How to Maximize Your PRM for Reporting

PRM software plays a crucial role in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of liaison teams. By providing tools to track and measure performance, PRM software offers insights that help identify areas for improvement, plan future activities, and manage budgeting and forecasting. This comprehensive approach ensures that organizations can strategically navigate their partnerships while maximizing their resources.

Tips for Getting Started

Keep it simple; don’t overcomplicate PRM access.

Liaisons shouldn’t feel overwhelmed — like they’re spending the majority of their time in the PRM. PRM software should be easy to use and accessible in the field. This is where having a mobile app can help. Instead of having to block their entire Friday to sit in front of their computer and log activities, your liaisons can record tasks and notes while they’re on the go.

Focus on liaison buy-in, from day 1. 

Avoid pushback by getting your team invested from the start. Show them what the PRM can do, and how it will make their day-to-day activities easier and more effective. Part of Marketware’s implementation, for example, includes working with liaisons to customize their drop-down reporting selections. This saves them time and ensures they’re entering the right information for their managers’ reports.

Train your team incrementally. 

Don’t make your team “drink from a firehose” by throwing so much information at them that they won’t remember any of it. I like to train new PRM users on just activity reports, for example. When they get that down, we move on to lists and initiatives, and so on. Using this staggered approach to training helps liaisons feel successful, which drives their PRM adoption.

Get Your Team to Use PRM Software

Tie PRM use to performance goals. 

For example, one of my clients has physician liaisons record a certain number of activities and issues and onboard all of their providers correctly into Marketware to meet their quarterly performance goals. They do this with our activity trend reports, which allow liaisons to see their goals, and leadership to see if they are being met.

This being said you have to guard against quantity versus quality. With PRM reporting, it’s alarming if there’s too much in activities, and it’s alarming if there’s too little. If there’s too much, liaisons may not be having the right conversations. And if there’s too little, they’re probably not recording enough of their activities — or they’re spending too much time in offices, so they don’t have the time to see as many providers as they expected.

Ask your PRM partner for training; don’t be shy. 

A lot of my clients know healthcare like the back of their hands but can struggle when it comes to integrating a PRM into their daily work. That’s why when they have questions, I offer to set up a quick call/training — even if it’s about something simple. I also offer to set up training for user groups when I see that their usage is dropping or if there’s a software update. Don’t be afraid to ask if there’s an easier way to do something. Usually, there is! And your PRM provider should be more than happy to help.

Set up regular check-ins. 

These should be between you (the physician liaison manager) and your PRM partner. Use this time to ask questions, discuss newly released features or dashboards, set up a team training, review a new data set, or anything else that can help optimize your PRM reporting.

Monitor your team’s success. 

Keep a pulse on whether some liaisons need more training or if others are ready to add more functionality. Not everyone on your team has to use the PRM at the same level, as long as they’re meeting their baseline goals.

Next Steps – It’s All About Data

Get to know your data.

When it comes to PRM reporting, there’s so much you can do with your data. Get familiar with where it comes from and what it can show you, so you can ask the right questions to get better, actionable insights. For example, when working with liaisons, I point them to the provider-specific dashboards in our PRM. There they can find a wealth of data (connections, referrals, etc.) that they can leverage on their next visits.

Clean up data before loading it into the PRM.

There’s truth to the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If you don’t send your PRM provider the right data, you won’t get the right insights and outcomes.

Let your PRM partner find your data’s blind spots. 

This is especially helpful during implementation. They can look for key omissions like affiliation, city, or zip code. They can also let you know if something doesn’t make sense and ask for clarification.

Nurture relationships with your data sources. 

Sometimes internal data files will be missing the fields liaisons need to monitor campaign success. Since IT teams are often inundated with requests, it can take a while to get even small adjustments or corrections to your data. So, by nurturing your relationships with internal departments, you can help make sure you have access to the data you need, as you need it.

Move from Tracking to Reporting

What story do you want to tell? 

Is it liaison activity, issues, and topics, or outreach impact? Think about what your leadership team wants to know. Then, reconfigure your reports to deliver this data, and roll it out to your team. Say, “We’re adjusting how we do these reports because this is what leadership wants to see. So, make sure you’re selecting these drop-downs that we’ve changed, so we record the right data.”

Tip: Ask your PRM partner to customize your activities and issues drop-downs so they’re more specialized and targeted to your needs. For example, one of our clients had a lot of different users. Yet, under their activities, 90% were marked as “growth” — which was way too vague for meaningful insights. So, we added more specific drop-downs, including “visit type” (like provider-to-provider), “category” (i.e. service line growth), and “topics discussed” (such as orthopedics or cardiology). This added much more context to their data entry and resulted in more meaningful reports.

Train liaisons on pulling reports & interpreting results. 

When it comes to PRM reporting, standardization and consistency is key. If liaisons understand what you’re reporting for, they’ll be more invested in recording their field intelligence in the right way. (If they think nobody’s doing anything with it, they’re probably not going to enter it and they probably won’t care.) Also, if you show them how to run reports that improve their pre-call planning and target providers with the best chance for referrals, they’ll learn to love (and use!) the PRM.

PRM Reporting Success

To best maximize your PRM for reporting, you need to set expectations upfront, provide ongoing training, use good data, and share results. If you take these steps and continue to evaluate your PRM’s effectiveness, then everything should be pretty seamless.

Of course, if you have questions, I’m happy to help! Please email me directly at: danielle.krystyniak@marketware.com.