As many of us that work in Pharmaceutical Sales Operations are preparing to head to the Veeva Global Customer Summit next week, we thought it would be an ideal time to discuss how an SPM and a CRM system can complement each other very nicely.  First, to differentiate the two—Incential’s software is a Sales Performance Management (SPM) system focused on automating processes around the measurement and reporting/analytics of sales performance and compensation.  Veeva is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software focused on tracking demographics and activities associated with customers. 

So, how do the two come together?  As your sales force is tasked with making calls to key targets, the data they enter into Veeva can flow into Incential’s SPM system via Incential's pre-built web services API.  On a daily, weekly or monthly basis, data from Veeva can be used by Incential’s SPM system to incorporate call activity measures in your incentive compensation plans, build activity contest components, and integrate with sales data for better ROI analytics.

For example, Contract Sales Organizations (CSO) are sometimes required to make a certain number of calls for a given time period.  As part of their incentive compensation plan, Reps must be motivated to hit a call activity qualifier such as “Average Number of Calls per Day” or a minimum Reach and/or Frequency.  By using the Veeva data to pull in call activity, Incential can seamlessly create a qualifier rule to use in calculating the sales force earnings.

Another example of integrating the two is using Veeva data to measure and incentivize calls on targeted physicians during a launch or contest period when the corporate goal is to achieve a high level of detail reach and/or frequency.  Having weekly or even daily access to this data allows Incential to report on contest standings or results much quicker than traditional pharma data sources.  Contests are meant to be timely and motivating, with the integration of your CRM and SPM system you can maximize the effectiveness of your plans by linking these essential technology platforms.

Once you have the data in your SPM and CRM systems synchronized you can take it a step further by embedding Incential performance and pay reporting within the Veeva end user interface to create one location for Reps to access all of their activities, performance and pay information.  Incential has built Single Sign-on (SSO) technology to create this ‘one-stop-shop’ for the sales force so that they only have to log-in to their Veeva system and their Incential dashboards will display as another Veeva tab.

To find out more about how you can gain efficiencies by integrating your SPM and CRM systems, stop by our booth at the Veeva Global Customer Summit next week (May 6-8, 2013).