Case 2

Laurz and Bridz: Implementation of a customer

Relationship management solution
 
 
 

 
 Group 9- Section C 

 Group member 
 
  Name  Enrollment number 
 
Anshul Jain  20A2HP458 
Mayanka Bagri  20A2HP416 
Shubham Hajare  20A2HP447 
Raghav Khaitan  20A2HP451 
Tahjeeb Saikia  20A2HP437 
Bhavesh Choudhary  20A2HP435 

Submitted to: 
Dr. Manoj Das, 
Assistant Professor & Area Chair –Marketing 
IMT Hyderabad 
 
 Summary
Laurs & Bridz is pharmaceutical company started by Manoj Chaudhary that exported pharmaceutical
products all over the world and specialized in providing drug combinations to the medical community.
The company started in 2011 with an initial investment of 10 million and seven employees and by
2017 it gradually expanded its business to the north eastern states and generated a revenue of 550
million and the field force rose up to 80 employees who catered around 15000 physicians, stockists
and retailers as on that date. Now Manoj Chaudhary decided to expand its business to pan India and
by 2020 to generate a revenue of 1500 million and to upgrade from traditional information systems
and implement CRM because of increasing client information and it is difficult to manage in
Microsoft Excel and plans to invest 50 million that will help to build relationships and manage them
efficiently. The case discusses the implementation of a CRM solution.

Q1) Discuss the importance of CRM in a pharmaceutical company like Laurs and
Bridz? Why should the company opt for CRM solution?
CRM was important in a company like Laurz & Bridz because it helped companies earn more
revenue from their physicians. CRM provided tools to automate and integrate different business
process in marketing and sales. CRM also helped to increase the contact directly with the company
and the physicians, retailers, stockists, and other healthcare providers.
It will also help the company to map preferences according to their customers which will cut the time
spent by MR’s on call with the customers and hence it will increase productivity. The company
should opt for CRM because of the regulatory reforms by the government that is the drug and
increasing competition in the industry had created many challenges to the existing companies who
used to follow the traditional method of selling and there were many entry and exit of different
entities, so to improve and to exist in the market CRM was necessary as it would lead to measure and
monitor promotional effectiveness, carry out campaigns, and improve overall sales and marketing
management.
CRM would cut down on soft dollars promotional techniques that influences physicians and MR’s
will not be using it for their own benefit. Due to this if affected the profitability and it also made
ASM’s and ZBM’s frustrated as they could not get the insight of the organization.

Q2) Evaluate the direct and indirect effect of CRM initiatives on Laurs & Bridz?
Direct Effects:

 The accessibility to employees will increase and ASM’s and ZBM’s will get better insight of
the organization and the MR’s who were doing personal gain will also be minimized.
 Automating Sales force will also be a positive effect on the company as automation could be
used for opportunity analysis, forecasting sales, and will also benefit in collaboration.
 CRM will also solve the inventory issues and will help the MR’s understand the stock cycle’s
and supply lines and stockists which will be beneficial in forecasting demand more accurately
and accordingly revenue and profitability will be maximised.
  CRM will enable the customer related information in a single database and mishandling of
information will be prevented.

Indirect Effects:

 CRM will help in customer retention as the service provided to them will be more effective
and they will be more satisfied. It will also result in long term relationship building with
customers.
 Since operating efficiency will increase due to CRM which will result in increasing the
market share and in future it will also lead to employment generation.
 By using CRM techniques and exiting the traditional methods, a company will be updated
with its technology which will create a goodwill for that company.

Q3) Which CRM solution should Laurs & Bridz select &Why?
Several probable CRM solutions after looking at their features were shortlisted among them were
CRMNEXT, Prophet CRM, a pharmaceutical CRM product from ADAMI Systems GmbH, and
Veeva CRM.
Table 1 Shortlisted CRM Companies

CRM COMPANY CRM EDITION AND PRICE

 Small Office, Home Office ($15)
CRMNEXT  Small and Medium Business ($36.2)
 Large Enterprise ($67.2)
 Contact Manager ($25)
PROPHET CRM  Team ($55)
 Enterprise ($75)
 Vista CRM Professional ($35.7)
ADAMI CRM  Vista CRM Enterprise ($47.6)
 Vista CRM Unlimited ($59.5)

Veeva CRM  Veeva CRM (NA)

Laurs & Bridz needed to deploy a CRM solution to strengthen its sales and marketing. The company
had to build robust systems to better track customers, strengthen customer relationships, and
enhance the productivity of its sales force.

