Product – Key Opinion Leader Intelligence

As a generalised definition, key opinion leaders can be defined as industry professionals who influence their peers' medical practice, including but not limited to their prescribing activity. The key characteristic of an opinion leader is that he or she is trusted to evaluate new information in the context of group norms.

One of the problems faced by the some industries regarding KOL's is the lack of targeted information management tools designed specifically to handle the qualitative data which typically is gathered during a KOL analysis. Traditional ETMS systems are generally not orientated towards recording the complex interrelationships required to produce a KOL sphere of influence model. CRM systems can be configured to gather qualitative data but again this class of system does not generally have the capability to gather the network/nodal data which is required of a KOL model.

There are two key components which are pre-requisite for the successful execution of a KOL strategy.

Key Components:

• An information management system orientated towards the gathering of network data, generally of a qualitative nature and held in tree or spider structures, where the intersections of the network nodes can be scored with regards to quality and reliability.
  
• A well defined strategy for the execution of the data gathering exercise. At a minimum this strategy must incorporate access to a relevant and sufficient sample of the professional population, a geographical (national, regional, catchments area, etc) and organisational (PCT, etc) scoping definition, and a well designed questionnaire, possibly with incentivisation, which will succeed in gathering the required data.

The benefits from a successful KOL exercise can be significant. Identifying opinion leaders and any associated behaviour such as referral patterns can pay dividends when an organisation is able to align their promotion efforts with the key nodes in the technical, professional, social, and trust/friendship networks which are in operation.

The combination of V-sales KOL/SOI information management data model and our experience of building this class of specialist, value-added system, offer one of the strongest propositions currently available in this area of sales and marketing strategy.