Drugs giant opens channels to customers

By ADAM GIFFORD

The New Zealand division of global pharmaceutical giant Merck Sharp & Dohme has completed the first stages of a rollout of StayinFront's Visual Elk 9 multi-channel customer management software.

StayinFront, whose software development arm is in Ponsonby and head office is in New Jersey, has carved out a niche among drug companies, with almost two thirds of its revenue worldwide coming from that industry.

Merck Sharp & Dohme IT manager Alan Smith said StayinFront was selected over competing vendors, including incumbent Dendrite, because it was able to deliver true multi-channel customer management.

This will allow the company to deal with consumers, prescribers, pharmacists and other key groups in the way they want to be dealt with, whether over the phone, by fax or email, through direct sites or through a self service web portal.

Another key factor was that StayinFront allows field staff to synchronise data remotely.

"While there is a strong case for permanently connected mobile clients, which StayinFront does offer, the telecommunication industry is yet to deliver speed and cost effective solutions when dealing with large volumes of data," Smith said.

The call centre element of the package went live at the end of last year, and the 30 remote users are being brought into the system this week.

The web portal, which will be developed later this year, will be able to track what users are using the site for.

The system, which is costing "between $300,000 and $500,000", also includes StayinFront's Panorama data analysis and decision support tool and the Knowledge Management, Campaign Management and Call Centre modules it has developed for the pharmaceutical industry.

Smith said the project is being considered as a pilot, not just for a possible StayinFront roll-out into other territories but also as to the role of customer management within the company.

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