Problem Statement

To understand and assess the problems involved in Business development and understanding
marketing strategies/techniques that would fetch the client positive visibility and prove to be
beneficial. For any firm, especially one like Med Life, dealing with business development.

External factors:

The application of internet to access drugs and diagnostics which begin early in advent of info age
has matured into portals or virtual drugs stores popularly known as “internet pharmacy”. The
advent of internet pharmacy and access of drugs and diagnostics is gaining popularity due to cost
effectiveness, high speed delivery to doorstep of patients. It is also known as Online Pharmacy,
Internet Pharmacy, Web Pharmacy or Cyber Pharmacy.

E-prescribing or electronic prescribing is a technology framework that allows physicians and other
medical practitioners to write and send prescriptions to a participating pharmacy electronically
instead of using handwritten or faxed notes or calling in prescriptions.

E-commerce or electronic commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the
transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet. These business
transactions occur either as business-to-business, business-to-consumer, consumer - to- consumer
or consumer-to-business. The terms e-commerce and e-business are often used interchangeably.
The term e-tail is also sometimes used in reference to transactional processes for online shopping.
Interaction between communication systems, data management systems and security, which
because of them exchange commercial information in relation to the sale products or services, will
be available, so the definition, the main components of electronic commerce are: Communication
systems, data management systems and security.

The external factors that are to be considered are the consumers or the customers, media agencies,
channel partners, doctors , industry bodies, government and the public at large. At Med Life, the
external factors relevant to the smooth functioning of the internal operations to achieve desirable
results are
Customers - Customers are spread across various economies. Business developers tend to interact
indirectly with the customers thereby enhancing communication and enabling better understanding
of customer needs.

Channel Partners: The channel partners play a vital role in carrying out the coverage received by
the client on a positive note. Building a rapport with the channel partners enhances the entire
process. Also, timely delivery of content is a key factor.

Healthcare sector's market size and growth: Every company will like to know what is the
market size and if there is appreciable growth in healthcare sector going forward.

Regulatory authorities: Launching a drug involves a lot of certificates and clearance, sometimes
even 7-10 regularities can be involved in the whole process before a drug can be officially
launched. For some markets, apart from central approval, regional approvals are also required.

Internal Factors can help a firm analyze any situation by describing how the organization currently
handles any crisis it faces. Lists of organizational media (two-way) for communicating with
internal groups can help in better understanding of the work culture at Med Life.

Internal Factors:

The internal factors at Med Life largely consist of the employees, the investors/stakeholders and
other business associations. The categories are populated with information available from the
inside of the organization, including both the good points as well as the bad ones. To increase
efficacy, public relations firms should reinforce their ethics codes through organizational ethics
factors, such as:

 Top management support : At Med Life, the organization structure is flat hierarchy. The
employees directly report to the higher authorities and there are no discrepancies, or rather
minimal discrepancies in the execution of the orders. The higher authorities are supportive
and down to earth.

 Ethical climate: Since Victor and Cullen (1987, 1988) introduced the concept of ethical
climate to predict ethical conduct in organizations, and it has served as a key conceptual
foundation in ethics studies ( Martin and Cullen, 2006).The association between ethical
behavior and career success in the organization.
Organizations with authoritative cultures with centralized decision making are affected by their
rigid control by management, competition between departments, influence, decisions based on
authority, and fear of senior management.

However, Med Life as a firm proves that greater participation and involvement by the employees
gives them a feel of appreciation and recognition, resulting in greater job satisfaction.

Technological Factors :
 Web-based and/or mobile-based application for consumers to upload the scanned copy of
their prescriptions and place requests for medicines.
 Every order that is received to be verified and checked by a team of registered pharmacists.
 The registered pharmacists to forward the validated prescriptions to the pharmacy store
from where the medicines are dispensed.
 The web or mobile-based platform to be governed under the IT Act 2000 and only act as a
platform to facilitate connection between consumer and pharmacy store.

Market Factors :

E-pharmacy in India, an exponential growth opportunity, the e-pharmacy market has the potential
to be a very large industry segment soon. It is expected that the e-pharmacy model could account
for 15%- 20% of the total pharma sales in India over next 10 years, largely by enhancing adherence
and access to medicines for a majority of the under-served population.

Medlife has been diversifying and offering value-added services like online consultation,
scheduling appointments with doctors and clinics, app-based healthcare related services, health
blogs and tie up with diagnostics and laboratories.

Online pharmacies in India have significantly increased due to growing E-commerce in India and
little regulation of the industry. There is "no regulatory control over drug advertisements on
television or the Internet". Technology can help in meeting the healthcare objective of India. Indian
government is planning to spend Rs 500 crore on computer literacy project for 50 lakh people over
a period of 3 years. This would help Indian citizens to access government services in the fields of
e-education, e-health and e-governance. Healthcare providers in India are also expected to spend
$1.1 billion on IT products and services in 2014.