Marketing Plan for a Small Pharmaceutical Company
Abstract
A small pharmaceutical company library was under the gun to tighten its purse strings. A plan was created to do so by heavy marketing and training on flat-fee end-user services, reduction of the number of seats subscribed to for seat-based services, training to avoid imprudent usage of non-flat-fee services, and cancellation of under-utilized resources.
Introduction
Until January 2006, Celera Genomics (Celera) included a small pharmaceutical division that was served by an in-house Library and Information Service (the library) with a staff of three (2.6 FTE). In 2005, the library budget began to receive a much greater degree of scrutiny and restriction than in previous years. Along with lowering the total annual budget, management asked for a greatly increased amount of data to support our budgeting decisions. In my capacity of Assistant Librarian, I prepared the following plan to maximize use of resources while simultaneously giving a framework in which possible savings between $70,000 and $170,000 annually may be realized.
- Library mission: to manage carefully selected information resources; train Celera staff on specialized databases and services; and provide professional information services including expert searching, information management, and literature and business news alerting.
- The vision of the library was to support the company’s staff in order to meet company goals and to promote individuals’ professional development.
- Mission of this marketing plan: to assure that the information resources we applied our financial resources to were appropriate and sufficiently utilized.
Long-term Goals
- Raise users’ awareness of our services
- Raise usage of flat-fee resources
- Lower unnecessary or imprudent usage of non-flat-fee services
- Reduce the number of seats subscribed to for seat-based services
- Drop any unnecessary resources
- To be the first place that users think of when they have an information need
Success in goals 3, 4, and 5 will translate into direct savings in our future budget.
Objectives and Implementation
A summary of objectives is included. I have also made available detailed objectives and timelines under separate cover in light of space considerations.
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Summary of Objectives
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Estimate of Possible Savings
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1. Reduce spending
by chemists on SciFinder by 25%
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~$40,000 per year
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2. Evaluate ability
of SciFinder to satisfy the company’s bioinformatics needs in regard to
sequence searching
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$100,000+ per year if GENESEQ is cancelled
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3. Increase Beilstein
usage by 20% in order to reduce SciFinder burden
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No direct savings
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4. Increase number
of Integrity users that log in more than once per month by 30
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No direct savings; savings will come from reduction of seats of IDdb
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5. Increase total
Integrity usage per month by 40%
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No direct savings; savings will come from reduction of seats of IDdb
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6. Reduce number of
seats in IDdb to 25
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~$30,000 per year
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7. Increase usage
of Faculty of 1000 by 20%
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No direct savings; benefit is in
productivity of scientists
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8. Create new brand
and logo for the library
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No direct savings
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Total possible savings to the company
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Upwards of $170,000 per year
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The following is an outline of the general shape of the implementation strategy that was planned. The outline is intended as a flexible tool that allows for continued input from all stakeholders as the plan grows to match the library’s needs.
1) Compile
a complete list of information resources used at Celera
2) Collect
usage statistics
3) Analyze
statistics and categorize resources by level of usage:
a) Well-utilized
b) Medium-utilized
c) Poorly-utilized
4) Specify
target usage figures
5) Identify
methods to market resources in ‘medium’ and ‘poor’ categories
a)
Make better use of website
i)
provide more online tutorials
ii) find
new ways of bringing users to the site
(1) RSS
feeds from popular resources
(2) Prominently
feature popular non-science magazines online
(a) Consumer
Reports
(b) Economist
(c) Technology
Review
iii) provide
better browsing options for online journal titles in the library catalog
b) Branding: Create logo and standard format for library
emails and newsletters
c) Send
more frequent email advertisements and mini-newsletters
d) Hold
more training sessions/seminars
i)
both staff led and bringing outside trainers in
ii) in-house
resources
iii) external
databases
iv) solicit
feedback on trainings
e) Hold
informal open-house sessions on individual resources (provide food)
f)
Remove barriers to access
i)
Allow for self-registration when possible
ii) Keep
website data and links up-to-date
iii) Avoid
service stoppages due to lack of payment
6) Implement
marketing methods
7) Re-collect
usage statistics and compare to targets
a) If
objectives are reached, celebrate
b) Otherwise
i)
Consider alternative/additional methods of marketing
ii) Reconsider
necessity of this resource
(1) Survey
the target audience
(2) Drop
resources deemed unnecessary
Evaluation
Evaluation of this plan is relatively straightforward. With only two exceptions, each of the objectives contains a quantitative endpoint that is measurable either through a decrease in our expenditures or via an increase in usage as evidenced in the database statistics. Objective # 2 requires a “Yes” or “No” decision regarding the need for overlapping resources: SciFinder and GENESEQ. Either decision will be a positive resolution: either the company requires both resources or not. Objective #8 involves creating a new brand and logo for the library. The effects of this objective are not easily measured, but it is an important part of the whole plan to increase the visibility of the library’s products and services.
Summary
With the use of sufficient internal marketing and training, the library will be able to cut product and service costs and continue to succeed in its mission to provide services that support company staff in pursuit of company goals.
The plan involves the library staff creating and presenting training seminars for under-utilized resources, increased communication about available services and current expenditures, and a effort to brand the library as “the first place to go when you have an information need.” It also requires a new level of collection and analysis of data describing usage of the services in question.
The biggest barrier to the success of this plan was expected to be the need for sufficient staff time to carry out the necessary components of the plan. A budget overview shows the expected funding and human resources required. The plan was never implemented as the pharmaceutical business of Celera Genomics was closed in January 2006 and the entire library staff was laid off.
Note: this website was coded using XHTML and CSS by Ari Kleiman. Exceptions: Microsoft Word was used to convert objectives charts, implementation outline, and budget charts from Word to HTML.
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