The principles of working remotely are commonplace and many of us have opportunity to take days away from our office desks and work at home or from another location. Nothing much new there.
But what if you could completely redesign your job so that half of your activities were taking place using internet tools?

What do I mean by “internet tools”? well anything from a meeting scheduler like Doodle to a shared database like SugarCRM or Salesforce and collaborative project management like BaseCamp .
I regularly use these tools so that I can now work almost anywhere with little loss of functionality compared with my own desk. The only things I carry around with me are papers [goodness, how last century!]

It feels good. I leave all the backing up and security tools to these online service providers. No need to buy new software each year because when it is released it’s usually already installed on the website and my fee to them includes all these updates, online support and training.

A new mode of working

This phenomenon is called SaaS or “software as a service”. But it’s come to mean far more than just software. It is a new mode of working that releases organisations from having huge in-office servers for hosting networks, software installs and updates and costly security firewalls. Many small and medium sized enterprises now don’t have their own servers. Is this progress? Does it save money and staffing?

Well it seems that Pharma is slowly catching up with the crowd with the first drug rep meeting scheduler tool – all run off the internet. RXVantage has been running a trial in Rhode Island and Massachusetts for the past two years. And it seems to work well.
Drugs reps and medical device salesfolk can schedule meetings online with doctors. It’s led to an increase in efficiency for time-starved doctors and the reps are able to make an appointment without first having to visit the doctor’s practice, sit in the waiting room for 2 hours in order to make the appointment (tell me that wasn’t a waste of time!).

Although I’ve positioned it as a scheduling service the company describes itself as

“The most efficient way for medical providers and pharmaceutical companies to exchange knowledge and ideas that improve patient care.”

How does that sound to you? It’s an ideas exchange…. we give you information in exchange for your time Mr Doctor. Obviously NOT selling.

It has a huge sign-up rate for doctors of over 90% of those invited joining enabling the reps free access to the majority of medics in two states. The doctors can reschedule and rearrange appointments easily online (quick to do between patients rather than having to pick up the phone) and the software advises all parties of the change. It fills a gap in the doctors’ surgery software armoury – they have no proprietary software to handle drug reps visits. It also enables doctors to show when they are available for rep visits… insight that must be worth gold dust to pharma companies.

Why is it an attractive proposition?

The openness of the exchange of value between a drug rep and a doctor is the underpinning principle for this service and is one of the main reasons both parties find it attractive.
There are times in our working lives when we are ready to be “sold” to and different times when we want information or education.

A salesman has to guess when these times are based on little or no information from his targets (even if he has a loyal customer base and data from years of interactions, it’s still guessing much of the time). By taking the cold-calling aspect away from these interactions, RXVantage has created a fabulous exchange of value between these two groups. I tell you when I want information, education, drug samples or just a general catchup and you turn up to my bidding.

One of the key insights that CRM has failed to deliver to many industries is the timing for a particular information exchange. This software service passes power to the doctor community to dictate when, where and how the drug companies can interact with them.

Now that’s a real example of B2B vendor relationship management (VRM) in practice. And the future is slowly developing before our eyes.

Exciting, isn’t it?

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In the good old days every company and every salesman had a card index file of contacts.  Rolodex ruled and nobody's desk was complete without one.  As the electronic database grew, the complexity of fields increased – I remember my first database [run on Smart integrated software, sigh...] when I wanted to introduce a new field, I had to copy the entire database to a floppy disc, create a new field on the computer and then merge the data back in.  I loved that database.

Now I have been thinking about the increasing numbers of people I have on my database stored in a 'catch-all' category which I started calling "Blogger" or "Freelancer"/.  There are nearly 60 people who don't work for an organisation, who I connect with regularly and who are beginning not to fit into the data fields provided.  These lead withorganisation as the principal field.  No organisation = create a fake one (Blogger) = not really representing this person accurately as there isn't an organisation called that and these people don't all work together for that organisation.

And that's just the start.  What about the people with whom I correspond via social media platforms?  It's pretty easy to add in a field called "Twitter ID" or "Facebook profile link".  But what's the point?

