As discussed in my earlier blog, using the combination of the explosion of commercial data accessible by pharma companies, and new methods of advanced analytics and data visualisation, pharmaceutical companies can create a winning HCP Targeting Strategy to drive sales. I also considered some of the prominent use cases based on the same data sets that will help these organisations answer key questions posed by:
- changing market and regulatory dynamics,
- changing HCP behaviours,
- adopting patient-centricity, and
- constant pressure to increase sales and reduce costs.
Pharma companies are at varying stages of their data journey. Leading pharma companies are already using commercial insights for competitive advantage. Some have been unsuccessful on their insight journey and vision to data excellence. Others have ambitions and aspirations to do more with their data.
Speaking with various clients on their current Commercial Insights requirements, one theme stands out:
- How you approach the initiative?
- What comes first – Commercial Strategy or Commercial Insights?
- Technology or a real-life Use Case?
- Where does Agile fit in?
- What about Data Architecture and Governance?
- How do you measure success?
- Is it once-and-done or do you need an ongoing focus and capability?
The tricky part is that there are no right or wrong solutions – it totally depends on your current business situation and goals.
Acrotrend has deep expertise in customer data analytics and insights programmes. Working with leading pharmaceutical companies has given us a solid experience within this industry. Because of this, we were able to develop a high performing framework for Commercial Insights, to help pharmaceutical companies address the above questions. Our framework keeps your business situation and goals always in focus and aligns the insight journey to your business urgencies. We use our methodology to take you from ambition to success, with well-defined milestones at every stage, and a set of capabilities to enable you to continue to derive value. Our methodology identifies the best approach to take for your Commercial goals and provides you with optimum solution options and a roadmap. The focus is on your business priorities and required capabilities, and getting the foundation right!
1. Our Discover stage takes you and your team through a structured and engaging workshop-based exercise to reveal your true business requirements, challenges, priorities, skills, synergies and feasibility when it comes to being data-driven and working collaboratively on insights. We align this with the leadership vision and goal to create an actionable roadmap to achieve your vision of success. This gives you the ability to keep the end vision in sight and to course-correct your strategy as you go along.
2. It’s all about the data! One of the most crucial skills in the future will be how rapidly you can create and manage broad and emerging data sets from your sales activities, HCP detailing sessions, KAM, Third Party prescription and diagnosis data. You need to complete the picture by understanding the data flows, their significance to business, organising data for secured access and maintaining the quality on an on-going basis. With the storage and processing power of cloud databases and technologies, getting the data(ware) house sorted is not a Herculean task. Most importantly, this doesn’t have to be a massive 2-year programme, we have delivered complete and functional cloud-based data management and governance solutions in less than 10 weeks!
3. Data is useless when it is sedentary. The ability to set your data up for answering not just the regular KPI questions but some tricky, uncomfortable and unusual questions about your HCPs, Markets, Sales and Channels will help provide the much-required boost to your commercial strategy. Applying advanced analytics techniques will help you generate more pragmatic and pointed HCP segments, provide insights into prescription behaviours, channel preferences. Recently, we surprised one of our clients with counter-intuitive and insightful HCP segments drawn out of multiple dimensions and behaviours, all in 6 weeks. Here’s a sample.
4. The true value of analytics can only be realised when you have the ability to embed the insights into your day-to-day sales and marketing processes, sales activity planning, HCP detailing sessions and also at a strategic level of territory management, sales force alignment, HCP-centric engagement models and KOL management. The crux of the matter is making it easy to access the right insights to the right people in a manner that is easy to consume and act upon. These dashboards and analytical segments are easily embedded within your Veeva CRMs and other systems of action. Some samples of our interactive Commercial Insight dashboards are here.
Our Commercial Insights solution is complemented with our other services of Data and Analytics Strategy Assessment, Data Quality Profiling and Management, Data Governance Advisory.
For more information on how we can help you supercharge your Commercial Insights journey, please contact us today.