Novartis

Achieving operational excellence in medical sales calls

Context

Enhancing the skills of Medical Sales Representatives is a key training objective for Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical group, which aims to deliver clear information to healthcare professionals and ensure long-term follow-up to guarantee the use of good professional practices.

Medication is a complex product. A medical visit that is relevant and adapted to the needs of the healthcare professional is necessary to meet a common objective: optimizing patient care. The aim of the medical visit for doctors is therefore to benefit from up-to-date, high-quality information. Promoting the correct use of medicines, from prescription to patient compliance, is therefore essential, which is why it is so important for doctors to have clear, comprehensive, rigorous and practical information at their disposal. To meet these challenges, Novartis is also stimulating its spirit of innovation in training, to better prepare Medical Sales Representatives for their role as sales representatives.

Need

One of the Novartis franchises wanted to launch a medical sales call simulator. The aim is to enable Medical Sales Representatives to experiment with the behaviors they need to master in medical sales calls, and to achieve the following pedagogical and operational objectives:

Ua gamified digital device perfectly integrated with existing classroom training and managerial follow-up: haute couture blended learning!

A high degree of replayability to ensure that good behavioral practices are adopted and memorized.

Personalized feedback integrated into the simulator to ensure that the benefits of these practices are fully understood on a daily basis.

The simulator should therefore enable Medical Sales Representatives to train regularly and adopt the right behaviors to better meet the needs of healthcare professionals.

Illustration of Novartis case study

Solution

The simulator designed by the Serious Factory teams enables medical representatives to train in front of healthcare professionals. To make it truly effective, it is made up of teaching sequences lasting no more than 20 minutes, in which the Medical Sales Representative is confronted with random events, as in a real-life situation. Each case presented offers a non-linear and variable interactive experience.

Confronted with different healthcare professionals, the Medical Sales Representative conducts his or her medical visit in different ways, depending on the interactions chosen, which will lead him or her into different branching scenarios. He must then ask the right questions and propose solutions adapted to the needs of the healthcare professional. Qualitative feedback based on the medical representative's choices is included to provide relevant and useful keys for improving practices.

By deploying VTS Perform, Novartis' Management and L&D teams were able to benefit from highly detailed and qualitative statistical reporting. In fact, the combined power of VTS Editor and VTS Perform enables in-depth monitoring of learner behavior and the evolution of their skills. These are invaluable indicators when it comes to deciding what further action to take, and striving for excellence.

Benefits

Thanks to this system, which complements the face-to-face training, the Medical Sales Representatives have strengthened their knowledge of the behaviors they have been working on. The immersion and realism of the scenarios enabled them to fully understand the benefits of applying them in real-life situations. The qualitative feedback provided during the interactions provided relevant and useful food for thought for improving practices. Particular attention was paid to learner involvement in the simulator.

To encourage replayability, the team from Serious Factory, specialists in gamification, proposed challenges during the missions: timed tests, accumulation of maximum points, etc. The learning experience was also optimized to be played on PCs as well as on Ipads. The design and ergonomics have been adapted to mobile use, enabling the simulator's use to grow significantly. Thanks to its deployment expertise, Serious Factory was able to respond to the connectivity constraints of certain learners by offering playability even offline, once the learner had downloaded and installed the application.

Some Figures

86%

This is the percentage of Medical Sales Representatives who attended.

2 912

That's how many medical visits were carried out virtually in just one month of use. A truly successful digital transformation!

524

The number of hours spent on the simulator.

Medicines are not like other products. Promoting proper use, from prescription to compliance, is essential. That's why it's so important to provide quality training for our Medical Sales Representatives, to ensure that doctors have access to clear, comprehensive, rigorous and practical information. Digital training helps maintain knowledge and effectively complements face-to-face training.

Quality & Training Journey Manager

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