1. I can't mail / contact them in a traditional-style mass mailout
2. I can't contact them using links from inside my database
3. The style of contact in social media doesn't enable a mass mailout approach, if you're following me you'll see my message

I am thinking that the days of a single customer database aggregated from across the organisation is dying.  

Welcome to the interim new world of a distributed contact database and the world of aggregators to enable cross-platform viewing.

[note this is interim as the market moves towards the day when consumers hold their own information and companies build trust in order to access it = VRM]

So how might it all work?

Social media has some key attributes that are very different from old-world corporate marketing communications:

• Sharing and discovery
• Real-time information
• Feedback and re-iteration

Now that hardly works with a traditional 'campaign nor with database marketing techniques.

And so we'll need to change the nature of our "campaigns".  Of course they will continue to be called campaigns but that will become a mis-nomer.  Conversations will have to become the norm. There's a spectrum of information from broadcast (fixed point in time and not editable) to one-to-one conversations (infinitely editable, fast-moving and continuing over time).  Campaigns of the future may start in the broadcast mode but will need to move through the middle ground where peer-to-peer conversations and social media sharing is the broadcast medium and then move back to the organisation on an individual conversation business as the moment of transaction gets closer.  

 I think there's still a role for a database and some direct communications in this scenario – but its influence will be different.  It'll be a "conversational stimulant" not just a marketing message.

The anatomy of a "conversational campaign"

1. Each will be more time-co-ordinated: judged to be delivered, developed and amended in real time
2. Starting with some broadcast channels and including easy sharable content for social media
3. On-the-fly improvements and changes with several possible directions will be needed as the peer-to-peer messaging happens
4. Tracking and measuring must flow through all three parts : broadcast / peer to peer / direct conversation with the brand organisation
5. The customer contact team (?call centre) will work as part of the delivery team at the conversational end to close the marketing loop and fulfil the transaction

Unresolved issues and changing behaviours

In no particular order:

• We will still segment our audiences.  But by behaviours not demographics.  How to define?  Sales cycle stages?
• How do you send a message out only to the parts ofyour SM profile and followers that you want?  Multiple online profiles / rss?
• How to get an overall view of a multiplicity of sites with your brand / organisation profile and the differing audiences and conversations?  Aggregation and tracking tools needed.
• What to do with your company database as its utility slowly dies.  Maintain stasis?
• Stop worrying about collecting customer data via social media- they will come and go.  Track numbers but don't try to record them until near the point of transaction.
• Anticipate the rise of customers holding their own data and feeding it out to brands / organisations on a trusted basis.  Privacy intermediaries may control this?

What to do now

 Transitions take a long time to happen.  We're all going to be running parallel systems of old-databases plus new social media contacts held on third party platforms for a while.

1. Get a presence on SM platforms
2. Sign up to an aggregation platform like Friendfeed
3. Track changes in numbers of subscribers
4. Run old campaigns with a SM link-in so that the broadcast elements can migrate into peer to peer social media with ease
5. Run new campaigns on SM with direct conversational opportunities back to the brand / organisation
6. Continue to try to link 4 and 5 ever closer
7. Practice good database marketing but track customers who are on both SM and old database.  This will give clues about % take-up and when you'll be able to switch off the database
8. Stop buying data lists.

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Enjoyed my first VRM hub group meeting for a long time last night.  Fantastic views of the city at night.  

Adriana challenged us to write down what we wanted from VRM and the range of answers gave good insight.  Then we drew up a list of 'tags' that represented our answers which i enjoyed.

The area where the discussion felt most key work was needed is the personal data store.  Someone online to store your stuff – safely.

James from Plebble was at the meeting as was Rob who I met at the Northern Entrepreneurs Mobile gig on Tuesday.

Plebble rating toolbar has helped me out today…I have a garage to rent in Putney.  And so I found a car park space lettings agency online…. registered… and then noticed how low their ratings were.  Apparently they give poor customer service and don't pass clients money back to them in a timely way.  So I advertised on Gumtree instead.

Helpful.

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