Making commercial arguments using digital media
pharmafile | November 10, 2011 | Feature | Medical Communications |
The global climate and the NHS overhaul are placing exceptional pressure on healthcare professionals to cut costs while preserving – or even improving – patient experience.
In the past making the financial case for a product usually came towards the conclusion of a sales call. But in our current financial situation, especially with the formation of Clinical Commissioning Groups on the horizon, making a strong commercial argument may be one of the best ways to buy time, giving your sales team the opportunity to communicate key messages, clinical benefits or indeed, superior patient outcomes.
In this environment, the power of digital cost calculators as a means to engage potential customers can be immense.
The advantages of cost calculators
Digital solutions have the ability to evolve as dynamically as the subject they represent. Information can be continually updated and maintain its relevance to the target audience. These solutions can be tailored specifically to the needs of the individual or of a wider organisation and provide instant access to on-the-spot cost calculations and historical and current data on the benefit of a treatment.
Providing instant localised data analyses of figures that are relevant to a certain PCO for example is hugely powerful. It’s all very well to show savings in a brochure and comparison graphs in an ideal world, but when the savings demonstrated are the result of real time analyses using data that is pertinent to the customer, the whole argument comes to life.
Depending on the disease area, localised data can be found in the public domain, for example using QoF figures or information obtained from registries. Preloading this data before a sales call can make the entire experience quick, efficient and impactful.
Of course, depending on the therapy area and the information available, input from the customer may also be needed to fill in some of the data fields in your calculator, but having default values in place will still demonstrate the savings that can be achieved. And when the customer adds their own data the impact is increased.
Cost calculators in practice
Cost calculators are an excellent tool to emphasise cost savings, but this isn’t their only role:
• Justifying premium pricing
While clinicians generally prefer a clinically proven, gold standard product they are increasingly under pressure from payors to use or prescribe less expensive alternatives. Each situation is unique to the therapy area and market circumstances but if a superior product has data supporting better outcomes – e.g. fewer complications and side effects – a digital cost calculator can translate this significant benefit to patients into a cost effectiveness argument, justifying the premium pricing.
• Highlighting value for money
Even in this financial climate, a competitively-priced product may struggle in a marketplace where the main competitors are market leaders with long standing relationships with stakeholders. The price difference, unit for unit, may not seem substantial enough to warrant a change in prescribing behaviour but a cost calculator can be used to demonstrate cost effectiveness over a longer period – a year or even five years – and suddenly the numbers begins to make sense, not just to the payor but even to the clinician.
• Capitalising upon price parity
Even when parity exists between your product and a competitor, a simple cost calculator can set the sales call up to succeed. Reassured about cost, the customer is free to consider your product’s clinical benefits, unimpeded by concerns about a further increase in their spending.
The deployment perspective
The method you choose to build and deploy your cost calculator is dependent upon how you wish to deliver the tool: online, offline or mobile.
When deploying your calculator to an online audience only, use of server side frameworks and languages such as PHP allow interaction with stored data, letting you and your audience generate and save reports as PDFs. Client-side Javascript (using toolkits like jQuery, Moo Tools or Dojo) communicate with server-side technologies using AJAX to provide a more responsive user experience.
If there’s a need to deploy across multiple mediums, for example a web application that needs to be deployed online as well as working as a desktop application (using a wrapper like MDM Zinc), then Flash provides an ideal solution. Desktop versions could then be delivered using USB sticks, DVDs or downloaded from a secure website.
Smart phones and tablets can be used for more interactive and mobile deployment of the cost calculator. Mobile frameworks like jQuery mobile or Sencha Touch can be used to develop highly interactive web apps to allow offline cost analysis to be carried out even without network access.
Conclusion
In this age of financial restraint it can be challenging to engage customers and get the time you need to fully demonstrate your product’s benefits. But a well constructed, digital cost calculator can help you succeed in our current cash-poor environment, because using a cost argument gets the attention of your audience, opening a door that allows you bring your key selling messages to life and moves you closer to your sales objectives.
By Ekta Jain – Digital Strategist, Halesway
For further information contact us at ideas@halesway.co.uk or see www.halesway.co.uk
