .