In the fiercely competitive pharmaceutical industry, knowledge is king. Pharmaceutical companies are always looking for the most up-to-date information to improve their competitive positioning in this $600 billion a year business. Enter ImpactRx, a Mt Laurel, NJ-based market research company that has built a successful business tracking how, when and why doctors prescribe various prescription medications.

With a nationwide network of physicians armed with smart phones, ImpactRx collects information daily on the sales presentations the doctors receive and the treatment decisions they make as a result. Perhaps the physician was influenced by the pharmaceutical representative who did an excellent job positioning the medication for that specific ailment. Or, perhaps the patient asked about a specific medication because they saw a TV commercial or print ad. This detailed point-of-care intelligence measures the impact and effectiveness of various promotions on prescription-writing patterns. Pharmaceutical companies then use this information to improve their sales and marketing initiatives and to gain a better understanding of how physicians use their products.

Healthy Growth
Founded in 2000, ImpactRx initially chose Quickbooks to help them run their business. Jina Melnyk, ImpactRx VP of Finance says, “Quickbooks is great for a small startup, but as the business grew, it wasn’t meeting our needs. We needed something more robust to meet the needs of a mid-sized company.” At the same time there were issues with keeping track of an ever-growing information network of physicians. “Our customer service group was recording manually, by hand, how and why they were reaching out to our physicians.”

ImpactRx chose to implement Sage MAS 200 and SalesLogix in 2001 to help manage their growth. According to Melnyk, “SalesLogix has allowed us to record every time we have a meeting with a physician and what that outcome was. We now have a record to track through the system and that saves us several hours a month.”

Sage MAS 200 was chosen as ImpactRx’s financial system and has since been upgraded to Sage MAS 500 as ImpactRx’s needs have grown. “MAS 90 / 200 and MAS 500 all provided separate modules that we were able to use for the contract management side of our business,” said Melnyk. “We don’t need to rely on excel and need to cross our fingers that everything reconciles at the end of the day,” she adds smiling.

One of the primary reasons that ImpactRx migrated to MAS 500 was to better manage and monitor deferred revenue recognition and billing schedules for their long term contracts. The company takes advantage of the BHE Contract Revenue Management enhancement for MAS 500. The billing for contracts is separate from the revenue schedule, and can be based on user defined cycles and include different amounts at different dates. “MAS 500 really meets our needs from a contract perspective and, as an accounting system, it allows for more flexibility for a company of our size,” says Melnyk.

Keeping it in the family
Recently, ImpactRx has added MAS 500 Project Accounting and Sage Timesheets to their system to better manage the profitability of their contracts. Each contract is tied to a project in a one to one relationship. ImpactRx can track all costs associated with a contract to determine the profitably of each. Employee time is entered via Timesheets, which is then tied to a project. Melnyk adds, “Now that we have project codes, it saves us a lot of time and let’s us focus on more important things that can grow the business.”