The pharmaceutical market is getting more and more competitive every day and many companies are finding it challenging to secure solid financial returns. This has led many pharmaceutical companies to seek innovative ways to stay ahead in the market and improve their financial returns. With the rise of Customer Relationship Management, a number of pharmaceutical companies have seized the opportunity to develop new ways of reaching the market by transforming into customer-centric companies.
The cost pressure on public healthcare is calling the efficiency of traditional, isolated marketing, sales and service processes into
question. Currently, productivity improvements in pharmaceutical companies’ sales organizations through benchmarking and better market research data are leading to an adjustment of competitive advantage across the industry. Companies are still trying to compensate this homogeneity with an increase in medical representatives who try to influence doctors’ prescription decisions, although the number of doctors remains constant.
The continued emergence of new companies within the pharmaceutical industry means the high costs of production and service delivery need to be reduced significantly if a company is to see substantial returns. Customer-Centric Companies are able to cut back on costs by profiling patients and potential customers using Customer Relationship Management, so as production and service delivery can be customized for drug and treatment delivery. This is especially efficient if the targeted customers are managing chronic illnesses that constantly need a renewal of medications. Basically, pharmaceutical companies will have data and information required to manufacture patient specific drugs, information like a patient’s current weight, BMI, metabolic rate, medical history, kidney and liver function, etc., can be securely collected and stored using Salesforce’s CRM. This kind of data is required in manufacturing patient’s specific medication.
Patients vary in their choices and needs. In a 2001 study revealed that 57% of the executives interviewed expected CRM to grow in the coming five years, and 76% of the pharmaceutical companies had already made some kind of CRM investment (CGEY and INSEAD 2002). Showing that from the beginning, CRM investment was taken seriously by the Pharmaceutical Industry .
