CASE STUDY - Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC: Improving Pharmaceutical Sales and Marketing Effectiveness
- By Freddie Hannibal
- October 18, 2007
Commentary by Freddie Hannibal, Director of Sales Operations, Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC
Alpharma Inc. is a global specialty pharmaceutical company with leadership positions in products for humans and animals in more than 60 countries. Alpharma Inc., through its subsidiary Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC, has a growing, branded pharmaceutical franchise in the chronic pain market with its morphine-based extended release Kadian product. In addition, Alpharma Inc. is among the world’s leading producers of several specialty pharmaceutical-grade bulk antibiotics and is internationally recognized as a leading provider of pharmaceutical products for poultry and livestock.
Biltmore Technologies offers My Vital Signs Rx, a hosted sales and marketing data warehouse solution designed specifically for small to midsize pharmaceutical and biotech companies that lack the business and technical expertise to support their own data warehouses. With My Vital Signs Rx, which is anchored by MicroStrategy’s business intelligence software, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are able to monitor new product introductions and track the sales performance of existing products, analyze the success of marketing campaigns, and determine sales force and targeting effectiveness.
Challenge
Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC was challenged with finding a better BI reporting solution and empowering the sales representatives in the field with the right information at the right time. Our previous BI solution lacked the robust and sophisticated analytical and ad hoc reporting capabilities needed to meet reporting needs. We also were unable to track the sales performance of the company’s flagship products and other sales initiatives efficiently. The Alpharma Pharmaceuticals sales group was unable to target the right prescribers or measure the impact of our marketing initiatives in a timely fashion. Alpharma Pharmaceuticals also wanted pharmaceutical data to be made available more quickly to our user community.
Alpharma Pharmaceuticals conducted an extensive review of pharmaceutical reporting applications and found that Biltmore Technologies solution exceeded all of our user requirements. We chose Biltmore’s BI solution, My Vital Signs Rx, anchored by the MicroStrategy platform, to provide ad hoc query and reporting capabilities to the field sales force, sales operations, sales and marketing managers, market research analysts, and executives. With the Biltmore-MicroStrategy solution, more than 200 users are able to access dashboards, perform analytics, and run intuitive reports, thereby improving Alpharma’s sales and marketing effectiveness.
Solution
Biltmore integrated Alpharma Pharmaceuticals’ sales force automation data and its syndicated data and partnered with MicroStrategy to leverage its analytical and reporting capabilities against this data. Biltmore provides this hosted Web-based solution to Alpharma, enabling the pharmaceutical company to analyze pre- and post-marketing campaign data, prescribing habits of target doctors, sales representative effectiveness, and product performance.
With the Biltmore-MicroStrategy solution, Alpharma Pharmaceuticals receives a monthly briefing book that includes a wide variety of valuable reports customized for each user across the organization. For example, an analyst accesses a report that lists prescribers and alerts decision makers of upward or downward prescribing patterns. The vice president of sales accesses executive dashboards that provide a pulse of the business with one click to follow new product introductions and sales trends of existing products. A district manager analyzes the success of a marketing campaign and learns who is performing above or below goal.
Field users receive personalized briefing books containing information about their specific geography. Internal users receive personalized briefing books and can also access and execute ad hoc queries via a robust reporting library.
Results
Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC has a single data source for all sales and marketing business-critical reporting to support key business strategies, including the management of its continued business growth. Users are empowered with easier access to consistent and accurate data in a more complete and timely fashion, with the MicroStrategy platform enabling greater ad hoc querying and analytical capabilities. Users can analyze data directly against the data warehouse for analysis and decision making that was not possible before. The result: more precise analysis of prescriber targets, more effective call plans, and more focused sales and marketing campaigns.
This article originally appeared in the issue of .