CYTYC Corporation Builds Growth on Strong Products and a Custom-Designed Marketing/Sales Automation System from Alexander Associates

In 1997 CYTYC Corporation commercially launched its ThinPrep® Pap Test system in the U.S. for cervical cancer screening. To capture commanding market share with this advanced new technology, CYTYC needed to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of ThinPrep to three market segments: health care providers, third-party payors, and clinical laboratories. Since these segments are interdependent (e.g., physicians generate business for labs; labs and physicians rely on insurance providers for reimbursements, etc.), a high degree of collaboration among sales and marketing teams across segments was desirable. Initial attempts to manage marketing/sales information with departmental databases developed by a consultant proved ineffective. CYTYC sought fresh outside expertise to help with IT needs assessment. Alexander Associates was selected.

Background

New technology rollouts in health care require that companies educate and sell to interrelated market segments in a coordinated fashion. For CYTYC to generate demand for ThinPrep, the Company had to ensure:

• that a large number of insurance providers/managed care organizations (MCOs) were willing to reimburse for ThinPrep use,
• that physicians could be serviced by labs that supported ThinPrep,
• and that labs had the expectation that there would be enough doctors using the product to warrant investment in processing technologies and training.

Separate CYTYC sales teams were assigned to these market segments. Product sales were tracked in a legacy production system. CYTYC used four marketing databases to track sales lead management, lab marketing, managed care marketing, and training. These marketing applications were developed in stand-alone desktop PC environments, and lacked the ability to communicate with each other. In addition, communications to and among field staff were not integral parts of these systems. Significantly, with data in so many silos, it was difficult to measure the effectiveness of marketing programs on sales. As MIS Director Bill Roberts recalls, "we did not have the infrastructure we needed to maximize ThinPrep marketing effectiveness. "

Solution

Alexander Associates began their assessment of the situation in October of 1997.
Working with the stakeholders, the Alexander Associates team developed goals and objectives for a project to replace the old technology. The objectives were as follows:

• integrate the production data and departmental databases into a centralized database accessible to marketing, sales and other stakeholders;
• implement a set of business rules which defined ownership of the data, and provided security and complete audit trails;
• improve data integrity by reducing data redundancy and moving data verification as close to the data source as possible;
• provide enhanced tracking, reporting and analysis of sales and marketing performance;
• improve the flow of information to and from field personnel and remote facilities using distributed technologies such as the web, email, etc.;
• improve the efficiency of the data collection process dramatically without increasing staff.

With their extensive consulting background in the design, implementation and support of complex databases, the Alexander Associates team was able to provide detailed system requirements by late January of 1998 for CYTYC management review and approval.

Development of the new system began in February, 1999. Deployment began a few months later, providing substantial productivity improvements throughout the marketing and sales organizations. The new system established a consistent and integrated approach to defining marketing territories, tracking changes to data, generating customer communications, contact management, and remote access. Each field rep, telemarketer, trainer and manager had more effective information and tools for doing his/her job.

The greatest breakthrough came from the integration of lab, physician and managed care data in one database. For the first time, the field and management could easily see the inter-relationships among their target market segments. This integration allowed them to coordinate activities, to maximize opportunities and minimize competitive threats without corresponding increases in staffing.

For the year ending December, 2001 CYTYC reported a 56% increase in annual revenues to $221 million and the attainment of a 57% market share