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Real-time data capture at Allergan

Companies often speak of empowering the lower rung of employees. Allergan India has implemented a system to do just that. While the focus is on presenting real time field information to field personnel, the company enables its medical representatives to access data that helps them do better and hence improve the company’s business

For any pharmaceutical company, the percentage of doctors that the medical representatives cover is directly proportional to the business generated by that territory.

Allergan is a speciality pharmaceutical company and ophthalmologists are their audience. Their current estimates show that there are over 12,000 opthalmologists across the country. “Our business requirement here was to reach this entire population with the minimum number of representatives who were extensively trained and certified” says K.T. Rajan, Director, Operations, Information Systems and Projects, Allergan India.

Allergan classifies doctors by their “prescription potential”. They wanted to ensure that they don’t miss out on any A or B class ones. “The med-reps will met the class “A”s more often than the class “B”s, the class “B”s, more often than class “C”s and so on,” clarifies Rajan.

There was a cross-functional team formed covering various faculties of the organisations. This team looked at the vital needs and developed the scope of the initiate. These field personnel reviewed and committed to the proposed solution. The management team approved the final specification.

A broad category of needs was identified for this initiative. Firstly, the aim was to offer online and real time field information on daily basis. They also wanted to track the quality and accuracy of data gathered from the nation wide physicians who were catered to by a sales force of over 180 field personnel. They wanted to increase the productivity by making use of the slack time between doctor calls.

TVS-E Chennai, who also took care of the server administration and troubleshooting, developed the software. Allergan’s IT team framed the functional specifications, trained field personnel, did the implementation and the software administration.

Key Objectives

Allergan wanted to enhance customer coverage, as they felt that the percentage of doctors covered is directly proportional to a territory’s productivity. They also felt that with rising competition, being able to meet more doctors meant more prescriptions and hence more business. Another objective was to call on core customers more frequently, since 100 percent coverage of ‘A’ class doctors would assure 80 percent of business. Finally, the company aimed to capture a doctor’s perception of its molecules and products during the short period of interaction (normally a few minutes) that a salesperson has with a doctor. This drives its R&D and product promotions.

Apart from these, the company wanted to capture a doctor’s perception of products offered to him by its competitors and suitably redesign its own offerings.

The process

Initially they started by implementing a pilot program that involved 12 medical representatives. The chosen few were those who were experienced and who were well versed with the working of the company. Due to their immense experience with fieldwork, these reps knew exactly what the doctors would want and also had a good idea of the needs of the representatives. Leveraging the requirements of both parties, Allergan came up with an initiative that would be profitable to both. “Everyone has inhibitions about new technology,” says Sridhar Ranganathan, Divisional Sales Manager, Allergan India.

A dozen people worked for six months on the pilot. All kinds of loopholes and problems were spotted and the initiative was deployed only across the four southern states to begin with. Later it was rolled out across the country. Allergan conducted a one and half day launch program out of which a whole day was dedicated to training medical representatives who were asked to bring along real time data that they had accumulated from continuous meetings with doctors and a live demonstration of the solution was given.

A person from the development team accompanied certain reps to the field to train them in using the system and helped them better understand its workings.

Benefits

Examining the business user’s perspective would give a clearer view of the aftermath of the implementation. Ranganathan seems satisfied with the returns that this initiative has provided.

To track the returns from this initiative, exactly a year after its implementation, a detailed study of each product viz. the sales progress was conducted. This study revealed that in those territories where a detailed description of the project was given to doctors sales were better. Another factor that impaired the provision of better service was the fact that each medical representative had over 10-12 doctors to deal with. Understanding the specific needs of the doctors helped reps sell the right kind of product to doctors enhancing sales.

Another benefit of this implementation was that it helped managers track continuity. “Reps will have to report back after they meet with the doctors. This would help managers keep track of how each sales rep is performing,” says Ranganathan.

Challenges

The software developed had to be menu driven and simple to learn and use. The hardware needed to be rugged and robust to withstand the rustic field conditions in which it would be put to use. Allergan had to ensure countrywide connectivity for timely data transfer. Also, the solution had to offer extensive analysis, provide quick query facilities and enable flexible reporting. “Connectivity from some remote areas was a problem as reliable cellular communication was unavailable. Hence online data upload caused a few snags. Apart from this, PDAs were unable to withstand the heat and dust at some locations,” says Rajan.

Highlight of the project

This project has ensured better connectivity. Earlier, capturing vital information on transactions that occur in a doctor’s chamber took seven to ten days and only partial information was available. Now it is captured in its entirety in near real-time.

Earlier medical reps were unable to connect to their supervisors and the head-office in real time. This project solved the problem by providing details of a territory to the concerned sales rep on his PDA.

This deployment allowed online, near real time information dissemination and permitted high quality, precise and accurate information capture at the point where it is generated. It helped reduce the reporting time of the sales force, increasing productivity in the process. Allergan is now in a position to organise and manage its territories and fieldwork and precisely organise current and historic data for rapid access. This initiative allowed for quick decision-making.

Roadmap

Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, President and Chief Technology Officer, Reliance Capital, who was a member of the Intelligent Enterprise Award jury says, “There is nothing more that I can comment on this initiative from the IT perspective. However, from a business point of view, I feel they would be able to use this solution for business forecasting. Also, since the reps are empowered with real time information, the PDAs, could be used as terminals to allow chemists to place orders. Having said that, I think it would depend upon their processes and plan of action and the working of the pharmaceutical industry. From the IT perspective, and from a standpoint of an Intelligent Enterprise, it seems complete.”

Allergan plans to integrate this PDA system with its supply chain management system to provide a seamless integrated information flow from the factory to the field. It also plans to push secondary sales data from distributors to the field force’s PDAs. The use of Bluetooth or Infrared for syncing data from the PDA is also on the anvil.