Pills of peril

MUMBAI, INDIA: Gone are the days when the Indian pharma sector was a dawdler in terms of implementing IT whilst other sectors surged ahead with latest techniques and processes.

With international trade agreements surfacing, India suddenly became a talking point and the land for every pharma major to set base. However, this industry is not without its perils.

“I think the supply chain itself is not IT enabled. If I were to talk on the Indian automotive industry — take the case of the top three players Hero Honda, Bajaj Auto and TVS motors — all these companies have an end-to-end connectivity. The suppliers are connected and the dealers are connected. Also, the top three players constitute about 90 per cent market share while the scenario in the Indian pharma industry is different and is highly fragmented. And because it is so fragmented — the top 10 would add to less than 30 per cent,” states Venkat Iyer, director - Business Technology & Distribution, Pfizer Limited.

Also, the pharma industry in the country boasts of an astronomical 20,000 manufacturers in its arsenal, if one compares it with say a sector such as the automotive -- they are just handful. In such a scenario, the supply chain plays a key role in bolstering the processes put up by a particular company and in taking the products to the consumer.

The state of affairs is not so rosy as Iyer avers. “Also in the pharma domain which is has about 20,000 stockists are not connected properly. They may have systems, they may have computers etc and the supply chain is very long.”

Analysts point out that there is no direct and perfect science to monitor this situation. “We go randomly checking of how the product is performing in the market but it’s a still highly manual process and we hope that next 3-4 years with retail players coming in and changes happening at a rapid pace …this scenario would change too,” admits Iyer.

Arun Phadke, vice president, Information Technology, Nicholas Piramal India Limited gives an interest perspective to the whole issue.

“Let’s look at this—today if I want to know my consumer, I don’t have a direct methodology to gain that number in pharma.”

He also mentions, “We can’t sell our products as it is not allowed. What we do is that the staff in our sales and marketing division visits the doctor and tell him about our products. In pharma, I would not know what caused the sale of my products and I don’t have a matrix to measure it. It’s not a commodity like toothpaste, soap or a detergent but a medicine and this situation is slightly tricky. The sales primarily depend on the doctor who prescribes the medicine. To top that, there are regulatory requirements, which are prevalent across the world. That’s the reason there is not direct promotion, all we can do is influence our products to the doctor and then the person would go and purchase. That’s the catch.”

So what’s the solution? Arun states, “What we have done is in a territory like say Mumbai, the credit for the sales is given to the entire team. That’s not the case in a FMCG company where the sales guy would have a physical boundary.”

Iyer has gone for some interesting IT implementations lately. “We have been doing a major work on a sales management tool. A company like us would have over 1000 people on the field and it’s important for us to know what they are doing. The way our business works is different. We are working in an environment where the output is crucial. Doctors are our end customers and the sales representative needs to know whom to meet and the output from the discussion. Not just meet 10 people and then go home,” Iyer points.

With promotions virtually ruled out, doctors are not surprisingly the customers in the real sense of the word. So, it is crucial to meet the right doctor not just to show sales to the organization but also to save lives on time. Despite the challenges that exist in the pharma industry, the IT icons firmly believe that there surely is light at the end of this tunnel.

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