Our decision to create a new commercial model recognizes the enormous demands on the time and attention of patients, physicians and payers alike. It is based on efficiently providing value to all our customers by getting them the right information, at the right time, in the right way.
We will devote more resources to bringing relevant information to payers and consumers, all of whom are becoming more and more involved in the choice of medicines. We will provide more information resources through easily accessible channels — for example, on the Internet and through health professionals.
This new approach will ensure that patients, physicians and payers will all be able to learn how our products can benefit them more quickly than ever before through sources they can trust. Through these channels we will continue to demonstrate — with good, hard data — why Merck's products offer unique benefits that no other medicine can fully match.
We also will redeploy our sales representatives and use new tools to help them do their jobs more effectively. In the United States, we have already cut in half the number of representatives promoting the same product and have reduced the number of products our representatives carry to just two. As a result, the physicians they serve will get greater value from the time they spend with our representatives. In addition, we are committing the full resources of our sales team behind our new vaccine launches, so that patients who will benefit can receive them as quickly as possible.
Through all these efforts, along with a more targeted approach to consumer education, we expect to reduce our U.S. spending per brand by 15 to 20 percent within the next five years. Taken together, our commercial model will be leaner, more nimble, more information- and value-driven, and much more cost-effective.
Our decision to create a new commercial model is based on efficiently providing value to all our customers by getting them the right information, at the right time, in the right way.
Fundamental to our plan to deliver greater value is our initiative to create a lean and flexible cost structure.
