Custom Application Builds Competitive Advantage

CYTYC Corporation Kickstarts Growth with Great 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 payers, and clinical laboratories. Since these segments are interdependent for sales growth, a high degree of collaboration among sales and marketing teams across segments was desirable. CYTYC's attempts to manage this process through internally developed applications proved ineffective. CYTYC sought fresh outside expertise to help with IT needs assessment. Alexander Associates was selected.

Download Profile as PDF file (252k)

CYTYC's Mission

CYTYC designs, develops, manufactures, and markets sample preparation systems for medical diagnostics. Its ThinPrep® System provides substantial improvements over the traditional pap smear method for reducing the incidence of cervical cancer.

Read more about CYTYC...

Project History

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:

• physicians were educated about the product and ready to order tests using ThinPrep

• a large number of insurance payers were willing to reimburse for ThinPrep tests

• testing laboratories were equipped and trained on the use of ThinPrep technology

Separate CYTYC sales teams were assigned to these market segments. Product sales were tracked in a legacy sales and accounting system. CYTYC was using four marketing databases to track sales leads, 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, communication of data to and from field staff was possible. Significantly, with data in so many silos, it was difficult to measure the effectiveness of marketing programs on sales. When MIS Director Bill Roberts arrived at CYTYC he found that “we did not have the software systems we needed to effectively support the projected sales and marketing efforts for ThinPrep.”

Solution

Alexander Associates began their systems assessment in November, 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 that 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 January of 1998 for CYTYC management review and approval.

Development of the new system began in February of 1998 with deployment starting five months later. The new system quickly began providing substantial productivity improvements throughout the marketing and sales organizations.

As MIS Director Bill Roberts said,

“Alexander Associates was very quick to understand our needs and to develop a custom software system that provided significant benefits.”

Results

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 allows them to coordinate activities, to maximize opportunities and minimize competitive threats without corresponding increases in support staffing. Most significantly it allowed CYTYC, for the first time, to measure the effects of marketing activities on sales.

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.