A Smart Mobile CRM Boosts Productivity at Dr. Reddy’s

Summary:

The legacy mobile CRM application at Dr.Reddy’s didn’t arm their sales representatives with the data they needed to be taken seriously by doctors. A new mobile client app changed all that and has today made their sales representative 6 to 8 percent more productive. Read how.

Highlights:

An important factor in his final decision was his solution provider’s willingness to work on the necessary customizations needed to run the solution in far-flung parts of India, where bandwidth is low.Dr Reddy’s estimates that the new solution makes their salespeople between 6 percent to 8 percent more effective.

Reader ROI:

How to come up with creative solutions using existing investmentsHow to operate with low bandwidth, slow connections

The face of any pharmaceutical company is its R&D team. But few would survive without their feet on the street: their medical representatives. Yet the 2,000 medical representatives at Hyderabad-based, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories – they are called professional medical sales representatives or PMSRs at the company – didn’t have the tools to be as effective as they could. In the way was a legacy mobile customer relationship management (CRM) application. The system, which required PMSRs to carry two separate devices – a PDA (Palm) and a mobile – was a one-way street. It only allowed sales people to upload data to the company’s servers, like a report of a meeting with a doctor or a question that doctors might have. It was certainly a step forward from the days when medical representatives needed to maintain that data on paper. But what it didn’t do was arm sales representatives with the data they needed to be taken seriously by doctors. And like any salesperson, when you’re a medical representative, building a relationship with a doctor is a major part of the job. Worse, the PDA-mobile combo was maintenance intensive. Software upgrades, for example, couldn’t be done on the fly and meant downtime for the solution. And pushing out new functionalities was impossible. Yet Dr Reddy’s couldn’t give up on the solution – not with the amount of money that had already been sunk into buying the PDA-mobile combo.

“While a representative is waiting to see a doctor, he can access information from past interactions with the doctor.This will help him sell more and also inculcate a personal bond

To overcome these challenges, B.V. Srinivas, deputy CIO for Dr Reddy’s, went on the hunt for a mobile CRM solution. He needed something that was scalable, allowed two-way traffic between the company’s ERP and the salespeople. It also needed to work in remote locations, and would operate with both PDAs and the new Window’s based smartphones Srinivas wanted to introduce. It was a tall order, but he found it. An important factor in his final decision was his solution provider’s willingness to work on the necessary customizations needed to run the solution in far-flung parts of India, where bandwidth is low. The no-frills user interface ensures all functions are easily usable even on slow connections. Srinivas also made sure that PMSRs could work offline even if they are out of coverage area. Today, medical representatives go online for just three to five minutes to sync their mobile devices. And in case the mobile application fails completely, Srinivas backed it up with a Web portal. “So if a device goes down, staff can still complete their tasks and report back to base by spending a few minutes at a local Internet café,” he says. The new mobile client application, which was piloted with around 50 professionals, is today being used by close to 2,000 employees – most of them on the smartphones Srinivas phased in. And it’s making a difference. Not only can sales representatives upload customer details, their visit schedules and expenses claims, today they can also pull out relevant information from the company’s ERP, enabling them to have greater impact with doctors.

“While a representative is waiting to see a doctor, he can access information from past interactions with the doctor. This can be from his birthday to his daughter’s wedding date, in short any information that will not only help him sell more but also inculcate a personal bond,” says Srinivas. Doctor queries regarding a product can also be logged into the system through an application on the rep’s mobile and when he syncs it with the backend systems, the question is forwarded to a panel of experts who can handle those queries and respond – which goes a long way in building a sales person’s credibility. Dr Reddy’s estimates that the new solution makes their salespeople between 6 percent to 8 percent more effective.

“While a representative is waiting to see a doctor, he can access information from past interactions with the doctor.This will help him sell more and also inculcate a personal bond

Back at regional headquarters, managers to whom these medical reps report also enjoy mobile access to dashboard reports based on data fed in by their reps – something that wasn’t possible earlier. This makes it easier to keep a closer tab on the activities of medical representatives and their efficiency. And when a medical representative leaves, it helps the replacement catch up quickly – some estimate that the information can cut the time needed to build a new relationship by a third. Although Srinivas is unwilling to share how the new solution with all its customization cost, the combined benefits lead Dr Reddy’s to believe that they will recoup their investment within a year. In fact, they are so confident that since the project began they have already phased out the Palms and bought about 2,000 Windows smartphones – that cost between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000 a pop.