Pharma CRM on the Blockchain and Distributed Ledgers

Blockchain is one of the hottest technologies in the last few years. Here are a couple of areas where Pharma CRM can take advantage of this technology. Even if companies may not be using blockchain in the short-term, the question of adoption is just a matter of when. Blockchain tech has over many benefits over the current fragmentation of different systems. Below are some areas where I think blockchain and distributed ledgers may help.

Sample Accountability

The current state is that Sample drops to HCP’s are recorded within CRM. This data needs to be aggregated to the Sample Accountability system. Often, this is a complex interface and often, the Sample Accountability vendor sits outside of the extranet.

Blockchain would be a good use case for to solve this challenge. One of the key features required is immutability. When a Sample drop is recorded, it should not be modifiable. A public blockchain resolves the issue of requiring some type of file exchange, which currently is done by FTP since the blockchain can be public.

The question becomes, how to we store data on the blockchain and how should privileged recipients retrieve the data? Blockchains are not good at storing large amounts of data since the data will need to be stored redundantly at every node. This points to a pattern where only some type of pointer will be stored on the blockchain and referencing some type of distributed data store.

Digital Assets

Currently one of the challenges is determining what is the latest version of a particular presentation or document. This can be done through document management systems where the latest version of a particular file is always rendered, while avoiding keeping offline storage of various files all over the place. This works great within the enterprise and across multiple enterprises as well. I will need to read up more about this one. It seems to me that this can already be solved without the use of blockchains. A particular version of a document can be stored on a blockchain, but it can also be stored in traditional methods. The difference is whether the owner of the document repository can be trusted when the system specifies it is the latest document. On a public blockchain, a document’s unique signature can be generated and written into a block. No other party can modify that block. For internal corporate use, regular document repository systems are fine.

Smart Contracts

This can apply in several areas. One area that requires a lot of integration work is the area of contracts and orders.

Across multiple organizations, I’ve seen that the payment of speakers is still a very manual task. After a speaking engagement, a rep needs to submit a cheque request (chequereq), and then someone from Accounts Payable will process it manually. With blockchain, it will be possible to execute this as part of a contract. Once a speaker engagement has been marked as completed, the appropriate functions of the contract will be called and executed. The payment will be released to the HCP immediately.

The same idea can be applied for orders. Current integration typically requires sending the order either to SAP or an external fulfillment vendor. Then it is integration hell to try to sync the data back and forth when a particular user wants to find out about the status of their order.

Orders can be written to a common blockchain. This can also be done using convention means, but the way most enterprises are set-up, systems do not talk to each other. SAP is getting into the blockchain space big time, so in the foreseeable future, the way to talk to SAP will be through these ledgers.

Identity and Customer Master

Blockchains can store unique identities. This solves one issue of figuring out which is the master record that a HCP should match against, and minimize duplicates. A HCP’s identity will become a public record, and against that, a system can attach any type of data.

This is especially for most companies. Despite advances with customer mastering technologies, duplicate records are still rampant.

In the area of identity, another area where this will be extremely helpful is verifying credentials and licenses. All academic degrees will be published on the blockchain. Pharma companies don’t even need to do this as universities or 3rd parties should be on their way to doing this. Pharma companies just need to understand how to access the information.

Likewise with state licenses. Currently, there is no good system of harvesting the license info of HCP’s from each state / country. 3rd parties mitigate some of the laborious work, but practically there are still many data gaps from these data sets. Pharma reps often do not know that a HCP license has expired until they encounter the HCP.

Compensation / Incentive Comp

Here is a more controversial one. As part of any sales organization, compensating the field reps is a big area. Talent is motivated by incentive schemes. What is not so clear is how the incentives and bonuses are actually paid out. There are definitely thresholds set by organizations, but is the payout certain? This can be solved through smart contracts. When the CRM system records that a certain number of activities has occurred, the contract can be executed and the payment automatic. Users can read the contract themselves.

Conclusion

Blockchain and distributed technology is a very interesting space. I am looking forward to creating some demos in this area. Let me know your opinions and thoughts on this space, or if you are working on anything related to this area.