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MROnline to ease
field-force management for pharma companies
February 15, 2002
A Special
Correspondent, Mumbai
As the
pharmaceutical market grows beyond the limited thought-kits of medical
representatives, a paradigm shift becomes vital for the drug companies in
its traditional system of managing their field force. The knowledge driven
market has not only forced the companies to invent more niches in the
portfolio but also optimising the capabilities of its team especially the
market men by empowering them to access as well as provide accurate and
instant data for a smooth go.
Today, says Nayan Patel,
executive director, Patel Extrusion, the primary focus of any
pharmaceutical company is to empower its field personnel with adequate and
instant information about the company's products and in turn expect market
information and activity reports from the field in the same
pace.
No wonder, the investments of pharma companies to
implement ERP and other resource management systems to track finance,
production, accounts and to pursue the sales and marketing personnel so as
to strategise their marketing efforts and understand the competitor's
activity is on a rise now. Traditionally, the field personnel have
achieved this objective through filing of daily activity report. This
report then essentially passed through the hierarchy of the organisation
before being fed into the system by the IT department for further
analysis. This exhausting procedure of reporting and filing often results
in the loss of crucial data.
At this industry juncture, the
innovative ideas in information technology and applications of Internet
have been creating revolutions in different facets. MROnline, an IT tool,
which connects the drug companies with their medical representatives
online, has been one of the additions in the modern pharmaceutical market
management system.
With this software, which is developed
jointly by VirtuNex, a company within the Patel Extrusion Group, and Savex
Softech, the field personnel of a drug company are able to report their
daily activity through the medium of Internet using one of the many
available resources like Home PC, Cyber Cafés, Internet Access Devices,
Laptops etc. The data collected by the field personnel that was previously
reported on paper shall now be entered into the solution developed and
available on the server (accessible through the Internet). The advantages
of this being an increase in transparency of information being fed to the
marketing personnel and also an increase in the efficiency of information
handling by making it available in a short period of time.
In
addition to the daily activity, the field personnel can also enter their
daily expense statements and have it available for the accounting
department in a highly efficient manner. With MROnline, management can
directly interact with the field personnel through memos for
market-related information. MR's, in turn can receive more hands-on
information about new products, case studies etc.
In addition to
reporting of data, MROnline also allows the application administrators to
upload information about employees, doctors, items etc to the site to keep
it synchronised with the ERP. At the same time, the information collected
from the field can also be uploaded from the server into the ERP of the
company. It also helps the employee access the solution using an assigned
User id (employee code) and a password. The interface visually
differentiates the various levels of users from MR, level 1 manager, level
2 managers, marketing to management, once they logon to the system.
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