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Franzo spoke on Bayer Schering’s “Strategic Approach Toward Online and eBusiness” at eyeforpharma’s Online Marketing and e-detailing Europe 2007 conference in April.

By Editor on Sep 24, 2007

Franzo spoke on Bayer Schering's Strategic Approach Toward Online and eBusiness at eyeforpharma's Online Marketing and e-detailing Europe 2007 conference in April. He points out that a great deal of information is passed around a company, but often that information produces no impact: no change in behavior, no new or altered strategies. He suggests it is time to put in place new methodologies of thinking to generate more productive activity.

How many strategies does one company need?


Companies may have as many strategies for conducting business as there are divisions and sub-divisions to create them. The business units have one procedure, the marketing and e-marketing departments have another; HR has its own way of doing things, as do PR, IT, Sales, CRM, and so on. With so many discrete strategies and procedures in place, it's little wonder that considerable, useful knowledge slips through the cracks.

Three and a half years ago, Franzo says, he was approached by then-CEO of Bayer Schering: the CEO wanted a system that would enable him to control all the activities of all the company's many departments. Franzo was given the job of devising and implementing a system wherein everybody in the company would know what has to be done. It was a daunting task.

Two key elements to company-wide understanding


Franzo identifies two key essentials that, as he says, ensure the overall understanding with various local's [departmental] strategies. These two methods encourage cooperative integration between teams and departments, getting everyone, as Franzo says, into the same boat.

One important component is the Balanced Scorecard, or BSC. The BSC is a management system that enables organizations to clarify vision and strategy and turn them to action, says Franzo. It looks at Learning and Growth, Business Process, Customer Perspective and Financial Perspective, allowing members of different teams to understand the more global objectives of the company as a whole.

The other key component is system thinking. System thinking, according to Franzo, is a method which helps companies to analyze and visualize complex issues in a team in order to develop goal-oriented activities. He stresses the team angle, saying that without people on the team who are able and willing to contribute to system thinking, the method won'st be effective.

System thinking on any complex issue involves six steps: first, the team must identify the stakeholders. Who are they? What are their interests on the issue at hand? Second, the team needs to deduce success factors. What drives the team to success with the identified stakeholders? Designing the basic circle is the third step, and accomplishing that will allow for steps four (developing the netmap), five (structuring the netmap) and six (devising BSC goals and action plans).

A good team, says Franzo, can control all the activities of the company by using system thinking methods.

Promoting integrated thinking


One tool Bayer Schering uses to promote integrated thinking is the successmap. These maps show how seemingly discrete departments within a company are linked. Each department has its own map, but a company-wide successmap demonstrates how every department is tied to every other, how each department contributes to the give-and-take flow of information and knowledge. Successmaps, by visually demonstrating the ties between departments, allow different departments to develop a common language.

It's important, says Franzo, to have a sea change at the controller (finance and/or marketing) level. Nowadays, controllers are content to compare targets against plans and figures to determine success. This is too simplistic. According to Franzo, it should be the controller's job to bring to management a level of information that will help bring about change, that will have impact. Management needs a comprehensive knowledge of what's happening in a company; only this way can truly informed decisions be made.

So, how can a company know when its marketing fits with its overall sales and CRM strategies?

Franzo gave conference attendees this message to take home. Companies should:


- focus on the important success drivers in order to select the appropriate marketing activities


- ensure a clear understanding of company strategy at all levels, among all employees


- secure management support. Without support from the highest levels, no strategy can succeed.


- develop a unique company language


- use information within the company to direct marketing dollars to the most effective channels.

eLearning how to maximize customer impact


One question Franzo posed to his audience was, Will eLearning programs maximize customer impact? The simple answer? Yes. If everyone in a company is aware of the direction the company is taking and the strategies they will be utilizing to get there, then eLearning programs make a lot more sense.

Franzo says that eLearning programs at Bayer Schering are simple but effective. However, he warns, eLearning modules and tools need to be part of the overall plan. Only strategic eLearning modules can maximize customer impact, says Franzo.

At Bayer Schering, once a topic is identified, tools are then built around the topic (CRM or SRP modules, strategy change). The tools are taken to the business units who are responsible for disseminating the information among the sales reps. According to Franzo, if the business unit managers understand why the tools are useful, why the eLearning can help, then they can get the sales reps on board. It's nothing special, says Franzo, but it works.

Making information useful

What makes the truly exceptional companies different? Franzo identifies three components that allow a company to be successful: the right information, future indications and people with passion.

As Albert Einstein said, Knowledge is experience. Everything else is just information. The right information is in place, says Franzo; it's all contained within the organization. It just needs to be accessed and shared. Knowledge is in the head of every employee in your company, and you need to bring this knowledge of your company into the system.

Lots of different people in a company have relationships with customers. To have a comprehensive CRM, it's necessary to gather all that information together: from the ERP, the medical team, the sales reps, the service center, etc. Anyone who has direct contact with consumers can inform the CRM system.

At Bayer Schering, knowledge accumulation is done simply: information is gathered from all sources around the company (employees). This is fed through a filter engine and categorized. From this, the company gets a broad understanding of the problems and hurdles departments face, as well as the opportunities employees have identified, trends in the industry, etc. The resultant wealth of information is then used to create or adapt marketing activities.

The essence of management is to make knowledge productive, says Franzo. Employees carry encyclopedic knowledge of a company inside their heads. A smart company knows how to retrieve and utilize that abundance of information.

Franzo advises companies to:


- motivate employees to record and share their knowledge


- build trust around the information they have


- frequently rethink and review their information-gathering processes and use that information to inform marketing strategies.

Ultimately, according to Franzo, what a company needs to know about its stakeholders and how best to reach them is knowledge a company already possesses. By utilizing tools such as Balance Scorecards, system thinking and eLearning, a company can maximize its marketing dollars, educate its employees and its customers and drive important changes within the company itself and the industry as a whole.