Encise
Powering Pharma Sales Data to Next-Generation

Japan’s pharmaceutical market, valued at about $95 Bn as per the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), is one of the largest in the world. For pharma companies, to compete in this market, robust marketing strategies are indispensable. For this, they fundamentally depend upon pharmaceutical sales data to learn which products are selling well and in what amount alongside their demand, suppliers, and pricing information. Traditionally, there had been a very few data providers in this space, with several limitations like – coverage, speed, accuracy and the quality. To address these conventional inefficiencies - 19 of Japan’s biggest pharmaceutical wholesalers, together with Crecon Research & Consulting, established Encise in 2012. These 19 pharma-wholesalers together distribute around 99 percent of the total Pharmaceutical products in Japan, while Crecon R&C is one of the oldest pharmaceutical data providers in the world, catering to this market for over 65 years.

Encise follows a unique model based on trust, which holds immense prominence in the Japanese culture, toprovide customers with consolidated information on drugs and medicines. “Wholesalers are competitors and Encise ensures that their individual data is not accessible, but is shared anonymously with the clients as combined data,” explains Hitoshi Kimura, President & CEO of Encise, who is also President & CEO of three other companies catering to the different needs of Pharma Industry, including Crecon R&C. “This unique model is based on trust and shows our commitment to ensuring a sustainable medical society and improving quality of services to the pharmaceutical companies,” adds Kimura.

The name Encise was created by attaching the prefix ‘en’ (from words like ‘encourage’ and ‘enhance’) to the ending ‘ise’ (from the word ‘precise’).

Every day, Encise gathers information on the movements of pharmaceutical products from wholesalers to institutes, at a very high speed and level of accuracy. Encise supports customer decision-making, marketing, and productivity through coordination, visualization, and analysis of the gathered data.

In terms of data collection, Encise receives information on actual products movement from wholesalers to institutions (Hospitals, General-Practitioners and Dispensing-Pharmacies)on a daily basis and processes them in deliverable form. Apart from this information on products movement, the 19 pharmaceutical wholesalers have a unique functional manager called Market Specialist (MS), who has an intense contact network with every single medical institutions and pharmacy in Japan to collect pharmaceutical information. Encise has access to use this super powerful network of about 16,000 MS nationwide, which also collects valuable information about outgoing prescription-flow from institutions to pharmacies and establishes a relationship among them. This, when integrated with pharma sales-data, provides other unique analytical tools for the Japanese Pharmaceutical market.

Encise can precisely trace the movement of every single drug-packet on an almost real-time basis, and creates daily reports on multiple levels. “Every morning at 10 am, our clients can see product movement till 6 pm of the previous evening. It’s an extremely fast information system considering the massive size of the industry,” says Kimura.

Encise partners with Veeva, a leader in cloud-based software for the global life-sciences industry. Veeva offers information platforms to pharma companies and uses the Encise sales database for its Japan offerings. Encise is also working to introduce several ‘undisclosed’ new-generation analytical offerings in the near future.

“One aspect that makes Encise different from its competitors is its founders’ vision to ‘deliver back’ to the society beyond commercial objectives,” says Devesh Singh, Head of Encise Research Center. The center has been engaged in tracking industry trends and developments for some overlooked indicators which have no commercial value as such, but they could be of great interest for the society, academia, and policy makers. Such reports and findings are made publicly available. “Committed to innovation, product excellence, and customer success, Encise is all set to play a greater role in the ongoing evolution of the pharmaceutical industry,” concludes Singh.