PROPHET CRM TEAM EDITION seems the best fit for Laurs & Bridz as this had features like Sales
pipeline management; opportunity and company reporting; expanded Outlook contact
management; sales automation and configurable sales workflows; sales activity tracking and
reporting; CRM analytics; grid view; mobile CRM; 400+ available integration options; role- and
department-based access control, management, and data sharing; e-mail tracking and sharing; e-
mail linking; and cloud and on-premise hosting.
Veera CRM seems also the best fit for Laurs & Bridz as they have features like coordinated
multichannel execution, key account management, mobile CRM, accurate customer profiles, up-to-
date alignments, actionable insights, guided interactions, multiple channels, and single source of
content. It promised benefits such as better events with greater compliance, pre-validation with
robust compliance, service with a complete customer view, a platform for extensibility, and
innovation.

Q4) Suggest a plan for implementing CRM solution. Should the company implement
CRM for the entire salesforce at once or in a phased manner?
The basic plan to implement CRM will be doing SWOT analysis and subsequently keeping in mind
about Porter’s five forces:

 Rivalry among competitors- Manoj must plan out how to CRM will be different from its
competitors in terms of cost, differentiation, and effectiveness of the product.
 Threat of New entrants- Entry of new firms is a concern but not a major one because
both political and legal barriers can be made by existing companies.
 Threat Of substitutes- Laurs & Bridz should implement the cost-effective CRM, so that
there are hardly any substitutes available to capture the market share.
 Bargaining Power of Suppliers- Laurs and Bridz should make sure that bargaining
power of suppliers are string by offering no close substitutes, making sure that switching
costs are high, and the products are highly differentiated.
 Bargaining Power of Customers- Laurs & Bridz should make sure that bargaining
power of customers should be low because the profitability will be affected and high-
quality services will be demanded at low costs.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths- Analysing the strengths like maintain the customer base, maintain good relations with the
physicians and clients should be focused because that is the backbone of Laurs & Bridz.
Weakness- Analysing the soft dollar commissions which the employee makes should be eliminated
because that can become a major weakness in the long term.
Opportunities- Analysing the market opportunities and taking decisions at the right time will be
beneficial for Laurs & Bridz as it will help in solving out weaknesses.
Threats- Old employees not getting accustomed to technology might pose a big threat to the
company, so analysing and taking necessary steps to educate them is important.
While taking all this in consideration we should not forget the non-market factors:
Political Factors- Laurs & Bridz should consider the country laws and tariffs and since its aim is to
expand pan India, so interstate taxes and transportation has to be looked and considered.
Economic Factors- Laurs & Bridz implementation of CRM should also look into the inflation rate,
growth and other economic factors, so that it has inevitable impact on the company.
Social Factors- Laurs & Bridz should make sure that it covers social aspects like population
demographics, health consciousness and other cultural aspects.
Technological Factors- Laurs & Bridz implementation Of CRM is one of a way of being highly
competitive in a market area as it drives globalization.
Environmental factors- The analysis of environmental including internal and external elements is
vital for the company since its performance might also be impacted.
Legal factors- For expanding pan India State laws and for abroad international laws should be in
adherence as not following them would lead to exit from the market.

The company Laurs & Bridz should implement CRM in a phased manner because:

 Earlier research has showed that 30-60 percent of the CRM deployed by the competitors
failed, so phase wise implementation will be a wise option.
 Phase wise implementation will give the employees to get accustomed with the new
technology and generate less errors.
 It will also strengthen the department wise management and it will help to keep a better track
of customers
 Customer Feedback will play an important role and if anywhere he/she is not satisfied,
assistance may be provided, and system may be update immediately and accordingly.