The other day I had a phone call from a double glazing company, asking if I was looking to replace the windows on my house. I told the nice lady on the phone that I was interested. In fact, I was so interested that I’d already had new windows put in by her company the day before. The phone line went dead.
As a consumer, I find it incredibly frustrating when companies don’t appear to know what’s going on. Not only is it a waste of my time and theirs, it can make me lose my faith in their business, as the lack of coordination can come across as incompetence. While this is quite a trivial example, the same problems exist in the Life Sciences industry. And with some drug investments amounting to many millions of pounds, there’s a lot more at stake.
The problems start when you’ve one department using one system and another department using something completely different. It makes it very difficult for staff to share information with each other. This can mean that they’re missing out on the chance to collaborate and share knowledge. For example, sales staff might not be aware that a major clinical trial is being carried out and miss out on the opportunity to make the most of it. Equally representatives could be unaware of what other people on their team are up to, and try to arrange a meeting with physicians the same day as one of their colleagues.
In international companies this problem can be even worse as you’ve got teams in different countries using different systems. And then you’ve got the issue of language as well. Today’s marketing demands that the organisation is joined up and they work in teams across the enterprise.
Smart organisations are starting to realise that it makes much more sense to integrate all of these different systems into one overarching solution that can be easily managed centrally. Having a unified system makes it a lot easier for employees to share expertise and best practices. It even paves the way for departments to learn from each other.
So why aren’t more businesses using a single system? That’s the million dollar question. As you might expect, this often boils down to money. It can be really expensive to rip out and replace all of your existing systems with a new one. But this isn’t as much of an issue now that software can be hosted in the cloud.
Software as a Service (SaaS) means that businesses aren’t required to pay a large fee upfront. Instead they can pay for the new system in smaller monthly amounts, as they would for any other subscription service. And what’s more, a single system is much easier than running several different ones, so it’s possible to achieve some significant cost efficiencies by centralising it.
But you shouldn’t get too hung up on the pricing model. What you really need to think about is who will be using the system. It’s vital that it’s personalised, right down to people’s job roles, languages, departments, markets, and even customer buying habits. This granularity will help you to get the most out of your business and ultimately keep your customers happy.
Steve Webb – Chairman
Interactive Medica
