At qordata, we’re driven by an aggressive ‘myth-busting’ mission when it comes to the Pharma Compliance/Transparency space. And one way we measure our effectiveness is by seeking participant responses during the webinars we conduct.
In our most recent webinar, in which I hosted Wendy Derosa and Bryan Timer from Merck USA, the poll results suggested we had made progress.
Myth #1: Visibility Into Pharma Spend Is Overrated
Is it? The bigger the pharma firm, the higher its data consumption. With data coming in from several regions, it’s difficult to scrutinize each record, regardless of the manpower at disposal.
Without the ability to individually dissect each record, it helps when data is entered, categorized, and then analyzed in an intuitive and robust system. This was one of the key lessons we derived from the webinar. But we didn’t let it rest there. We asked our audience:
“How important is it to have visibility into your spend data before submission?”
And this is how they responded: None of them believed it was “not important”, and none were unsure either. A resounding 88% advocated for pre-submission spend visibility.
Myth #2: Spend Data Visibility Only Matters Pre-Submission
As our presenters confirmed, visibility matters throughout the year. The period near submission should be reserved for finding “needles in the haystack” only. In fact, year-round visibility is an effective deterrent against last-minute scramble. Did our participants agree?
This is how they responded to “How important is it to have visibility into your spend data throughout the year?”
Five percent felt it was ‘Not important’. But of the remaining ninety-five percent, 79% felt it was “Very important”, and 16% believed it was “Important.”
Myth #3: Spend Analytics Solutions Are Only For Big Pharma
This myth is a stubborn one, as we’ve discovered in our longstanding industry experience. While it’s true that the sophistication of your analytics platform is in direct proportion to your size, the same cannot be said of cost.
Many mid-size medical device and drug manufacturers enjoy a world-class analytics solution, together with market insights. The key is to look for vendors with the strongest combination of industry exposure, technical skillset, global footprint and passion.
But that’s just us. What do practitioners think? Our poll invited responses from a cross-section of industry representatives—cutting across size, location, expertise, and so on.
More than knowing existing usage rates, we wanted to know how many would be interested in implementing such a program in the future. Thus, the telling statistic here was not “Yes” or “No”, but “Not right now, but would like to.”
One in ten respondents planned on getting such a solution for themselves in the foreseeable future, whereas slightly over seven in ten already had such a system in place. We observed that views on not getting an analytics system persist. (We told you it was stubborn).
