How to Create a Pharmaceutical Product Launch Budget Across Multiple Cities

The Launch of a pharmaceutical product in several cities requires not only a marketing budget but also many other expenses related to medical representatives travel, meetings, logistics, accommodation, fuel, reimbursements, etc. Thus the importance of expense management for pharmaceutical companies cannot be underestimated.

Using expense management for pharmaceutical companies allows marketing and financial teams to estimate their expenses prior to the launch and to control them afterwards. With the help of expense tracking software, you can connect each rupee with a specific city, team, activity or a goal of the launch.

• Create a City-Wise Launch Budget

You can start the creation of a budget by dividing it depending on each city. Take into consideration the number of your medical representatives, distributors, doctors, meetings, promotional activities, etc.

City-wise budget allows to control pharmaceutical field force expenses. Besides, it makes expense management for pharmaceutical companies easier since the finance teams will be able to compare the planned and actual expenses.

Your budget can include the following items:

• Medical representatives travel
• Hotel and accommodation
• Fuel and local transportation
• Launch meetings
• Promotional activities
• Meals and daily allowances
• Contingency expenses

This approach is good for expense tracking for pharma companies and helps managers better control over pharmaceutical field force expenses.

• Budget for Medical Rep Travel Expenses

Travel is frequently one of the biggest costs in a product launch. The medical rep travel expenses can be tickets for trains/flights, hotels, fuel, taxis, parking, and daily allowances.

Good expense management for pharmaceutical companies needs to offer clear travel policies before employees hit the road. Limitations by city help avoid any unnecessary spending.

Use of a centralized field force expense management software solution will simplify recording and analysis of medical rep travel expenses. Instead of receiving spreadsheets with claims and hard copies of bills, the finance department can track the claims online.

It will speed up the MR expense reporting faster while improving expense management for pharmaceutical companies.

• Connect the Budget With Pharma Sales Force Automation

Product launch becomes easier to manage when all sales activities and expenses are integrated. Pharma sales force automation will help organizations to coordinate activities of their field force, while expense management software will allow understanding the costs associated with these activities.

For instance managers can track expenses per territory and understand where pharmaceutical field force expenses are higher than expected.

The combination of pharma sales force automation and expense tracking for pharma companies provides a more comprehensive solution for assessing the success of the launch.

• Control MR Expense Reporting

In case of a launch covering several cities, there might be hundreds of claims coming from the field. Manual MR expense reporting may cause delays, missing receipts, duplicate claims and problems with reconciliation.

A field force expense management software system can help standardize MR expense reporting and simplify submission of medical rep travel expenses.

Robust expense management software will include such features as digital receipt capture, automated policy check, automated approval workflow, and duplicated detection.

All these functions will help make expense management for pharmaceutical companies faster and reduce the burden on the finance team.

• Track Pharmaceutical Field Force Expenses in Real Time

Planning is useless when companies are constantly comparing planned and actual expenses. Real-time expense tracking software will help finance and commercial teams detect over-budgeting even before the launch budget is depleted.

In the context of expense management software, it is easy to track:

Launch AreaExpected CostsActual CostsMedical Rep Travel₹8,00,000₹7,40,000Launch Meetings₹5,00,000₹5,60,000Local Logistics₹3,00,000₹2,70,000Accommodation₹4,00,000₹4,20,000

Such tracking will simplify the analysis of pharmaceutical field force expenses and help with expense management for pharmaceutical companies at any point of time.

• Maintain Contingency Budget

Every pharmaceutical launch involves some unexpected expenses. Additional meetings with doctors, extra travel, unexpected promotion or change in the schedule may cause additional medical representatives travel expenses.

Contingency budget will help secure the total budget, but still, the contingency spendings should comply with the expense management software regulations.

In case of efficient expense tracking for pharma software, it will be possible to know how the contingency budget is spent.

• Automate Expense Management for Pharmaceutical Companies

As the number of MRs increases, spreadsheets become hard to use and manage. Expense management software becomes an efficient tool for managing MR expense reporting, medical rep travel expenses, and other types of pharmaceutical field force expenses.

Expendesk offers such capabilities as OCR-based digital receipt capturing, approval workflows, policy validation, duplicated elimination, audit trails, and spend visibility in real-time.

All of this results in transparency of expense management software and enables finance teams to manage expense management software other than spreadsheets.

• Develop a Smart Budget for Multi-City Launches

Launching a pharmaceutical product requires transparency of the process starting from the very first travel request up to the last reimbursement. Pharma sales force automation can be used for organizing sales processes, while field force expense management software can help with the control over expenses related to them.

If MR expense reporting, medical rep travel expenses, and other types of pharmaceutical field force expenses are managed in one system, finance teams receive better control over launch budgets.

In effect, expense management in the pharmaceutical industry is more than just a process of managing reimbursements; it allows pharmaceutical companies to plan, monitor, control, and analyze expenses in all cities.

For organizations looking to expand into multiple markets, expense management in pharmaceuticals, in combination with expense tracking for pharmaceuticals and field force expense management software, will ensure that your complex launch budget becomes a manageable process.