The pharmaceutical industry has modernised its tech stack. So why is it still experiencing data pains?
The pharmaceutical industry has gone through important updates – expiring patents, the generalisation of drugs, technology upgrades for CRM and other systems and the adoption of digital technologies to keep up and align with the entire ecosystem and major stakeholders like hospitals and doctors.
With these transitions having been successfully completed, pharmaceutical commercial teams have the latest technologies and tools at their disposal and should be poised to make a significant difference in sales and revenues.
However, this new phase has brought with it a new set of challenges which make it difficult for commercial teams to effectively plan and respond to the market dynamics.
Pain 1
Doctors want specific medical information, not sales pitches.
Doctors and hospitals not only treat patients and handle large amounts of paperwork but also need to keep up with new learnings in medicine and new developments in the drug markets. Traditional marketing and face-to-face sales processes are ineffective due to changing doctor behaviours and preferences, and adoption of digital and social channels for information consumption. But it’s arduous to sift through the information deluge on websites and social media to get the relevant and important information they need in a timely manner and on their preferred channel.
Pain 2
Pharmaceutical companies need to adopt deliver highly engaging experiences so that they can differentiate in a market of generic drugs and specialty/patented drugs, and drive brand adoption at each stage from launch to clinical trials to commercialisation.
There is also an increased need and expectation to incorporate feedback on patient outcomes as proof points into detailing and medical information.
Pain 3
So many different types of information, all in different places. Migrating to new Veeva CRM platforms has made a large amount of raw data from marketing and sales activity available for trend analysis. Additionally, there are new and emerging data sources like website portal and digital streams, virtual and physical events, and social forums and opinion groups. All this data has the potential to tell deeply interesting stories on the actual state of the marketing and sales processes and their effectiveness. However, with the entire data landscape fragmented into multiple systems, departments, external partners and third-party providers, it’s time-consuming and expensive.
Pain 4
Too many reports based on local requirements and different for each country/market. This means there is no centralised, big-picture view. And still, there is a lack of ad hoc and timely analysis and predictive capabilities in line with field and market dynamics to work hand in hand with strategic and HQ KPI tracking and actionability.
Pain 5
Legalities to adhere to compliance and various regulatory policies that can differ quite significantly across markets and territories makes it a daunting task to deal with data as a global enterprise-wide asset and still be able to generate meaningful market-level insights and share them globally. The best practices that can be used across the markets are lost as a result.
Clearly, having only a part of the picture is not enough.
New age datasets provide an invaluable opportunity to deliver the best doctor and patient experience and increase commercial effectiveness and competitive advantages to the pharmaceutical companies that are able to deliver them.
However, the set of challenges discussed above need to have a holistic and integrated solution to transform all that wonderful data into a usable asset for Sales and Marketing processes.
Acrotrend has recently worked with one of the largest global pharmaceutical drug manufacturers to modernise their commercial data and analytics landscape. They are now are able to produce actionable KPIs and get predictive capabilities in place to respond quickly to market dynamics.
To understand more about how we did this and to view the case study, please contact us today.