iPad Replaces Paper for US Field Force Training

OK, we all freakin get it. The ipad is a fun device and our CIO is in love with it....and going paperless certainly saves money...BUT...

Is it really necessary to drop additional funds on these devices to go paperless? Last I checked we already gave our entire field force laptops capable of opening PDFs...talk about throwing money right out the friggin window. Whoever is leading this whole process should be drawn and quartered for spending a ton of cash on a device that's reaching the end of it's lifespan (with the second iteration likely this summer), and a device that is completely and totally unnecessary. They liked it best? No shit - but it had nothing to do with learning or anything else.

THIS is the crap that makes me nuts...but good to know that it could be afforded after laying off 3500 R and D employees. Nothing like a drug company that can no longer crank out new drugs! Instead of a pipeline we have ipads. Woohoo.

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In a move expected to generate an estimated savings of $500,000 a year, Commercial Operations has deployed the iPad for new-hire training of Pfizer’s U.S. field force.
The switch to iPad from traditional paper-based learning resulted from a recent pilot study in which training materials were sent to groups of U.S. sales representatives in different forms: 22 Kindle DXs, nine iPads, and 27 sets of printed manuals and textbooks. iPad users rated the device highest in efficiency, user interface and portability.

“It can be overwhelming, and sometimes intimidating, to newly hired sales representatives when a delivery truck arrives at their home and unloads several large boxes of textbooks and manuals,” said Dan Reading, Team Leader, Representative Field Training. “Now representatives receive a pre-loaded iPad delivered to their doorsteps with everything — textbooks, manuals and training videos — already installed. And they can carry it everywhere.”

Paper-based training materials are costly both to produce and ship, explained Reading. Printing and shipping expenses frequently exceed $1,000 for each new hire. By eliminating paper materials and reusing each iPad for the next new-hire class, Pfizer will save approximately $500,000 a year. Use of electronic training materials also provides an environmental benefit, saving several thousand tons of paper which typically are discarded after use.

“We have dramatically increased the use of virtual training, most especially with representatives who are learning their fourth and fifth products,” Reading noted. “Now, no matter where they are, they have all the materials at their fingertips.”

The move to iPad technology to train U.S. sales representatives has resulted in inquiries from colleagues around the globe, and the Established Products Business Unit field force in Japan is using the iPad to test e-detailing applications.

 

Anybody remember the paperless office initiative? Digital signature? Different CIO, same crap.

At Pfizer, paperless=boondoggle.

 

Have you had to use the My Signature Book website? It is so redonkulously difficult to get the "proper" format with signature blocks...if that's how we're trying to go paperless, they might as well give up now.

As long as the bigwig execs still demand everything hard copy, it's a lost cause...and spending a fortune on ipads is not going to help that.

 

Paperless doesn't equal bad.
I was there for all the digital signature processes they had. the methods they originally choice was primitive and needed to be stepped up. Again, too many cooks spoiled that soup. This needs to be reiterated all the time, FOCUS PEOPLE -- TOP DOWN VISION.

As for the iPad, I like the device however it is someone closed. I really like the tech, but I am wondering if this is really how they should be heading at this time.
I think i will do a short term investment into Apple, as we will see the profits rise.

 

So when Wyeth IT came to town, it was said how Pfizer IT was so so screwed up.
Well I wonder how long our friends, oh. fiends, from Wyeth will last.
Not so long... What A**H****

 

What load of hooey. Hitler had a top down vision, too.

When IT cooks up some bullcrap major initiative because some senior person read a magazine or visited the Apple store, this is how we wind up with multi million dollar initiatives that the clients don't value. And it's always justified with some ridiculous cost-saving claim that would disappear if exposed to the light of day. Ask yourself why IT is crowing about iPads when the Help Desk sucks so badly that most clients would rather remove their own liver with a rusty spoon than call it. How about getting the basics right before trying to sex it up? Could it be that we hope that if we talk about cool stuff nobody will notice that infrastructure support is rotting from within?

Personally, I think we could do with a whole hell of a lot less top down vision and a lot more bottom up common sense.

 

Well said !!!!!!

 

Well said and couldn't agree more. Investing in all the tech that we are (video conferencing, telepresence, ipads, iphones, lord knows what other bells and whistles) is well and good, but not at the cost of personnel - which is the directionally incorrect (to borrow a term from our CFO) way that we seem to be going.

Scary.

 

News flash - BT had nothing to do with this. A couple of guys in the training department did it pretty much themselves and then BT folks took credit. The cluster F on this one is that nobody in BT management really knew it was going on.

 

Isn't that how thing sometimes work ?
Ill conceived plan, implemented from the bottom where someone else takes credit ?