Campaign Manager Enables a Leading Pharmaceutical Company to Track and Manage its CMEs

Overview

An integral part of promotion for a particular brand in the pharmaceutical industry is the CME (Continuing Medical Education) conducted for doctors periodically. Large pharmaceutical companies may conduct around 3000-4000 events annually, making it challenging to track the massive details involved.

Business Need

Our client faced several challenges with their existing system for managing CME events:

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  Cash Advances: Campaigns were initiated by the first-line manager, who received cash advances to distribute among their team of medical reps. This left actual expense tracking solely up to the manager.

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  Laborious Approvals: The approval process for a particular CME involved multiple levels of approvals, causing significant delays in executing the events.

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  Expense Reimbursement Issues: Reimbursements were done monthly, often unrelated to the cash advances provided, making it difficult to track expenses on events and individual doctors.

Our Solution

Our Campaign Manager software was designed to address these challenges and covered the following areas:

Campaign Plan

• -CMEs were planned a month in advance, and only approved plans could be organized and conducted.
• -All types of events were captured in the system.
• -Events adhered to budgetary controls, determining who could create and conduct them.
• -Event desks received intimation for organizing specific events.
• -Approval levels for events were reduced t2-3, significantly speeding up the process.

Campaign Implementation

• -Captured detailed information after the event was conducted.
• -Generated expense vouchers post-event execution.

Expense Handling

• -Eliminated cash advances entirely.
• -Medical reps were issued credit cards for conducting events.
• -Expense vouchers were submitted with credit card bills after the CME, and reimbursements were processed accordingly.

Event Desk

• -Event management companies played a role in organizing CMEs.
• -The Campaign Manager application: Sent event intimation to desks for blocking and booking arrangements. Allowed actual expenses to be uploaded for reimbursement. Captured feedback on events conducted.

Benefits

The implementation of the Campaign Manager provided visible benefits to our client, including:

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  Improved Tracking: Enabled tracking of each event and comparison of estimated versus actual spend.

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  Doctor Spend Analysis: Provided insights into spending on each doctor, enhancing compliance.

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  Smoother Expense Management: Streamlined expense handling and significantly reduced reimbursement times.

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  Enhanced Controls: Introduced budgetary and administrative controls to improve the discipline of event execution.