Monday, October 29, 2007

Demystifying 867 Data

I want to let you know about a webinar this Wednesday called Demystifying 867 Analytics, which looks at the use of point-of-sale data from retailers and wholesalers. You should sign up and listen.

Yes, I know, webinars are usually boring, but this one will benefit from the presence of Josh Halpern and Jeff Sager from Integrichain. In my opinion, Integrichain is quickly becoming the leader in providing demand visibility at the outlet/point-of-care level to pharmaceutical manufacturers.

I’ve been particularly impressed with the company’s ability to connect multiple data streams from the pharmaceutical supply chain -- ex-factory sales data, wholesaler data (EDI 867 and 852 transaction sets), and third party data. Integrichain’s outlet-focused, bottoms-up (my words) methodology should also allow new data sources, such as ePedigree information, to be easily incorporated. In other words, they are not beholden to a single data stream or data provider.

Integrichain is benefiting from the IMS Health data mess. Novartis actually asked their sales reps to return bonus money because of faulty IMS market share data. Merck, Wyeth, and Lilly are reportedly also having problems with the accuracy of IMS’ mix of projected and survey data.

In the sprit of full disclosure, I should mention that I like Integrichain and its approach so much that I agreed to serve on the company's Advisory Board.

3 comments:

  1. Adam-Love your costume!!

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  2. I was a little concerned about your promotion of this event. You tend to be a little less obvious in your support of technology vendors (note your recent postings on pedigree). After attending this webinar, I am more concerned about your promotion of it. It was pretty lame. I think Josh did an ok job but the lack of content from Axway and the poor coordination between the two organizations made me question if you may have blindly put your stamp of approval on this event (not your style).

    I think the 867 data has a great deal of value and companies like integrichain and Valuecentric help companies unlock the value. The big question is whether any small company is going to have the staying power to build a business and become a long term partner or if they will go the way of Edge.

    In the future, I hope you stick to what you do the very best...stiring up the soup that is the pharma supply chain.

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  3. I appreciate your concern. I'll admit that the webcast was a bit dull, but that seems par for the course for a vendor webinar. I do believe that Integrchain is doing something innovative and cool. Please note that I was also careful to disclose my affiliation with the company.

    But don't worry -- I plan to keep my pot of supply chain soup plenty spicy!

    Chef Adam

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