5Managing Contacts in Life Sciences
Managing Contacts in Life Sciences
This chapter covers managing contacts in Life Sciences. It includes the following topics:
About Managing Contacts in Life Sciences
In Siebel Life Sciences, a contact is typically a physician, nurse, or pharmacist or other medical professional. In a more general sense, a contact can be any individual a pharmaceutical company deems significant to their business process including a formulary director, contracts administrator, or medical education event speaker.
This chapter describes how to manage Siebel Life Sciences contact information. Using the procedures given in this chapter, you will be able to perform the administrator tasks of defining and specifying medical specialities, deleting a contact, defining bricks, and associating contacts to a brick. End users such as sales representatives and managed care account managers can use the Contacts view to create and track a variety of contact information, including contact affiliations, contact and account relationships, contact assessments, and the best times to call on a contact.
Scenario for Managing Contacts
This topic outlines an example process performed by a Siebel administrator and end users. Your company might follow a different process according to its business requirements.
A pharmaceutical company is reviewing the contact information in their database to make sure it is as current and up-to-date as possible. During this update process, the administrator deletes obsolete contacts and associates new contacts with existing bricks (geographic areas).
Sales representatives use Siebel Contacts to manually enter and modify contact information. They add information that helps them track relationships between contacts.
Sales representative can add more depth to contact data by creating user-defined fields called categories. Using categories, representatives can track private or shared information about a contact.
Process of Managing Contacts
This topic details sample tasks often performed by administrators and end-users when managing contacts. Your company might follow a different process according to its business requirements.
Administrator Procedures
The following list shows tasks administrators typically perform to manage contacts:
Setting Up Primary Specialties
Define medical specialities within the system and specify a contact’s primary speciality.
End-User Procedures
The following list shows tasks end users typically perform when managing contacts:
Other Tasks for Managing Contacts. Enter contact category information and create contact assessments.
Setting Up Primary Specialties
As a Siebel administrator, you are responsible for defining and entering the primary specialty information about contacts.
The Primary Specialty field is read-only and can be edited only through EIM. The list of specialities is defined in the Administration - Application screen, Speciality view.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
Defining a Speciality
The following procedure shows you how to define a speciality.
To define a specialty
Navigate to the Administration - Application screen, then the Specialty view.
The Primary Specialty view appears.
In the Primary Specialty list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Some fields are described in the following table.
Field Comments Code
The Specialty Short Code for the health care provider's designated area of expertise. This is normally provided by the syndicated data provider (for example, AMA, IMS, or NDC).
Name
A full description of the health care provider's designated area of expertise.
Specifying Specialties for Contacts
The following procedure shows you how to specify specialties for contacts.
To specify specialties for Contacts
Specialties cannot be specified for contacts through the UI. Specialties are loaded into the MED_SPEC_ID field in the S_CONTACT table of the database using EIM.
Alternatively, configure the Primary Specialty field so that it can be edited.
Removing Contact Records
Three methods for removing contact records are described.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
Merging Contact Records
If you find that two or more contact records contain the same information, you should merge the records into one in order to keep the database accurate. For more information on merging records, see Siebel Fundamentals.
Removing Employees from a Contact’s Team
As an alternative to deleting a contact, consider making the Siebel administrator the primary team member so that he or she can remove all other employees from the account’s team.
Deleting a Contact
Deleting a contact completely removes the contact from the system. Be aware that deleting a contact could have undesired consequences.
If you are certain that the contact is no longer active, use the following procedure to delete it.
To delete a contact
Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contact Administration view.
The Contact Administration view appears.
In the Contacts list, select and then delete the appropriate contact.
The contact is deleted from the list.
Administering Bricks
A brick is a collection of accounts and contacts, normally in a common geographic area. Bricks are sometimes referred to as geo zones. The primary purpose of a brick is to allow a company to publish RSA (retail sales analysis) data while making sure that specific sales cannot be tracked to a particular contact or account.
IMS Health publishes retail sales data and determines the definition of bricks. Brick definitions are reviewed every six months and adjusted to make sure that the brick is as small as possible while providing the required level of anonymity.
