All participants of pharmaceutical market, using the same marketing tools have different indicators of sales dynamic. Why are some companies more successful and grow faster than the market, while others are growing along with the market, the third companies - slowly, and the volume of sales of fourth - reducing? What is the reason of such results, and why are marketing tools not always effective? These issues will be examined in this article and in the following articles about the effectiveness of the external service.

Now we will focus on the following issues: lack of time and demand for quality information, TAB-computers and their role in improving the quality of visits.

1. Lack of time and the demand for quality information

On the one hand, the issue of effectiveness of work of physician, pharmacists (hereinafter: the intermediate buyers), and medical representatives is becoming increasingly important in market conditions. This is due to the increasing of labor costs of these specialists, the lack of the required level of experience, the high cost of internal corporate education and fixed costs on personnel.

On the other hand, modern industrial society is characterized by the creation and accumulation of large amounts of data that require more time, human and financial resources for their processing and creation of high-quality information. In the process of drugs promoting marketing services of pharmaceutical companies have focused its efforts on the development of specialized information about drugs, that is in demand for intermediate consumers. For this product-managers develop and train medical representatives, supply them with printed presentations and send them on a visit to the doctors and pharmacists. The result of this work is not always positive. What is the reason?

Analysis of the quality of the medical representatives shows that the employers of field-force is very different in terms of training, experience, knowledge of product, stability, transfer of repetitive information to different recipients. High level of staff turnover also affects the quality characteristics of medical representatives.

This trend is not new and many markets have been faced with finding solutions of similar problems. The development of informational technologies for solving such kind of problems gave rise to new marketing tools. In order to satisfy informational needs, specialized database of information for pharmaceutical manufacturers and independent operators are developed, such databases are available only for registered users and internal corporate intermediate buyers.

Pharmaceutical companies provide additional services - on-line support services that are available 24 hours 7 days a week, for communication with the intermediate buyers, in order to satisfy their informational needs. These services are created as internal and outsourcing.

Quality of education of medical representatives is the main point in conditions of strong competition. Just filled vacancies in posts wouldn’t make the sales plans nowadays. Intermediate buyers are interested in communicating with medical representatives not below the level of the expert.

According to Ivan Natalchenko, head of the "Pharmacy project," of company "Farm-ROST" - «Physicians and pharmacists don’t have free time, which they are willing to spend to communicate with non-trained medical representatives nowadays. They expect quality and professional information that will be useful in their future careers from such contacts. Marketing companies that can create valuable information about drugs for doctors and pharmacists and control informational channels will win in the fight for "prescribers" and pharmacy shelves. Today, information about drugs - it's the instructions, articles in specialized medical publications, information available from the Internet, especially with specialized sites and databases, or information of a medical representative".

Analysis of communication with doctors and pharmacists shows that they are open to receiving the unique information that is not available in the instructions and specialized literature. At the same time, physicians and pharmacists are not willing to spend time on empty talk with medical representatives, listening to the data that is already familiar.

In marketing of drugs, there is demand for quality information, confirmed by the evidence base needed to carry out professional activities of physicians. Thus, medical representatives without the knowledge of the product at a deep level, without sufficient medical experience, no knowledge of the competing drugs are not effective enough, and the frequent visits of such employees will worsen the perception of the brand pharmaceutical companies. In the market there is a tendency to optimize the external service by recruiting experts, who are at a lower frequency of visits will be more effective due to their professional and ethical qualities, and a higher level of equipment.

2. Tablet computers and their role in improvement of visits quality

Now sounds surprising fact that the innovative concept development of TABs and the project of its implementation by company Apple is not perceived positively by experts and marketers of the IT-business and other sectors of economy. The main advantages of TABs users have begun to understand only when started actively use them. Steve Jobs saw in this product synergy of laptop and a smartphone, that could allow people to solve their informational problems by:

- Creation, retrieval, preservation, transmission and presentation of information;

- Recording information in the form of images and video;

- Communication and GPS-navigation.

Few could have predicted that the Internet and TAB computers will be an effective tool for distance learning, bringing together experts from different countries, and the cost of information exchange will continue to decrease with the amount of data transfer. Henry Ford, creating his car, pointed out that the cars will help bring people together in large areas, but the global impact of the car on an industrial society and mass production, also could not be foreseen.

"Pharmaceutical marketing is on the stage of rapid embedding of informational technologies. Hardware and software products are used more often not as a fad, but as a means to increase employee productivity, - says Igor Vovkodav, director of "Farm-ROST". – A lot of progressive heads of companies, marketing departments of pharmaceutical business are embedding TAB-computers as a tool that speeds up speed of information exchange and processing in 2 times, it enhances expert opportunities of medical representatives through its integration with the corporate databases. External services, with technical and information superiority, strengthen their competitive advantage and hold leading positions in their companies, maintain and strengthen the loyalty of doctors and pharmacists, and as a result, increase the value of their companies' brands".

An example of synergy and innovation in marketing is the direction of the distance education of field-force employees. It saves time and money. Moving from paper to electronic media. For example, more and more presentations are developed in electronic form using the elements of graphics, animations, video interviews / statements of opinion leaders (KOL). Developing such video presentation, company can provide physicians and pharmacists with the same quality and without misrepresentation.

Based on the above material, we came to the following conclusions:

1. Pharmaceutical marketing will focus on creation and maintaining of quality "database of information - bases of knowledge ".

2. Electronic and video presentations would increasingly using in hardware solutions.

Medical representatives are provided with informational bases of knowledge, mobile hardware products, such as TABs, can become experts for doctors and pharmacists to offer the products, which will increase the efficiency of the field-force.

Analytical service of company "Farm-ROST"