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.