Location Analytics in Pharma - A Bigger Deal Than You May Think

Besides the highly competitive market, businesses in the Pharma industry have to face challenges such as budget cuts, patents falling into the public domain, or the pressure to comply with dozens of standards. However, increasing sales effectiveness, boosting profits through marketing campaign optimization and sales territory alignment remains one of the most difficult tasks in the industry. 

One of the most effective ways to boost profitability and increase sales and market share is to start understanding the business geographically.

The actual location intelligence and spatial insights can be the key to unlocking new opportunities in the Pharma industry. The geospatial industry has been growing rapidly in the past few years and its innovations have significantly impacted Pharma businesses. Obtaining and understanding location data can help businesses make better and more precise decisions when considering marketing and sales territory alignment. 

With that said, here are multiple benefits that location analytics can bring to your business.

The Benefits of Location Analytics for Pharma

Location analytics solutions can transform the way businesses in the Pharma industry make crucial decisions. The use of location intelligence can help businesses shape geospatial data into effective and strategic insights and lead important decisions in the right direction. Many businesses are not aware of the importance of data they own. Combined with business data such as sales, visits, doctors, and hospitals, demographic data can make an enormous difference in the way marketing decisions are made.

The Impact of Location Analytics on Sales Territory Alignment

Location analytics allow businesses to understand the geographical aspect of sales patterns, thus allowing them to steer their sales efforts in the most profitable direction. Sales Territory Alignment has multiple advantages such as minimizing travel time for sales reps, making sure that they all have equitable work load and are able to maintain a consistent communication between the doctors to improve customer service.

Let’s say you are big Pharma company who wants to distribute a new drug that is aimed at people above the age of 50. You divide your sales territories among your sales reps. In a few weeks when you look at your stats, you realize that some of your sales people make much less sales in their designated territories than the other sales reps. But why? This can be due to multiple reasons and one of them could be that in some of the territories the majority of the inhabitants are less than 50 years old. In the meantime you wasted resources and it might have also crossed your mind to fire the under performing sales representatives.

With the advent of Location Analytics, these mistakes can be avoided. Location Analytics allow businesses to understand the geographical aspect of sales patterns, thus allowing them to steer their sales efforts in the most profitable direction. Sales Territory Alignment has multiple advantages such as minimizing travel time for sales reps, making sure that they all have equitable work load and are able to maintain a consistent communication between the doctors to improve customer service.

Using Location Analytics, these mistakes can be avoided – After all, every sale happens in a specific location for a reason. Knowing your costumers more thoroughly will help you optimize your sales territories and reduce your spending.

The Impact of Location Analytics on Marketing Campaign Optimization

Marketing campaigns are one of the most important assets when it comes to any type of business. Proper marketing efforts will not only increase sales but also raise brand awareness and improve the reputation of any business. 

With that said, marketing decisions play an important role in the overall success of companies in the Pharma industry. One way to increase the business visibility and achieve better results with targeted marketing campaigns is to obtain and analyze spatial insights of the marketing activities. 

Let’s picture the following scenario – you want to promote a new drug aimed at women but later on you find out that the area you are targeting has mainly male population. This type of mistake can be avoided using Location Analytics. The solution allows the user to combine their business and 3rd party data (like IMS or IQVIA data) with demographic data which they can then analyze and visualize on a map.

Location intelligence can help you create new marketing strategies or optimize the old ones to achieve more desired results. Either way, it is recommended to take into consideration the geographical aspect of the whole marketing process.

Combine External and Internal Data & Take Advantage

Location analytics solutions serve to help businesses analyze different type of data. By combining external and 3rd party data with internal data sets such as sales, territories, and visits, every Pharma company can gain a comprehensive view of their business procedures and marketing efforts. Combining this data in a geographical perspective also allows businesses to understand the prescription journey and the impact that their sales representatives are making.

Different sources of data including business data (sales, visits, campaigns, doctors, hospitals, pharmacies), demographics (residents, families, households, diseases prevalence), and external data (3rd party data sets, competitors) can be put together to create meaningful insights for future business decisions. When these data sets are utilized efficiently the company will be in a good position to achieve its mission and vision.

Conclusion

In this era, the key to the success of a business is not necessarily based on bigger budgets, but better tools and technologies. A successful marketing is now a blend of intelligent product promotion and smart targeting of the consumers at large. It is a key competitive edge for emerging and established businesses alike, levelling the playing field to a certain extent.

Mapidea is changing the rules of the game. Are you ready to reap the rewards we promise?

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