This study represents the first effort to measure the present and future of Competitive Intelligence (CI) in the Mexican pharmaceutical industry, which is openly provided to the public for free distribution.
first-study-of-competitive-intelligence-in-the-mexican-pharmaceutical-industry-2004In Mexico, the Pharmaceutical Industry faces a series of challenges and problems that make survival in the market more difficult in the medium and long term. Laboratories have realized the importance of establishing business relationships among themselves (co-marketings and co-promotions), making economy-of-scale contracts with key suppliers and even pushing more and more to improve the negotiations that are made with the drug distributors nationwide.
But while this occurs in the upper echelons of the industry, outside the competition for the doctor, the patient, the pharmacy, the hospital and the media is increasingly fierce.
The lack of timely communication that occurs at three key levels of a pharmaceutical laboratory represents one of the main areas of opportunity where CI can provide greater value:
The Sales Forces lack, on the one hand, information that allows them to design more aggressive attack strategies, and on the other, there are no clear channels through which to report to the administrative offices when they detect
early symptoms of threat in the field. or opportunity.
The CI provides them with a means to channel market alerts that will be processed and returned to them in information easily adaptable to their commercial work.
Product Managers, in charge of designing the general strategy of a drug, have outdated information on what is happening on the battlefield, they do not have methods to quickly abate a threat or turn an opportunity into profits for the business. The CI provides them with timely information converted into intelligence, as well
as tools and methodologies for decision-making, such as scenario prospecting, future design, war rooms, war games, etc.
Directors can sometimes be the ones who are most unaware of the performance of their sales forces and products in the market, nor the small details that over time become big threats and / or opportunities. An alert detected by a Sales Representative in the field has a minimal chance of reaching the ears of a Director. The CI provides the top management levels of pharmaceutical companies with a feedback link that is much more consistent with the market, with the competition, with the forces that drive the prescriptive habits of doctors, and warns very early on possible changes in regulatory aspects. With a formal Competitive Intelligence system, Directors of pharmaceutical laboratories become less reactive.
In this context, CI is presented as an excellent option to solve many of the weak points of pharmaceutical laboratories, particularly in the Mexican context, where instability at all levels is a constant always present, and rarely taken seriously. Although the practical usefulness of CI is much more visible in the commercial and marketing areas, others such as Public Relations, Research and Development, Manufacturing and Operations, can equally
derive much value from having the support of a CI expert, either from internal or external way.
