Metagenics Uses Bloomfire to Expand Knowledge Sharing Across Departments

RESULTS

Metagenics produces nutritional supplements and medical foods and develops lifestyle medicine programs designed for the health professional. In addition to direct sales to healthcare professionals, Metagenics is an international manufacturer with facilities in the USA, Australia, Belgium, and affiliated distributors that deliver its products just about anywhere.

Dr. Mark A. Kaye, the Director of Medical Information at Metagenics, is passionate about knowledge, learning, and teaching. He has worked at Metagenics for more than 20 years and manages the medical clinical information department. 

Mark was originally looking for an information repository to help train the internal sales team. He sought out Bloomfire to empower their sales team with the knowledge they needed to close deals. As Mark learned more about Bloomfire, he realized the longer-term potential benefits of implementing its multi-functional features to other departments, he just needed to prove it out first with the sales team. 

Metagenics needed an easy-to-use platform that could educate reps to speak intelligently about dietary supplements with practitioners. New sales reps needed to have a thorough understanding of the nutrition and biochemistry aspects of all the products so they could explain how to apply nutritional knowledge with patients. Metagenics needed a tool to aid the onboarding process and be a place for reps to turn to for future reference. 

The Challenge 

Before Bloomfire, the sales team primarily used email to share documents, ask and answer questions, and document processes. With over 150 sales reps, this created major challenges. Reps were frustrated because they couldn’t search for and find up-to-date information. “I know I have this in my email, but I can’t find it,” was a common complaint Dr. Kaye was receiving. There was just no easy way of validating if a document was current or of asking a question and getting a quick response. 

Metagenics needed one central repository of information for the corporate office and the sales force. “Bloomfire is great because it is in one location that is private, shareable, with a very robust search engine,” Dr. Kaye said. “With Bloomfire they can also attach any type of document (pdf, video file, audio file), allowing for all kinds of multimedia responses. Now reps can just ‘Google’ information internally for themselves.

Bloomfire is simple, user friendly, visually attractive, and any rep has access to it via phone, tablet, or laptop.

Proven Benefits of Bloomfire

“I’m just thrilled with Bloomfire, I think it’s an incredible tool,” said Dr. Kaye, “Bloomfire is simple, user friendly, visually attractive, and any rep has access to it via phone, tablet, or laptop.” 

Dr. Kaye was extremely pleased with the launch of Bloomfire because it has helped speed adoption with the team, the sales force actually wants to use it and they turn to it as a first response to questions. Metagenics has a sales team of 150 reps that are using Bloomfire two times per day per rep on average, equating to over 300 views per day. 

Previously, executives primarily communicated with sales reps via conference calls. This was very inefficient, wasting time the sales rep could be speaking with professional accounts. Since implementing Bloomfire, Metagenics has seen a 70 percent reduction in internal conference calls.

Sales reps are often alone for days at a time, so it’s nice for them to feel connected via Bloomfire. “When they’re remote, they can still feel a sense of camaraderie by having others from the company comment and interact with their work,” said Dr. Kaye. “Having a social learning tool where reps can stay in constant contact is powerful.”

Bringing Success to Other Departments

After equipping the sales team with Bloomfire and seeing how it quickly sped up onboarding and became a part of the day-to-day, Metagenics realized they were onto something big. “We knew Bloomfire could be applicable to other departments, but once we implemented it, it was clear we needed to expand it to other departments as quickly as possible,” said Dr. Kaye.

So Metagenics did just that and launched Bloomfire to their customer service team. Due to the highly specialized nature of the questions customer service teams receive, they needed to find a way to standardize the response to very specific questions or commonly asked questions. “The quality of content with relevant information is always in there,” said Dr. Kaye. Bloomfire has saved customer service reps time and ensured they get questions answered.

“We’re expanding our focus so we can include any information–sales, documentation, email alerts, etc. to process through Bloomfire,” Kaye said. With the proven success of a knowledge sharing tool across multiple departments, the entire sales and marketing team at Metagenics are planning to adopt Bloomfire.