Dear Bill Wolfson and Tom Armstrong,
Upon the request of choosing among the Ipads and the Laptops; it is to my
greatest pleasure to help you with the investigation process in determining
which is the best option for your sales rep team.
Prior to my recommendation I
would like to include certain articles that will add value to this research
analysis. “Use of iPads among pharmaceutical sales representatives doubles in
one year” by MedReps.com. This article shows the significant impact that iPads
have on influencing doctors’ behavior when considering which drugs to
prescribe. Another Article found on tabtimes.com “Four
ways tablets can help the modern sales rep”, clearly emphasizes on four
different ways tablets can make sales reps more effective: information on
demand, Geo Location, Productivity, The wow factor (impressing your customers
with high technology)
Taking in
to consideration all these features and benefits that makes an iPad more
valuable than a laptop, I will focus on certain requirements that we define
certain criteria that are needed for the complete success of our business. The
iPad column certainly addresses all of our requirements and improve every
criteria in our chart. The importance column is measured within a range from 1
to 5. The number five represents the highest level of importance for our
company’s objectives; meanwhile, a grade of zero will not meet our
requirements.
Information on Demand: Our sales reps need to be updated with all
current information. iPads in addition to WIFI provide Hotspots. This
technology adds more internet reliability for our sales reps. Laptops in
comparison are mostly restricted to WIFI.
Productivity and Saving Time: Amrahp LLC currently holds 25%
old computers that are 4 years old and 23% of them are 3 years old. With this
information our current laptops uses Windows 7. Cnet.com (See reference table
below) ran a test to see how long a windows 7 laptop takes to turn on and the
result was 228.567 seconds which is equivalent to 3.8095 minutes. Based on our
limited time to see a doctor we need about 30 seconds to 1 minute per
interaction. The laptop on the other hand can be on sleep mode and can still
take about 5-8 seconds to resume. An iPad, in contrary, has the ability to last
for 10 hours, does not need to be on sleep note. It takes approximately 1.05
seconds to resume. In addition the iPad can multi-task many applications at the
same time. We can certainly use significant application that can result in a
positive advantage to our sales reps. One of the applications that can be used
would be rxvantage. This app can be easily downloaded from the app store. Sales
reps have access to see their appointments, canceled appoinments, search for
territories; save time by using scheduling through the app. Sales reps through
the app can communicate with the main office through their direct connection
feature that includes communicating with their office managers, view provider
profiles, etc. All other information, such as daily reports, travel and expense
report can be modified through many apps available for pharmaceutical business,
in addition to apps in the market such as Google drive and others.
Saving money/Costs: Laptop costs can range from $1,000 to $1200
giving us a median of $1,100. An iPad can range from $500 to $800 giving us a
median of $650. Our total approx. investment for our 2000 employees if we opt
for laptops would be $2.2 million meanwhile our total approx. 4 years
investment for iPads would be $1.3 million. Opting for using iPads would result
in almost $1 million in our 4 years investment.
Uncover hidden opportunities: The Geo-Location feature on iPads
help sales reps to constantly search for territories to find hidden
opportunities for sales. These opportunities are delivered in real time
allowing sales reps to save time and get to their destination faster and allows
them to increase their goals of visits per day, resulting in more doctor visits
= more revenue for the company.
Security: iPads can use a mobile device manager (MDM)
system; this technology helps monitor when iPads connect with internal systems.
Laptops in comparison do not offer that feature.
I have also researched
companies that their sales reps are currently using iPads and those are:
Pfizer, Stryker, Novartis, Medtronic (See Reference Table). Pfizer had already
anticipated savings of $500,000 just from printing saving costs on avoiding
printing training materials, and sales manuals.
In conclusion, many pharmaceutical companies have realized
that there are many reasons as to why invest in new technological advances such
as iPads. Opting to choose iPads over laptops will certainly create positive
advantage over our sales reps. This action will create more business
opportunities and will generate savings in costs for our company.
Sincerely,
Ronald A Rojas
References:
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