Optimizing lead capture and appointment management at ESMO 2024

These numbers represent the average results across all companies using Onomi’s Field Force Hub App at ESMO 2024.

Situation

At ESMO 2024, 25+ global pharmaceutical companies needed help managing everything from event logistics and field force engagement to lead capture and KEE appointments. With large teams on the ground, juggling booth activations, endless emails, and Excel spreadsheets was time consuming, pulling focus away from building meaningful relationships with HCPs. These companies needed a simpler, more centralized way to handle things in real time.

Onomi supported over 6,000 reps, with more than 2,500 users actively engaging through the Field Force Hub App. From coordinating field teams and sending notifications to capturing leads and managing appointments, the platform took care of the heavy lifting — everything integrated, so pharmaceutical teams could stay focused on connecting with HCPs and driving results.

Challenge

Exhibiting at congresses such as ESMO is a multimillion-dollar investment, and making the most of every interaction is critical for companies looking to maximize their return.

Before ESMO, these companies faced challenges in three key areas of HCP engagement — lead capture, appointment management, and satellite/theater sessions — with logistics coordination for staff and sponsored HCPs complicating everything further. Many still ran congress processes on Excel.

HCP engagement

Lead capture. Many companies still rely on outdated or unintegrated tools — manual forms or the simple scanners provided by congress organizers. The result: fragmented data, compliance risks, and missed opportunities for immediate follow-up.

• Congress-provided lead capture tools lack the flexibility to customize data capture forms by team, losing valuable HCP insights
• Congress-provided scanners are not integrated with exhibitor CRM systems, so captured data arrives late in the CRM — or never
• Fragmented tools across congresses produce unstructured data that’s hard to act on, reducing ROI

Appointment management. Scheduling and managing thousands of HCP appointments with simple calendars, spreadsheets, email threads, and agency-printed schedules leads to double bookings, no-shows, lost meeting slots, and confusion about room availability — all of which keep reps from high-value interactions.

Satellite and theater sessions. These sessions offer deep engagement, but without tools to track participation, sentiment, or engagement in real time, follow-up opportunities are missed. Feedback is typically collected through voting tokens or non-integrated survey tools.

Logistical coordination

Exhibitors must give reps and invited HCPs accurate, up-to-date information on personalized agendas, hotels, and booth locations. Fragmented tools — a congress app with a non-personalized agenda, WhatsApp groups — lead to confusion about schedules, missed meetings, and a poor rep and HCP experience.

Solution

1. Universal lead capture

Teams were equipped with Universal Lead Capture: reps scan any badge via optical scan (OCR) or capture leads through manual entry, including a kiosk mode.

• Badge and business-card scanning — OCR extracted and populated lead information into the app automatically, mapped to configured fields in the lead form
• Manual entry with custom forms — configurable fields, on-the-spot qualification, and real-time updates when scanning wasn’t possible
• Team-specific qualification forms — qualifying questions and additional inputs, modified in real time based on event or business needs
• Kiosk mode — self-service capture for high-traffic booths, gated activations, and unstaffed stations
• Consent and signatures — consent checkboxes for multiple consent types, plus electronic signature collection stored with the lead for audit purposes
• Real-time CRM sync — captured leads landed in the CRM immediately, during ESMO

2. Appointments

Rep teams scheduled, rescheduled, and managed HCP appointments through the Field Force Hub and Backstage:

• A planner view with a centralized overview of room and attendee schedules, for pre-event and onsite coordination
• List and calendar views for reps — own appointments or the full team schedule, depending on configuration
• Room management with capacity limits, availability windows, blocked slots, granular permissions, and custom locations when suites were fully booked
• Email invitations with RSVP handling and two-way sync with external calendars (Outlook, Google)
• Real-time attendance tracking, automatic buffer times between meetings, and instant notifications and reminders for reps and HCPs
• Appointments visible as account/contact activity on the HCP’s timeline via the Onomi Sync App for Veeva and Salesforce

Implementation and workflows

Universal lead capture

1. When HCPs arrived at the booth, reps started their usual conversations
2. At the end of the conversation, the rep asked to scan the HCP’s badge for follow-up
3. To keep things compliant, the rep handed the iPad to the HCP for a digital signature
4. The rep completed the lead form using advanced qualification forms customized per team
5. All data synced directly into the company’s CRM (Veeva/Salesforce) for immediate follow-up

Appointments

Three main workflows ran at ESMO: planner-entered appointments from pre-agreed rep lists (with room assignment and conflict handling), rep-scheduled appointments directly in the app, and outreach handled by Onomi’s Professional Congress Service Team using appointment request forms to collect HCP availability.

Logistics and rep engagement

Each rep received an individualized agenda and personalized travel and accommodation support; teams exchanged insights on discussion boards, received live notifications, collected competitive insights, and the most active reps earned awards through gamification and leaderboards.

Results

• Lead generation: over 7,300 leads captured and integrated with CRMs for effective post-event follow-up
• Efficient meetings: 3,125 HCP appointments coordinated, cutting scheduling time by 40%
• High engagement: engagement feeds and activity challenges maintained strong participation
• Operational efficiency: centralized logistics and communications reduced complexity
• Real-time insights: analytics on engagement, leads, and meetings enabled data-driven decisions on site

Conclusion

Onomi made a measurable difference for 25+ global pharmaceutical companies at ESMO 2024. By streamlining lead capture and appointment management, these companies could focus on what mattered — building strong connections with HCPs and maximizing their congress presence.

Deployment: Onomi Congress Excellence Suite — Field Force Congress Hub, HCP Congress Hub, Symposium Web App, pre- and post-congress webinars, Veeva integration, Salesforce integration. 25+ global pharma companies.