As many of you all know, over the last few weeks we've
organized a couple of webcasts looking at the integration of ERP and CRM
systems ("Leverage Your ERP & CRM Data to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions" and "How To Integrate Product, Customer and Patient Data"). This is as part of a series of five webcasts we are running
related to enterprise systems.
The last two webcasts have looked not only at the advantages
of integrating ERP and CRM systems, but also the use of master data management,
business process orchestration and business intelligence tools.
There are some good questions the came out of yesterday's webcast session
and unfortunately we didn't have time to answer them all during the live
webcast.
As we promised we've reproduce the unanswered questions and our answers here our blog.
Q. Can you say more about why some life sciences companies
are keen to get into healthcare management and what they are doing?
A. We talked about this quite extensively in one about
earlier webcasts () but basically were seeing a number of life sciences
companies move more into healthcare as they see their traditional profit
margins being increasingly squeezed. Moving into healthcare has several
advantages such as:
- Opening sources of new revenue
- Ensuring better health outcomes for patients
In the case of this latter benefit this means that patients
are more likely to continue using the regulated companies drugs or devices,
thereby ensuring an on-going revenue stream. At a time when many payers
(whether these are insurers or governments) are increasingly looking to pay
based upon results it makes sense for life sciences companies to ensure that
patients are complying with their medication regimes and treatment is
successful.
In the case of yesterday's webcast were seeing a number of
life sciences companies increasingly extend the use of their CRM systems to
incorporate the use of patient and healthcare management.
Q. Can aggregate spend reporting be built into CRM systems?
A. It is certainly possible to build aggregate spend
reporting based upon information that is held in CRM systems. For small to
medium life sciences companies with only a single CRM system, these systems may
indeed contain all of the information required to produce accurate aggregate
spend reports. However, where there are multiple CRM systems data usually needs
to be aggregated across the systems and as we saw yesterday's webcast there are
also advantages in terms of integrating information from the ERP system such as
cost information and expense data.
For those of you specifically interested in this topic we'll be talking more about aggregate spend in a webcast in
the New Year
Q. With such a focus on external patient facing activities,
easy ERP system becoming less important?
A. The traditional reasons for implementing ERP systems have
never gone away. Those of us remember the days of early MRP and MRPII
implementations understand the significant benefits that such functionality
brings. For small to medium life sciences companies who do not currently
leveraging ERP system there is considerable return on investment from
implementing core ERP functionality. This should really be the primary reason
for acquiring and implementing a new ERP system.
However, we are seeing ERP systems become increasingly
integrated across the enterprise and not just in areas such as manufacturing
and operations. While ERP systems are just as important as ever, they are
becoming more and more integrated into the enterprise applications landscape.
For a company that has no ERP system implementation of a new
ERP system is properly one of the most important things the company can do in
terms of investment in IT. However once the basic ERP functionality has been
implemented there are a number of additional end to end business processes that
can be facilitated by integration of the ERP system and it is perhaps true to
say that additional manufacturing functionality may not be the most important
extension of functionality.
If you have any remaining questions please do get in touch
and for those of you who missed the webcasts the recordings are still available
on the Business and Decision Life Sciences website (see Past Events). We do hope you'll be available for the rest of the webcasts where we were looking at some
interesting topics such as
- How to leveraged software and system integration activities for cost effective validation
- How to integrate good record-keeping and document management with your ERP and CRM systems
- How to plan for successful ERP and CRM systems as a regulated company
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