SAS launches Physician Targeting solution

CARY, NC  (Apr. 07, 2009)  –  Increased regulatory scrutiny, more specialized product portfolios, declining sales-force productivity and some legendary blockbuster drugs coming off patent usher in a new era in the pharmaceutical industry. For pharmaceutical organizations to continue to prosper under these new conditions they must increase precision when targeting physicians for promotions. SAS® for Physician Targeting helps organizations apply predictive analytics to sales, CRM and other customer data to go beyond deciling and target physicians based on profitability, retention and future probability to prescribe. 

“As more and more pharmaceutical organizations restructure their approach to sales the need for enhanced targeting tools increases,” said Jason Burke. “The SAS solution can mine prescription data with other data points, such as CRM data, managed care, health plan and patient level data in order to predict which physicians are responsible for the prescribing activity and segment accordingly. In proof of value exercises this approach has shown to increase the precision of targeting between 18 to 26 percent compared to traditional top decile targeting.” 

In addition, using a broad range of predictive modeling techniques, SAS for Physician Targeting enables organizations to understand the rules and characteristics surrounding why physicians have prescribed in the past, and apply those rules to predict who will be the prescribers of the future. Analytics can glean high-value targets from previously non-target populations. 

“Today's biopharmas need a competitive advantage,” said Dale Hagemeyer, Research VP, Gartner Industry Advisory Services. “Since there are fewer sales reps on the street calling on doctors that are harder to see it is critical that they have better insight on whom to see, when to see them and which product message to share with them. Predictive modeling is a huge piece of this ability to be more insightful.” 

Analytics capabilities also help organizations to predict which physicians will be the most profitable and have the highest lifetime value per sales call, which will most likely remain loyal to a brand and to monitor and measure targets’ responses to promotions on a continuous basis. 

“Traditionally many sales and marketing functions in pharmaceutical organizations were outsourced. We’re now seeing a move toward developing in-house capabilities to crunch prescription, CRM, sales, doctor profile and patient data in order to develop physician target lists,” added Burke. “This dramatically reduces costs and turnaround time. Perhaps most importantly, long-term it increases the knowledge and ownership of one of the most important assets that any company has – its sales targeting strategy.”

However, SAS realizes that not all organizations will make the investment to develop in-house capabilities for advanced targeting. For a growing number of organizations, the answer is to let SAS subject-matter experts provide the service via SAS OnDemand: Physician Targeting. This service provides the industry’s leading business intelligence analytics on a shareable and scalable infrastructure tuned specifically for the solution. 

SAS OnDemand: Physician Targeting offers repeatability, low risk, and fast “time to solution” with minimal investment – plus a comprehensive solution development and deployment program. Add to that a written guarantee of solution and system availability, and the “OnDemand” offering of SAS for Physician Targeting provides an intelligent way to meet an organization’s physician targeting needs. 

An integrated suite of solutions for life sciences

SAS solutions for life sciences address each stage of bringing a drug to market. SAS’ portfolio of integrated solutions drives efficiencies and deeper insights throughout a drug's lifecycle: from discovery through development, commercialization and beyond.  

Globally recognized as the industry leader in analytics, SAS is the de facto standard for clinical data analysis and the choice of every FORTUNE 500^® life sciences company. SAS is synonymous with accurate, comprehensive, and reliable analysis of pharmaceutical research and business data.  

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers worldwide trust SAS to support their businesses, including AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly and Company, Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, ImpactRx, OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc., Sanofi-Aventis, Santarus, Inc, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Speedel Experimenta Ltd, Synteract and Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

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