Proscape Closes Sales Loop for Pharma Reps

Microsoft partner Proscape has developed a customer relationship management system that it says makes pharmaceutical sales representatives work more efficiently.

Proscape Technologies co-founder and President Derek Pollack said the closed-loop marketing system takes into account the potential physician customer’s profile before the sales call happens and also gathers, analyzes and delivers data during and after the sales call to show the sales rep what techniques, strategies and tools are most effective for that customer. Proscape gave a presentation during the Microsoft Health and Life Sciences Developer forum April 24 in Atlantic City, N.J.

The Proscape closed-loop marketing system has Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 as its foundation, Pollack said. The latest version, Proscape 6, rolled out April 10.

Sanjay Jain, Microsoft CRM Dynamics ISV architect evangelist, said Dynamics offers sales, marketing, services and activity tracking, as well as reporting and analytics functionality comparable to CRM suites from Siebel and Salesforce.com, but that the competitive differentiator is the platform capabilities.

"We also give you a tool kit to extend your application on top of the platform, whether or not that application is CRM-related," he said.

The system includes various modules that can execute physician surveys; ease program enrollment; present the results of clinical trials and deliver other medical information requests; and facilitate materials ordering and electronic signature capture, all from a Dell Latitude XT tablet PC. The system also includes automated tracking, analysis and reporting capabilities, Pollack said.

"We're taking marketing, sales, operations and IT, putting them together and coordinating them to be very specific to health and life sciences," he said.

The system makes sales rep visits more efficient, Pollack said, since reps can customize their sales presentations based on the individual physician's customer profile, which can include specialty, previous preferences, prescribing history, medication samples requested and other information. During sales calls, representatives record data about the visit into the system using the tablet PC. Then the data is re-entered into the system, where it’s analyzed and sent back to the sales reps so they can better understand their customers’ needs.

"The system closes the loop based on feedback from individual sales calls and tells the rep what strategies, what marketing and sales collateral, what tools are working," Pollack said.