|
Medical Device Industry : Pros &
Cons of E- Business
E- Business is a hot item for
companies all over the world, including SMEs in developing countries. But which
e- business applications are conducive to exporting to the European Union? To
help answer the question, the CBI (Center for Promotion of imports from
developing Countries), is developing a system for monitoring e-business
developments. The article reproduced from “CBI News, March 2008” gives
information about e-business in medical and medical laboratory equipment
industry.
In the medical and medical
laboratory equipment market, e-business, as players are becoming more and more
comfortable with new technologies. This is not so much in the sense of selling
your product directly through your website, but in terms of using new
e-technologies to improve efficiency in a whole range of business processes.
However, many DC suppliers lack
the knowledge and skills, financial and infrastructural resources needed to
implement e-business applications. Fortunately for them, personal contacts are
still considered a very important key to business in this sector, amongst others
because of the high importance of pre and after sales services. So while you’re
upgrading your website, consider getting an authorized representative in the
European Union, too. The medical and medical laboratory equipment industry
includes both medical devices and medical disposables. The main target groups
for DC exporters in this industry are: distributors/ importers; local
dealers/wholesalers, buying cooperatives; and end users. For this survey, we
have divided e-business into 5 main business processes: marketing and sales;
payment; product service delivery (PSD); Customer service; and production.
E-Marketplaces
Various e-marketplaces are in use
across the medical and medical laboratory equipment devices industry, such as:
In our survey, 12 out of 92 EU
buyers (13%) stated that they already use e-market places and virtually all said
they plan to continue doing so. However, only 5% actually buy products via
marketplaces. EU buyers and experts value the importance of e-marketplaces as a
“medium” for seeing and being seen. As such they offer interesting opportunities
to DC suppliers for profiling themselves. However, personal and direct contact
remains very important in this sector – except perhaps in Norway, as the
Norwegian market for this sector is entirely tender-based.
Marketing & Sales
When it comes to marketing &
sales, EU buyers and experts consider the following e-business applications to
be very important:
The participants in the CBI’s
Export Coaching Programme (ECP) for this sector are well aware of the importance
of visibility on the internet. A majority of them already use marketing
strategies for this and most of them intend to do so in the future. The survey
suggests that DC companies should raise their awareness of the importance of
registering in directories and of search engine marketing.
Directories And Search Engines
Registering in directories and
search engine marketing is an important way for DC suppliers to profile
themselves on the market and to enable EU buyers to find them. Contrary to
common belief, high ratings in search engine databases, which cost a lot of
money, are not important. Email follow-up is important and must always be
personalized. EU buyers are not interested in direct marketing and hate spam: DC
suppliers should make sure they use a professional email address and avoid
hotmail, yahoo, gmail or wanadoo addresses, as these tend to be discarded as
spam sources. Follow –up by email is not enough, however: personal contact
matters even more. For more information, please download the CBI manual on ‘How
to promote your website in the EU’ ( www.cbi.eu
).
Certificates And Websites
Displaying certificates from a
reputed certifier on your website is another very important form of e-marketing
and sales. The most important certificates for the medical industry are CE
marking, ISO and FDA certification. In browsing websites, the EU experts and
buyers in this survey said they tend to look for a company profile, company
history, company management (including full contact details for direct contact),
product catalogues (with specifications and clear pictures), and target group
information (for example, products for cardiology, anesthesiology, etc). One EU
buyer warns that DC suppliers should spend money on their communication as a
whole rather than merely on their website.
Page : 1 |
2
|
