Pfizer was founded by cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart in 1849. This pharmaceutical company has remained dedicated to discovering and developing new ways to treat diseases and improve health for people around the world. Pfizer is now the world's largest pharmaceutical company with total sales of 59 billion USD (FY 2012 full year). It is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (PFE) since April 2004. Founded in 1953, Pfizer Japan has now more than 5,800 employees. In 2014, its turnover was over 500 billion Yen. Main activities of Pfizer Japan primarily involve manufacturing and sales of prescription and veterinary drugs for local and international markets.

The aim: optimizing pharmaceutical sales force activities

The pharmaceutical industry employs medically oriented sales representatives called medical representatives (MR). MRs are the key contacts between the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. They have the responsibility of promoting their companie's major products directly to General practitioners (GP) and hospital doctors. MRs do this via face to face meetings or medical presentations at various types of meetings. All representatives tend to work in an assigned territory. The territory size and geography vary according to companies. Most GP's /Hospital doctors have an appointment system for seeing medical representatives. As so many other companies are trying to see the same customers, it is essential for the medical representative to be well organized and plan appointments in advance.

To visualize its market coverage and plan sales deployment, Pfizer Japan chooses Geoconcept's TourSolver to increase sales efficiency.

Pfizer visualizes its market coverage to deploy its sales strategy

Following the successful deployment of TourSolver for Pfizer in Latin-America, both companies agreed to the deployment of the Geographical Information Software for Japan. This enables Pfizer's representatives to understand, extract and use the geographical content of their customers' data, which allows both managers and sales representatives to visualize their current market coverage and plan their sales deployment. According to Mr. Hasuike, the Head of the sales strategy department: “The software increases our efficiency by helping re-plan our sales territories taking into consideration all of the geographical data. However, the ever-changing health care environment still keeps giving us challenges, it is difficult to respect the complicated visit requirements of the hospitals while keeping our MRs active and efficient.”