Redefining CRM in the era of Facebook

It is finally here.

A virtual network to connect people to a common base. Facebook is a formidable tool, not simply for the social shananigans of gossipy exchanges or voyeuristic peeks into your friends' lives but it is also extremely helpful in giving what are often tedious professional relationships a little casuality and light-heartedness.

It took me a while to use Facebook. I was little reticent in the beginning but soon found my email inbox assuged with numerous 'invitations' and didnt want to appear prudish to all my 'friends'- which is a generic term that includes faraway relatives, primary school friends whom you've never spoken to even back then and almost forgotten ex-colleagues who had somehow never failed to let slip some unsavoury details about you to your boss. Now, I check my FB- an affectional acronym for Facebook- on an almost daily basis to get the dish on whats happening in these acquitances' lives. While it hasn't developed into an obsession yet, which I happen to know, Facebookititis is pretty prevalent. I happen to think it has evolved into an almost perfect mode of communication for professional networking.

I just wish that the FB-revolution had happened earlier in my early days of repping. Then I would not have to visit the same doctor 3 times in a week with Starbucks' latte and Polar sugar rolls just to befriend him enough to try my samples and prescribe my loot. If FB had been available then, it would have taken me half the number of visits before I'd had found and sent him a FB friend invitation with a virtual sizzling hot latte with the click of the mouse on a Starbucks application. Heck, I could've saved the effort in filling out the claims form too!

FB is changing not just social norms but also professional relationships. It makes you visible and involved. It turned what was once a tension filled customer-rep relationship into something a little closer to friendship, making it easier to break the ice at the next sales call. But it is also a double edged sword. Reveal too much of your personal details (the likes of petty name calling, gossip mongering, changing your relationship status from married to single to its complicated once too often, thinking expletives are cool, posting distasteful stuff from youtube) are just going to work against you and your carefully crafted professional image.

Thing is, very few people are able to separate their personal and professional lives properly. Almost everyone i know in senior management have a way of preening their professional image to project the right tone for negotiating or attaining any form of corporate objectives.

And FB doesn't distinguish between that. C'mon, FB doesnt even care if your 'friends' are your 'call-in-the-middle-if-the-nite' buddy or 'stab-u-in-the-back-whenever-i-can' ex-colleague! And by relating, socializing and communicating with all the people in your list in the same way, you are certainly breaking down whatever professional impression that you have been building up.

FB is a force to be reckoned with and has provided us with a great new tool of communication, but we must be able to identify its limitations and decide how to make it work to our advantage.

That's enough for now, gotta check out who just sent me that super-poke!

pushing the boundaries

I read recently that the cost of developing a drug lies between US800million to 1.2billion. Holy Crap! that's a hell lot of money for any molecular structures. Imagine, if all the pharma companies are to pool their R&D kitties together, its sufficient to bailout the troubled Wall street titans. Those banking fat cats ought to take a leaf out of pharma's compliance stance.

Anyways, before I digress into further naunces on the finance industry, 800 MILLION! obviously, that includes billions of petri dishes, thousands of bleached and starched lab coats, hundreds of centrifuges, top executive's bonuses, real estate costs and various other stuff that will just blow your mind off as it had done mine to splitereens.

This is the true reason why pharma remains a high-risk business. After deducting the huge costs of research, there is often no safety net in sight for the returns of investments until after the drug is launched for a period of time. With the increasing difficulty in approval filings lately, it is only going to chip chip chip into our patency period.

As any PM knows, managing the PLC of a drug is probably one of the most challenging given the brief lifespan of any chemical entity. so much bang is expected for the buck invested.

I advocate pushing the limits to achieve these market objectives. I mean, if the company is going to be investing 800M for that chance to make a difference -at least to shareholders- i dont see why we on the marketing floor have to adopt a play-it-safe approach in our competitive strategies or other marketing tactics that works to serve our objectives.

What's wrong with a little more aggression in sales and promotion? Obviously, its a rheotorical question. While I'm totally partial to appropriate corporate governance and the SAPI code, I'm simply jaded and unmotivated by all that abounds in the industry. It's pretty much monkey-see-monkey-do.

pharma promotion is so highly regulated and restrictive in Singapore that it is stifling any innovation or creativeness in the talent pool (what talent pool?!) I feel that failure to employ and engage into innovative ideas that is relevant to the marketplace will lead to a staid and improbable competitive environment, leading to non-attractive, repetitive activities or worse, a marketplace that competes only on price. That end serves nobody any good.