Maximising e-performance

Mike Hennel, founder and president of Silvon, discusses how pharma companies can maximise the power of the web to their advantage. Graham Lampard reports

Pharmaceutical and other chemical product manufacturers today are under constant pressure to shorten time-to-market cycles, get new products to market more quickly, and deal with the underlying forces of consolidation, all while facing downward pressure on pricing and a growing need to better manage larger channels of suppliers. These challenges are compounded by the emergence of e-business models that are changing how companies manage their supply chain, as well as how they maintain a responsive, well-informed sales organisation.

To be successful in this complex landscape, companies seek to gain efficiencies in maximising current product portfolios, increasing product pipelines and research budgets, and managing pricing. More than ever, they must rely on consistent, timely information about unit volumes, pricing, market share, customer service, and other factors that drive the business.

integrated modules

A way to address these issues is to use an integrated business performance management system, such as Stratum from Silvon, a US company with headquarters in Westmont, Illinois. Through seven independent yet integrated modules (figure 1), a company uses the system to improve its business performance. One area of help is in using existing technical infrastructure and harnessing the power of the Web to give people in every department, from the executive offices to sales, production, procurement and shipping, an immediate insight into the issues that matter to them relating to e-business.

Pharmaceutical companies can use the management solutions to conduct cost pricing analysis, track revenue per product, score vendor performance, and analyse unit volumes and market share by sales rep - all of which helps them understand how and where to invest their efforts most profitably.

Each segment plays an important role in improving the company's overall business performance.

• financial performance management allows companies to understand the cost drivers across the enterprise by using activity-based models, and analysing customer product and supplier information to drive strategic decisions;

• marketing performance management analyses the company's rate of investment (ROI) returns, campaign successes and failures and the variables that influence marketing success;

• sales and procurement performance management combine to address core areas in the company such as new product introductions and ongoing portfolio performance, especially important in maximising drug product lifetimes;

• customer analytics defines which customers are profitable, which are not and which offer the best potential;

n manufacturing performance ensures that items are produced as needed by analysing forecasts, orders, capacity and lead times;

• e-business performance management measures and maximises a company's e-business opportunities

In today's e-web economy, web-based interactions with thousands of customers generate high volumes of sales transactions and massive amounts of information that can be leveraged for greater competitive success.

However, Mike Hennel, president of Silvon, commented: 'Even though companies are investing heavily in different web-based interfaces to get information out to customers, in many cases you're not seeing customers place orders that way. They may be looking up information, but they still place orders through traditional mechanisms.'

web site behaviour

The e-business performance management (ePM) module helps businesses gain an insight, from the large store of information available, to measure and maximise opportunities in the e-commerce marketplace. It allows today's business to understand and influence customer behaviour on a web site, increase sales by attracting more of the right visitors who ultimately make purchases, decrease sales costs through self-service applications, measure and improve the layout and design of electronic stores, and promote, cross-sell and up-sell items based on past customer behaviour.

The ePM captures web log, clickstream and other data, organises and stores the data in a centralised e-business-centric data repository and provides more than 30 predefined analysis and reporting templates for measuring web performance.

The web analysis program determines if prospective customers are able to find what they want quickly, which ensures that the company web-site is well travelled by pinpointing visits by page and actual paths taken. This obviously has advantages in identifying the most viewed pages, and allows the webmaster and designers to upgrade and improve the less frequently read pages if necessary. Knowing which are the most-read pages also allows the company to make maximum impact with advertising and promotional programs.

Another important aspect is visitor analysis: tracking and classifying visits over time to determine preferences and frequency, uncovering patterns that identify how many hits the site is getting per day, and whether the trend is up or down. Analysing customer purchase or interaction history, and finding out the real value of web visitors in terms of revenue accrued or the quality of items ordered are all integral in determining the efficacy of the site with respect to sales.

effective searching

The entry point is also important, and programs such as Stratum will show company's how visitors locate its website initially, and on an ongoing basis. Again, this can be used to the company's advantage with respect to marketing opportunities and promotional programmes. Analysis includes whether browsers are coming from search engines, referral sites, web ads or direct. Once on the site, the program can determine how effective the internal search facility is.

'Beyond the powerful sales, planning and vendor performance management applications, programs such as Stratum gives pharmaceutical organisations high-value, high-ROI planning, analysis and business management capabilities for analysing manufacturing efficiency,' commented Hennel.

'The analytical applications have allowed many of our customers to achieve full payback within one year of system implementation.'