AstraZeneca takes good care of its prescribers
The second largest group on the European pharmaceutical market and active in seven major fields of treatment (oncology, cardiology, neurology, gastroenterology, infectiology, anaesthetics and pneumology), AstraZeneca generates 40% of its turnover with its flagship drug, the leader on the ulcer pill market. To pave the way for the upcoming economic challenges, AstraZeneca has recently equipped itself with a system to manage its relationship with its prescribers based on the Selligent software. It is above all the flexibility of the tool and the reactivity of the Selligent teams that won over the pharmaceutical group.
pierre-frédéric roubertiesDirector of Information Systems
“The pharmaceutical industry is a specific case when it comes to CRM, in that, generally, it does not directly contact its end customers, only prescribers”
“We have come a long way in the field of cross-disciplinarity and the sharing of information. We now have reporting capacities that were not fully developed to date. Selligent allows our teams to truly capitalise on the information gathered”
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A changing portfolio
In 2003 and 2004, AstraZeneca undertook an active overhaul of its product portfolio. Innovative and effective new products, the fruit of heavy investments in its R&D, will be brought onto the market over the next few months. They will replace the more mature products and ensure the Group’s growth. But the product itself is not the be-all and the end-all.
A specific CRM process
The pharmaceutical industry calls for specific treatment when it comes to CRM in that, as a general rule, it does not directly target its end customers, only the prescribers. In fact, the end customer has only little influence on the choice of drug. Hence the key role of the prescribers, in particular those that AstraZeneca refers to as the “Key Opinion Leaders” (KOL). To successfully launch its new products in each field of treatment, AstraZeneca must effectively communicate with these opinion leaders, professors and renowned doctors who are directly involved in the take-up of new treatments by the medical body as a whole. And that was the main reason behind the implementation of Selligent.
A sophisticated solution for a powerful player
AstraZeneca introduced a CRM system back in 2001 that allows it to manage relationships with its around 60,000 contacts, on a mass rather than on a one-to-one basis. Christened Optima, this project is based on a tailor-made solution developed by the company’s IT department. In 2003, to face up to the major challenges arising from the launch of new products and the growth of turnover in each range, AstraZeneca felt the need to adopt a sophisticated tool to monitor relationships with the key opinion leaders. Specifications were therefore drawn up and a call for tender launched in June 2003. Buoyed by its initial successful experience of CRM with its Optima project, AstraZeneca did not exclude the possibility in principle of repeating the exercise by developing its own tool. But in view of the tight deadlines, the company first of all wanted to examine what was already on offer in order to reduce, if possible, the implementation time. At the beginning of July, the Selligent solution had been chosen.
Involving the users in the decision for guaranteed adoption
“By bringing in a software package, AstraZeneca was forced to modify its approach to its IT strategy: from a development rationale, we switched to an integration rationale. In this context, the ease with which Selligent could be integrated with our existing Microsoft .NET infrastructure worked in favour of the European editor” explains Pierre-Frédéric Rouberties, Director of Information Systems with AstraZeneca, before adding: “That being said, we closely involved the users in the decision concerning the choice of tool, in particular when it came to criteria such as functional scope and user-friendliness. Selligent was the unanimous choice of these users”. It goes without saying that this is of capital importance for the motivation of the users and for their adoption of a system.
Speed and flexibility
In addition to the fact that it was the solution that best respected the technical constraints, and the fact that it perfectly met the needs, one of the major advantages of Selligent is without a doubt its speed of implementation. At the end of September 2003, i.e. less than 3 months after the tool was chosen, the solution was already up and running. “This was made possible in particular thanks to the reactivity and the availability of the Selligent teams”, underlines Kim Blangeard, Project Manager with AstraZeneca and head of the Selligent project. Another key factor in the decision: the flexibility of the tool, which made it possible to meet the specific needs of AstraZeneca without requiring additional specific development, which takes up time and money. Furthermore, this intrinsic flexibility allows the company to develop its solution as required. The advanced training given to two Selligent administrators internally also gives them a high degree of autonomy when it comes to simple upgrades.
Shared information and coherent messages
Currently, AstraZeneca manages four strategic projects with the help of Selligent in four different fields of treatment. The application is used in a totally cross-disciplinary manner throughout the company by all those involved in each of these projects: in the medical, management, marketing and sales departments. The company can thus share the information between these various departments, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, ensure the coherence of the messages relayed towards the KOL, at all contact levels. But that implies an advanced security set-up, as the players of one project only have access to information about their own project and this according to their user profile. Gateways have also been set up with the Optima system as well as with Business Objects.
Next objective: total transparency for the user
on is provided to the users via the company’s intranet site. The integration of Selligent into the company’s general application base means that a user connected to the intranet does not need to identify himself a second time to gain access to the application. AstraZeneca’s next objective is to literally “melt” Selligent into its intranet (thanks to the Web Services) by transparently providing authorised users with the information that interests them directly on the portal’s home page. Whatever its origin, the user will then find all the necessary information in one single interface. AstraZeneca is also thinking of implementing Selligent Xi for PDA that will allow users to carry away relevant data on their PDA in disconnected mode. Furthermore, in future, some elements of the Optima system may be replaced by Selligent functions.
