Marketing customer data

Some systems such as financial management systems will have no impact on GxP unless they contain special functionality that can affect GxP data. Examples would be the use of a zero price to indicate that a product should not be supplied to a particular market/customer. Another example would be financial material reconciliation affecting batch materials usage data. Even if a computer system is not deemed wholly non-GxP, it does not imply that general quality assurance principles are no longer applicable. Good business sense dictates that a quality management approach should always be applied such as TicklT, IEEE, SWEBOK. 

CRM connects the different systems for sales, marketing, customer service, and warranty departments and provides employees with a complete view of customer data. Integrating CRM with ERP allows additional benefits, such as providing real-time information on order status. An important function is the analytics on the customer information. CRM has been one of the more popular functionalities in recent years, and is offered by all of the major ERP vendors. 

This model represents the periodic customer orders in the domestic and international market. The data has been time-based regressed according to the historical daily data (in total 217 days) collected from the case companies. 

Data for the production and sales of maleic anhydride and fumaric acid ia the United States between 1979 and 1992 are shown ia Table 5. Production of maleic anhydride during this time grew - 2% on average per year. Production of fumaric acid has declined during the same period as customers have switched to the less cosdy maleic anhydride when possible. All production of maleic anhydride in the United States in 1992 was from butane-based plants which used fixed-bed reactor technology as shown in Table 6. The number of fumaric acid producers has been reduced considerably since the early 1980s with only two producers left in the United States in 1992 as shown in Table 6. Pfizer shut down its fumaric acid plant at the end of 1993. However, Bartek of Canada will start up an expanded fumaric acid faciUty to supply the North American market for both their own and Huntsman s requirements. 

It is axiomatic that sales analysis depends on detailed records of sales of a specific chemical to a specific company. Paramount to the success of such studies is the existence of data recorded on a systematic and continuous basis. It follows that these studies are done best by an ia-house staff on products already produced by the company. However, on occasion, a product new to the company can be studied by the ia-house group with the assistance of their field sales force. For example, a producer of polypropylene could use its people to secure data on the consumption of other thermoplastics by their customers. Such an exercise might identify opportunities for a new producer, but a more detailed marketing research study would probably be done before entry iato the new product area was made. 

Substances intended solely for scientific research and development in quantities less than 100 kg per year. Substances placed on the market for process-orientated research and development with a limited number of customers registered with die notifier. The aim of die notification systems is to identify possible risks posed to people and the environment from placing new substances on the market. A notification comprises data on the chemical identity of the substance an estimate of the quantity of the substance to be placed on the EC market details of the functions and uses of the substance Table 14.12 Notification bands ... 

Decisions affecting the future direction of the organization and its products and services are made from information gleaned through market research. Should this information be grossly inaccurate, over optimistic or pessimistic the result may well be the loss of many customers to the competition. It is therefore vital that objective data is used to make these decisions. The data can be primary data (data collected for the first time during a market research study) or secondary data (previously collected data). However, you need to be cautious with secondary data, as it could be obsolete or have been collected on a different basis than needed for the present study. 

Feedback from the market is another key data source. This can come through customer comments or complaints or through the vigilance systems that are mandatory for drugs and devices. 

Commercial Testing. The commercial test lab is by definition, in the business of testing. The satisfaction of its customers is paramount. Quality service and responsiveness holds old customers and attracts new ones. Getting dependable data fast is important, but here cost is critical. In a competitive market, the ability of LIMS to bring down the effective cost per test means more profit and/or the ability to keep or increase one s market share by lowering prices. 

Automation has been applied for a number of years in process control instrumentation, but the major impetus to introduce automatic devices into laboratories stems from three sources (1) the introduction of the continuous-flow principles as outlined by Skeggs [1] (2) the general demand for clinical chemical measurements, which represents a ready and sizeable market for instrument companies, and, more importantly, (3) the abihty to handle large volumes of data and package them in a form suitable for presentation to analysts and customers, through the use of mini- and micro computer systems hnked to a control computer. 

Both of the above approaches have hmitations, the first due to difficulties in relating results to calibration data, and the second because it becomes prohibitively expensive to cater for every situation in an instrumental approach, ffowever, in this respect Zymark has made significant progress by the introduction of the Benchmate products. These are tailored to a specific market area such as the sample preparation of pharmaceutical products prior to HPLC analyses. Thus, cost-effective solutions can be swiftly tailored to specific market areas. As progress is made on these products, it is Hkely that third party vendors will start to generate specific modules for individual customer needs. 

For quantitative data, see Table 8.1. In the market, considerable risk exists because of the structure of the customer base, primarily the pharmaceutical industry ... 

Market development is another marketing function known by many names in many companies. I view it as that department which contacts the prospective customers identified by market research or other source data. They attempt to sample material for part evaluation, in the case of established products, or to arrange to build prototypes in the case of new products. 

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