Because brick data is a key measure of return on a pharmaceutical company's investment in sales promotion, outside the United States most pharmaceutical companies build sales territories based on brick data available for that country. This provides a meaningful way to measure performance over time.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
About Bricks in Siebel Pharma
As Siebel administrator, you can associate a contact or an account address with a brick. A contact can be associated with multiple bricks and an account with multiple addresses can have one brick for each address.
Siebel Pharma also supports mini-bricks. Mini-brick data is a subset of brick data that narrows the number of contacts and accounts in a geographic area. Mini-bricks provide a more detailed view of an area, without identifying the individuals in the unit.
It is the Siebel administrator’s responsibility to set up and maintain brick definitions as well as associate bricks with contacts and account addresses. For information on associating a brick with an account address, see Associating a Brick with an Account Address.
Defining a Brick
This task describes how to define a brick.
To define a brick
Navigate to the Administration - Data screen, then the Brick Details view.
In the Bricks list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Some fields are described in the following table.
Field Comments Parent Brick
The Pick Brick dialog box lists all the bricks in the database. If the new brick is a mini-brick, click the parent brick in the Pick Brick dialog box.
Active
If checked, the brick is active. Only active bricks are listed in the Pick Brick dialog box.
Position
Defines positions associated with the brick and controls visibility on the Analysis screen, then the Brick views.
Note: For users to see the bricks for which they are responsible, the administrator must associate their position with those bricks.
Associating a Contact with a Brick
You can associate a brick directly with one or more contacts.
To associate a contact with a brick
Navigate to the Administration - Data screen, then the Brick Details view.
In the Bricks list, select a Brick.
In the Contact list, create a new record for the contact you want to associate with the brick.
Creating a Contact
A contact can be any individual an end user deems significant in achieving their business goals. Multiple employees can be assigned, as a team, to a contact. Any employee assigned to the team can update the contact’s information. The user who creates the contact is automatically designated as the primary contact team member. However, he or she can also be assigned to other contact teams by another user (such as a manager).
If you prefer the behavior of displaying all contacts that are on the team of the subordinate person, create a service request (SR) on My Oracle Support. Alternatively, you can phone Global Customer Support directly to create a service request or get a status update on your current SR. Support phone numbers remain the same and are listed on My Oracle Support.
Because the contacts shell is assigned to individual people (that is, employees) and not positions, this view does not show contacts that are assigned to a position that has no employee assigned. To prevent this behavior, assign a placeholder employee to every position.
Contacts can also be viewed on an account hierarchy tree that shows accounts, their child accounts and all activities, contacts, and opportunities associated with the accounts. For more information, see Administering and Managing Accounts in Life Sciences.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
To create a contact record
Navigate to the Contacts screen, Contacts List, and then the More Info view.
In the Contacts form, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Some fields are described in the following table.
| Field | Comments |
|---|---|
Address |
A contact can have multiple addresses. Use the Addresses dialog box to select an existing address or create a new one.
Note: Be careful when editing an existing address. Editing an existing address changes it for all contacts currently associated with the address. If you are unsure whether the change applies to all contacts, create a new address.
