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Pharmaceutical CRM-Why Product Differentiation Using CRM or Patient Relationship
Management (PRM) is the Key Competitive Advantage?
Key words: Product differentiation, Pharma CRM, Competitive Advantage, Product
Innovation, Patient Intelligence, Product Intelligence, CRM (PRM) Analytics,
Trials beyond Phase IV
On the average, Pharmaceutical product development
reaching consumers after Phase III is a billion dollar investment, takes 13
years and the product uniqueness patent expires in 15 years. That is, it is
difficult to create a product, takes lot of money, takes more time to take the
product to consumers, and ownership of the product expires sooner than any
product created for its uniqueness.
CRM or PRM (Patient Relationship Management) thus
helps to get the most revenue from these 15 years of shelf life by reaching more
new patients (consumers), keeping them loyal by increasing their well being and
if PRM is well done, the PRM has the potential to innovate new products and
services, there by providing competitive advantage to continue to thrive in the
market and grow.
The key insight here is the product
differentiation. “Product differentiation
is the modification of a product to make it more attractive to the target market
by differentiating it from competitors' products”.
If the product is great, beats the competition by miles, and it attends
to the consumers’ needs, the company can laugh to the bank. Some times, however
good a product is, the competition is always so close by that the
differentiation may not look reasonably well for the consumers to use one
product vs. the other. What are companies supposed to do. A great example is
allergy medication. The top 3 medication vying for number 1 position in sales
are the following: CLARINEX, ALLEGRA, Zyrtec. Around the same time the patent
was expiring for CLARITIN, Schering Plough brought out CLARINEX but the product
differential of CLARITAN to CLARINEX and among CLARINEX, ALLEGRA, and Zyrtec are
not much. What can Schering Plough do to keep increasing the product
differential and keeping the pressure at the competition?
This is where PRM or CRM can help greatly. This
creates more differentiation in product characteristics (a post product release
attribute created and identified with the product), by an intelligent
combination of PRM and the product marketing.
A simple structure for executing the PRM:
-
Define the ultimate FDA approvable goals of PRM
-
Execute the PRM
-
Acquire and Retain patients (consumers) using
patient intelligence (CRM – PRM – Analytics)
-
Structure IT and Analytics keeping with the
patient confidentiality and privacy
-
Continue this cycle with increasing revenue and
profitability
Last, but not least (perhaps the most important
benefit of PRM) is using patient intelligence for further product innovation.
Whether anybody recognizes or not, the on going strong years of patient care
intelligence will have so much of knowledge (may be responsibly called – patient
voluntary trials that complements Phase IV clinical trials) about the product,
its efficacy, side effects, co-effects, life-style, and pharmaco-demographic
effects, that it can lead to product innovation.
There is gold in PRM. Are you ready for the golden
ride?
Unique Success Factors for Pharma CRM Implementation
Key words:
Pharmaceutical CRM, Pharma CRM, FDA requirements, Patient confidentiality,
customer perspective, operational perspective, management perspective, HIPAA
Requirements
The end results
of CRM is the same among different industries that include pharmaceutical
industry also, namely to
o
Provide best
possible products and services to the customers,
o
Be
competitive
o
Be innovative
in creating new products and services to suit the dynamics of demographics and
market conditions with assured availability of continuity of products and
services
o
Sell and
service more with utmost details to the customer input and customer relevance
The
principles of CRM are also the same whichever the industry the principles are
used
Customer Perspective:
o
Fulfillment of
product or service needs
o
Fulfillment of
quality of life and experience
o
New enhancements
to products and services
o
Quality of
communication
o
Payment
relationship
o
Reward for better
relationship
Operations
perspective
o
Quality of
interactive media and interactive communications
o
Right message,
Right offer
o
Fulfillment
services
o
Data capture and
data utilization
o
Customer
intelligence
Management
perspective
o
Relationship
level metrics
o
Products &
services level intelligence
o
Revenue
o
Profitability
o
New Product
development and penetration into the market
The
critical factors for success that are unique to pharmaceutical CRM are the
following:
1. The
CRM communications have to be fully approved by FDA and the fulfillment
requirements have to be strictly followed, implying the following:
o
No over
selling of the benefits, services, efficacy, or under selling of toxicity due to
the products
o
There are no
differences between the patient information that is part of the medication
package and the communications that come out in every little bit that are part
of CRM implementation
2.
Privacy and confidentiality are foremost business rules the companies have to
uphold in terms of whatever the data companies collect, however they use the
data, and however they share the data with any one for any legitimate purposes.
o
Managing data,
sharing data or letting a third party have the data for analytical purposes, or
for tele-services and fulfillment purposes is very common in pharmaceutical
industry as with any other industry. However, this is a tricky situation in the
case of pharmaceutical industry and a careful solution need to be and could be
brought out where the confidentiality of patient information is not
compromised. Currently the author’s intelligence points to significant
potential for breaching of patient confidentiality despite the HIPAA.
3. Any reward
or points mechanism and resulting CRM communications strategy, content,
relevance, and frequency can not discriminate any sub population because their
ROI metrics are not favorable to the company. Though this may look like a
standard best practice every company has to follow, it becomes more important
and absolute necessity because it affects the health needs of an individual.
Components and layers of CRM
complexities in Pharmaceutical
CRM:
Pharmaceutical CRM has special and unique
components unlike other industry. There are four components, each one
having their own rights to exercise and follow some best practices.
- FDA
- Physicians
- Patients/Families
- Scientists
It is easy to see how these people and their rights
play a role, if we think of a candy company releasing a new candy vs. a
pharmaceutical company, though for all practical purposes, a particular newly
introduced candy may not pass a FDA regulation uniformly for all ages and for
types of people under all conditions assuming some significant difference
compared to the product and the placebo; besides it will probably take 10 years
to approve the product.
Ultimately, with new 1998 FDA regulations about
patient communications, the patient becomes an influencer in the whole chain of
product usage, especially on health conditions which are just annoying and pesky
productivity damper or lifestyle enhancer. Even here, the importance of
physician influence is not to be underestimated, but it is becoming less and
less powerful.
Thus the dynamics of these four groups changes
depending on where the product lies in the spectrum of lifestyle enhancing
medication vs. life threatening medication. On top of these, the
communication content has to pass through multiple levels of regulations and
need to be approved by each of the these four groups. Now all these
processes have to go through the normal regulations and formalities that are
additional levels of protection such as privacy and confidentiality, and finally
the operations of insurance, healthcare centers have to be in consonant with
their pricing, affordability, and other social and economic regulations.
In essence, the components of entities,
regulations, and best practices introduce so many different responsibilities
across many layers of operation, CRM in pharmaceutical industry is ripe with
problems unless done carefully fully addressing its peculiarities. This is
not to say it can not be done; only to imply that the best practices are
becoming easier working with domain experts.
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