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About Japanese Pharmaceutical Market Features

The Japanese pharmaceutical market has some unique characteristics concerning the relationships of Hospitals and Physicians that influence how pharmaceutical companies conduct their Sales and Marketing activities in Japan. These market characteristics dictate how Sales Representatives engage with physicians and hospitals in their territories and how they plan future calls. For example Physicians always see patients at either large hospitals or small, private clinics. Therefore a contact call always takes place within the context of the Hospital (account) that the Physician (contact) is associated with.

Japanese Pharmaceutical companies also typically create and distribute large Targeting lists for each Sales Representative in their Sales Force which are based on the Hospital-Physician relationships and a series of Targeted Products. These Targeting lists are generally updated and distributed at the start of a new Targeting period, which is typically every quarter or half-year. The Hospital-Physician targeting lists include a number of targeting attributes (such as Call frequency) for one or more Products that are specific to each sales representative assigned to the specified Hospital-Physician. For example, one sales representative might be asked to make six visits to one account-contact during the quarter for Product A, but another sales representative might be asked to make only three visits to the same account-contact for the same Product A.

NOTE:  Features specific to the call-planning features in the Japanese Pharmaceutical market are not covered in this section. For information about the call-planning features specific to the Japanese market, see About Features for Call Planning Specific to the Japanese Pharmaceutical Market.

The following Siebel Life Sciences features address the requirements of the Japanese pharmaceutical market:

• Hospital-Physician relationships. Sales representatives can visualize Hospital-Physician (i.e. account-contact) affiliations as a single record within a list. This feature provides an intuitive interface for users to retrieve customer information, create Siebel Target lists, and plan future calls.
• Hospital department support. Affiliated Accounts can be displayed as Hospital Departments along with the corresponding Physicians who are affiliated to these departments.
• Hospital-Physician targeting information. For a given targeting period (such as half year), Hospital - Physician targeting lists can be created by administrators and distributed to sales representatives for use within their targeting and call planning processes. Targeting information, such as call frequencies, detail frequencies and targeting flags, can be displayed for each hospital-physician record. Administrators can modify these attributes as business needs change and Sales representatives can plan their calls using these targeting attributes as guiding parameters.
• Weekly calendar with call-planning capabilities. The application provides an intuitive and user-friendly Weekly call planning user interface which enables sales representatives to plan and visualize all the activities for their hospital-physician targets within a specific time period. New calls can be created by double clicking within the Call Planning screen. Sales representatives can also enter and report basic call data, (such as products detailed and samples dropped within the same screen), and submit the call if no additional information is required.
• Contact call with account information. The standard contact call view has been enhanced to include account information. This feature allows sales representatives to capture detailed call data for a hospital-doctor record, such as promotional items dropped or decision issues.