Each user must specify one address as primary by selecting the Primary field. Each sales representative assigned to a contact can specify a different primary address. For example, one representative might specify a private office as the primary address, while another representative might specify a hospital department as the primary address. In the All Contacts view and the My Team’s Contacts view, the primary address displayed is the one assigned by the primary team member. |
Brick |
Indicates an impartial geographic code that groups contacts in a way that mirrors the definition provided by syndicated data providers. These codes are loaded by the administrator and are read-only for all users. For more information, see About Bricks in Siebel Pharma, and Associating a Contact with a Brick. |
Clinical |
Indicates if this contact has been involved in a clinical trial. |
Company Identifier |
A unique identifier for the contact that can be used to cross reference with other systems. |
Consumer |
Indicates if this contact is a customer. |
Last Call Date |
The date of the most recent call that has been submitted for each member of the team. In the My Contacts view, this field shows the last date that you, as the logged-in user, has made a call. In the other Contacts views, this field shows the last date the team’s primary has made to the account. |
License # |
Used to record all contact’s professional licenses. |
Primary Specialty |
Only Siebel administrators can define this value. For more information, see Setting Up Primary Specialties and Setting Up Primary Specialties. |
Primary TOP |
The physician's primary type of practice. |
Provider |
Indicates if this contact is a health care provider. |
Rep Specialty |
The specialty or area of expertise the end user sees this contact has having within their organization. |
Rep TOP |
The physician's primary type of practice according to the assigned sales representative. |
Route |
Allows users to select a when to visit an account from a predefined schedule. For more information, see About Defining a Route Plan. |
Speaker |
A check mark indicates this contact is a speaker for MedEd events. This field is used to track various speakers at any level. For more information, see Designating MedEd Event Speakers. |
Team |
Multiple people can be assigned to the contact’s team. The team member who created the record is indicated as primary. |
Territory |
Territories are assigned to contacts using Siebel Assignment Manager. |
Type |
Indicates the type of contact. |
Specifying the Best Time to Call
A contact can have more than one address. Using the Addresses view, end users can enter the best times to call on a contact based on a selected address. Entering information in this view automatically populates other views such as the PreCall view. For more information about:
Creating addresses, see the addresses field description in Creating a Contact.
Using the PreCall view, see Viewing Pre-Call Information.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
To specify the best time to call on a contact
Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List.
In the Contacts list, select a contact and drill down on the Last Name.
Click the Addresses tab.
In the Addresses list, select an address.
In the Best Times list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Indicating Affiliations Between Contacts
The Contacts Affiliations view allows end users to track referral relationships between contacts. Using this view, users can track:
Referral or Referring Relationship. Users can specify whether a contact receives or gives referrals to other contacts.
Influence of Contacts on One Another. Users can specify whether or not one contact influences another contact.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
To indicate an affiliation between contacts
Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List.
In the Contacts list, select a contact and drill down on the Last Name.
Click the Affiliations tab.
To specify a referring relationship, in the Affiliations list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
To specify an influencing relationship, in the Influenced list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Indicating Affiliations Between a Contact and an Account
Using the Account Affiliations view, end users can associate a contact with an account. One reason to indicate these affiliations is for greater efficiency in call reporting, as described in Completing Contact and Account Call Activities
Once you record an affiliation between an account and a contact, you can also:
-
Specify a role for the affiliated contact. This gives the end user some comprehension of the contact’s occupation.
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Specify the best times to call the contact at the affiliated account. This makes sure that the contact is not called at inconvenient of inappropriate times.
Specify the role of the contact at the affiliated account. This helps end users to track a contact’s importance within an organization. They can then refer to this information prior to calls and adjust their discussions with each contact accordingly.
-
Review products in the formularies of the affiliated account.
If the contact is affiliated with any MCOs (MCOs), make sure to add the names of these to the Account Affiliations list.
The Formulary Status list (LS Formulary Status List Applet) shows the drugs that are in the MCO account’s formulary. This is read-only information. Formulary status can be updated from the Plan Formulary view of the Accounts screen.
Note: If a PBM (pharmacy benefit management company) owns the formulary, you need to affiliate the PBM account instead of the MCO account, in order to see the formulary.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
To indicate an affiliation between a contact and an account
Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List.
In the Contacts list, select a contact and drill down on the Last Name.
Click the Account Affiliations tab.
In the Account Affiliations list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Some fields are described in the following table.
Field Comments Account
The account to be affiliated with the selected contact.
Start date
The beginning date on which the contact became affiliated with this account.
End date
The date on which the contact ended affiliation with this account.
Direct
Select this field to route profile data for the contact to the members of the team assigned to the affiliated account. The Siebel administrator must enable this behavior.
Do not select this field to route the profile data for the contact to the members of the team assigned to the contact. (Users who are connected to the server see the profile data whether or not a check mark appears in the field.)
To specify the role of the contact at the affiliated account, in the Roles list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
To specify the best time to call on the contact at the affiliated account, in the Best Times list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Viewing Pre-Call Information
The Pre-Call view is a single view that provides end users with a thumbnail view of important information about a contact. Users can access this view prior to making a call to get a summary of key information about the customer they are about to visit.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
To view pre-call information
Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List.
