QPharma brings a new CRM to life sciences

QPharma (Morristown, NJ) has been active in the pharma sales-operations support field for over two decades and has a client base of over 100 firms for such services as sample accountability, KOL management and master-data management of physicians. Last year, the company unified access to these and related services with what it called the Titanium platform, and now it has taken the wraps off a customer-relationship management solution added to Titanium, Ti Force, to provide an integrated CRM for the majority of sales support and compliance solutions that most pharma reps need.

The announcement presages a new era for the company, according to Patrick Den Boer, CEO. Through the acquisition of a San Diego company, MedStart, last month, the company now has offices in both the East and West Coasts; in 2018, it has plans to open offices in Europe, southeast Asia and South America. Over 100 employees have been hired in the past year.

Ti Force is a “bottom up” integration of a family of services QPharma has been marketing for years, with a focus on managing sample accountability functions, says Den Boer. At its foundation, it operates on the cloud version of Oracle Database, mounted in Amazon Web Services (AWS). The various applications are modular and are “loosely coupled,” so that clients can choose what applications they want, and can interface with other vendors’ sales support tools. Call reporting, territory alignments and other routine parts of CRM software are included. QPharma is an American Med. Assn. Database Licensee, which provides the foundation of a comprehensive demographic database of prescribers; the company also integrates state-level licensing information (which dictates, among other things, which prescribers are eligible for which pharma samples).

In addition to managing all aspects of sample accountability according to the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA)—and taking into account state variations of the acknowledgment of content (AOC) prescriber-signature requirements—QPharma manages sample fulfillment as well. “We’re now the only life sciences CRM vendor that provides both IT systems for managing samples, and delivering the samples themselves,” notes Den Boer. The capability has been enhanced with the acquisition of MedStart, which provides an onsite sample cabinet that can be stocked without a rep visit—a workaround for no-see physician offices and hospitals.

With its CRM offering, QPharma is going up against some industry heavyweights—Veeva Systems, with its CRM offering, and Mobile Intelligence from QuintilesIMS, among others. Den Boer figures that Ti Force will be especially attractive to small to mid-size pharma companies, but with its planned global scope, QPharma intends to be a major player as well.