Death of the Pharma Salesman

Big Pharma is beginning to explore ways of moving beyond traditional corporate web sites to establish web presences designed to create relationships with their physician and consumer customers. As part of these efforts, some drug companies are experimenting with the e-detailing technologies offered by a growing number of start-ups.Although e-detailing will probably never replace pharmaceutical company sales reps, it may provide large drug companies with a cost-effective way of holding on to profitable niche products that would otherwise fall by the wayside as they focus attention on blockbusters. Perhaps even more significantly, emerging pharmaceutical firms and biotechs may be able to use the Internet to expand their sales and marketing infrastructure capabilities, without incurring huge infrastructure costs, and thus help those smaller companies compete more effectively against larger players.