In the Contacts list, select a contact and drill down on the Last Name.
Click the PreCall tab.
The following table describes the list applets in the PreCall view.
List Comments Link Bar Rx Trends
Syndicated data about prescription trends.
Data can be viewed as a chart or as a list.
Rx Trend
Rx Trends By Plan
Syndicated data about prescription trends. Rx Trend by Plan shows prescriptions by managed care plans.
Data can be viewed as a chart or as a list.
Rx Trend By Plan
Rx Trends By Formulary
Syndicated data about prescription trends. Rx Trend by Formulary shows prescription trends and formulary status information at affiliated accounts.
Data can be viewed as a chart or as a list.
Rx Trend and Formulary
Account Affiliations
Lists all accounts affiliated with this contact.
This list can also be populated from the Account Affiliation view. For more information, see Indicating Affiliations Between a Contact and an Account.
Rx Trend
Rx Trend By Plan
Rx Trend and Formulary
Best Times
Lists the best times to visit the contact.
This list can also be populated in the Addresses view. For more information, see Specifying the Best Time to Call.
Rx Trend
Rx Trend By Plan
Rx Trend and Formulary
Calls
Features an historical list of all calls made on the contact.
Rx Trend
Rx Trend By Plan
Rx Trend and Formulary
Formulary status
Provides formulary status information for products in affiliated accounts.
Rx Trend
Rx Trend By Plan
Rx Trend and Formulary
Notes
Contains end-user notes regarding the selected contact.
Rx Trend
Rx Trend By Plan
Rx Trend and Formulary
Campaigns
Lists all the current campaigns targeted for the contact.
Marketing Communications are not editable in this view. This list is populated from the Campaigns screen, and requires the Siebel Pharma Campaigns option. For more information, see about Creating Campaigns in the Siebel Marketing User Guide.
Marketing Communications
Messages
Lists all the offers associated with the campaign selected in Campaigns, as shown in this table.
Marketing Communications
To add information:
Select the Calls, Best Times, Notes, or Account Affiliations lists.
Create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Tracking Documentation Associated with a Contact
Clinical research associates can attach electronic files, such as CVs, contracts, and reports, that might be associated with a contact and record significant dates, such as the date the document is sent, received, expected, or expires.
This task is a step in Process of Managing Contacts.
Adding an Attachment to a Contact
The following procedure show you how to add an attachment to a contact.
To add an attachment to a contact
Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List.
In the Contacts list, select a contact and drill down on the Last Name.
Click the Document Tracking tab.
In the Document Tracking list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.
Some fields are described in the following table.
Field Comments Activity
Must be Document.
Assigned To
The person to whom responsibility for the document has been assigned.
Expected Date
The date that the signed document is expected to be received from the contact.
Expiration Date
The date the document expires.
Name
The document name. This is a hyperlink to the Attachments view.
Lock Assignment
Determine whether the Assigned To field should be locked. If the activity is locked, Assignment Manager will not access it. If it is unlocked, Assignment Manager can reassign it.
Select the record you just created and click the Attachments tab.
Create a new record and add the document as an attachment.
Tracking Documentation Associated With a Contact
The following procedure shows you how to track documentation associated with a contact.
To track documentation associated with a contact
Navigate to the Contacts screen, then the Contacts List.
In the Contacts list, select for whom you want to track documentation and drill down on the Last Name.
Click the Document Tracking tab.
In the Document Tracking list, query for the document of interest and complete the necessary fields.
Other Tasks for Managing Contacts
Other tasks associated with contacts are:
Creating contact assessments. End users can use assessment templates to rate and rank contacts on key indicators. For example, sales representatives can use assessments to conduct primary market research during their sales calls. For information about creating assessment templates, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide. For information about performing assessments (contact assessments are performed the same way as account assessments), see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.
Creating category information. End users can create public or private categories to track additional contact information, such as a particular sports a contact enjoys or food a contact prefers. For information about categories, see Siebel Applications Administration Guide.