AvantGo, Inc. a provider of mobile enterprise software, introduces AvantGo Mobile Pharma, a packaged mobile application specifically built for the unique business processes of pharmaceutical sales representatives. AvantGo Mobile Pharma is a powerful mobile application designed to help pharmaceutical companies gain market share by dramatically improving the quality of physician interactions and increasing the productivity of their sales representatives. The mobile application provides sales representatives with immediate access to the information most relevant to them, including their existing sales force automation (SFA) system, product and clinical data, prescription distribution data, corporate intranet and the Internet on their handheld devices.

A number of new challenges have been posed to physicians and pharmaceutical companies, including tremendous growth in pharmaceutical sales forces over the last decade combined with 100+ new prescription drug introductions each year, and, in North America, greater emphasis on direct-to-consumer marketing. The same physician, in the same amount of time, has to deal with more drugs, twice as many pharmaceutical sales representatives and more extensive treatment input from the patient. High-prescribing physicians can have up to 50 different pharmaceutical representatives calling on them.

As a result, physicians are limiting face time, with 43% of visits turned away, and the average time per detail in the U.S. has decreased to two-to-four minutes, reports Hambrecht & Co. So, while the number of representatives has doubled in the last seven years, Forrester Research has reported that the number of visits to provide information about a particular drug to physicians has only grown 15%, and thus the cost of sales has increased substantially.

The pharmaceutical sales force has traditionally been the most effective vehicle for driving prescription market share. However, as physicians increasingly perceive that sales representatives take too much of their precious time and provide insufficient data, pharmaceutical companies are looking for solutions that enable their sales representatives do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

AvantGo Mobile Pharma Benefits Both Pharmaceutical Companies & Physicians

Designed to streamline both workflow and marketing processes, AvantGo Mobile Pharma delivers significant benefits to both pharmaceutical sales organizations and physicians including:

• Improved quality of sales representatives' interactions with physicians - AvantGo Mobile Pharma provides sales representatives with immediate access to the most relevant prescription, product, clinical and competitive information, making them much more valuable resources for physicians. Sales representatives can also receive alerts, pushed to their device, as well as access just-in-time collateral, including the latest drug research and clinical data to stay informed and ready for any type of physician interaction. In addition, sales representatives can capture information directly at the point of activity, providing brand teams a closed loop physician feedback system
• Improved productivity of sales representatives - Electronic sample management reduces sales representatives' paperwork and eliminates error-prone, paper-based reporting, which improves data collection and accuracy. AvantGo Mobile Pharma also facilitates field team coordination and re-routing for cancelled calls. And allowing sales representatives to prepare while on-the-go creates much greater field efficiency
• Maximized return on SFA investments - SFA systems have traditionally suffered from inconsistent user acceptance in the field. AvantGo Mobile Pharma allows pharmaceutical sales professionals to utilize their existing SFA system when it's convenient for them, thereby driving much higher and more consistent end-user adoption. In addition, AvantGo Mobile Pharma provides more than just standard SFA information, maximizing the SFA systems' benefits for sales representatives and giving them more reasons to use it.
  

"Pharmaceutical companies are striving to improve the quality of their interactions with physicians, while at the same time improving their bottom line," said Richard Owen, AvantGo's CEO. "Our new application delivers the best of all worlds - improving physician interactions, sales force productivity and the return on SFA investments, all of which will improve the bottom line. AvantGo Mobile Pharma is a clear indication of the trend toward broader mobility adoption across the life sciences sector to address specific workflow needs and business challenges."

AvantGo's unique technology is device agnostic - allowing all AvantGo applications to work on any readily available handheld device on the market, including Microsoft Windows Powered Pocket PCs, Research In Motion's BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds and Palm OS-based handheld devices - and is complementary to existing Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems like Siebel and Dendrite. The AvantGo Mobile Pharma solution operates both offline and online to maximize reliability, and supports open standards, enabling IT executives to rapidly deploy the solution for mobile use in the field. The AvantGo Mobile Pharma application is the third packaged mobile application from AvantGo, following the releases of AvantGo Mobile Sales and AvantGo Mobile Delivery.

The new mobile application capitalizes on AvantGo's healthcare and pharmaceutical industry experience and mobile expertise with leading global enterprise customers, including Baxter Healthcare, Aventis, AstraZeneca, Roche, Siemens Medical, Pfizer, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, McKesson Corporation and more. AvantGo's customers include 10 of the top 14 pharmaceutical companies in the world, three ranking medical schools, large HMOs and healthcare systems, leading hospitals worldwide and the world's leading healthcare service and technology company. All of these companies are leveraging AvantGo solutions to extend existing information and applications to mobile devices in the field.