How should 100 year-old pharma companies partner with tech giants such as Google?
Sharmeen Lalani-Fade, Global Procurement Lead for Online Media, Creative and Data for Bayer explains how they are partnering with Google to bring their Advertising Technology (AdTech) stack in-house.
The project is designed to connect the ‘demand side’ (Bayer’s marketing campaigns) with the online advertising ‘supply side’ (websites that show as such as Google, YouTube etc) – without the need of advertising agencies.
“The goal of the project is to be less reliant on agencies and more accountable.” says Sharmeen.
“The holy grail of procurement is cost transparency. When you’re buying everything through a media agency, however good they are, they’re just not built to give you transparency. “
Listen to the full interview in the PharmaSource podcast.
There were challenges with 100 year old company trying to interface with a new breed of tech company, says Sharmeen.
“Not all advertisers should directly contract with tech platforms. It’s a decision that a company can’t take lightly. It requires a great deal of upscaling of the organisation… marketing, procurement, accounts payable all need to go on the digital journey together.”
As Sharmeen explains, the project “required a great deal of due diligence. You need to be prepared for some of the common pitfalls.”
7 lessons from the Bayer/Google AdTech partnership
Here are seven takeaways from the Bayer / Google partnership for procurement professionals:
1. Aim for a true strategic partnership
“Dealing with Google or Meta is a different kind of relationship and power dynamic… you can’t just demand things in the model of traditional procurement.”
“As we’ve grown together as an organisation, we’ve forged a very fruitful strategic alliance. There are a handful of global clients that Google considers strategic alliances and I’d like to think that we’re one of them.”
“We have joint business plans where we align on corporate goals. We are talking about the direction and the goals of an organisation and aligning them with a strategic partner. It’s not all about the traditional procurement parameters, it’s much more understanding how you can both go forwards together.”
2. Educate yourself about the tech landscape
Sharmeen describes how she had to fully immerse herself in the AdTech category so that she is able to speak the same language as the supplier and her marketing counterparts.
“When it comes to dealing with a tech platform, do your homework, don’t go in there and not know what they’re talking about”
“Procurement people who understand the tech world is so rare, that suppliers will be very open to receiving you as a procurement person if you know what you’re talking about.”
3. Help the supplier to understand your world
“If you’re a 100 year old company, then help the tech company to understand your organisation and make it easy for them to work with you. It’s a different mindset and the processes and procedures for tech to enter the world of big pharma.”
“Remember that we’re dealing with people who deserve respect. If they find it difficult to work with you, because of your procurement processes and procedures, they’re going to look somewhere else for support.”
4. Ensure payment and contracting processes align
Systems and process need to speak to one another, which required both sides needing to adapt.
As an example, Google’s self-service platform does not accept the Purchase Order numbers that Bayer’s systems rely upon.
“Entering the wrong information could easily mean your account can get suspended. something as simple as that could cause havoc. Small mistakes can have repercussions across across the value chain.”
5. Marketing effectiveness has to be measured in-house
“Without an agency you have complete cost transparency, but you’ve got nothing to compare it to.”
This means that the marketing business need to build-up their own historic data and previous benchmarks are no longer relevant.
“As markets are onboarded onto the tech stack, they’re constantly trying to see how much cheaper they are but you can’t because you don’t have the previous costs.”
6. With great data ownership comes great responsibility
Bayer now own their campaign data, rather than the media agency.
“Now all our campaign data belongs to us, that comes with some risk” says Sharmeen, adding that ‘brand protection’ – an increasingly important issue in online advertising- is now something they need to manage themselves without agency support.
7. Stay strongly aligned with internal stakeholders
The internal collaboration between procurement and marketing has been critical for the success of this partnership.
Sharmeen says “It’s been great how the marketing team have embraced procurement. We worked hand in hand on demand forecasting.”
Sharmeen’s advises anyone embarking on this journey to “understand your stakeholder’s medium to long term digital marketing roadmap and understand where your organisation wants to play.”
“Strategic sourcing is understanding the cross-divisional landscape. While I work primarily with one division (marketing), I can bring them the learnings from the other divisions and share what we’re working on.”
Sharmeen Lalani-Fade is speaking in our upcoming Women in Pharma Procurement Online Meetup. Join the conversation by signing up here
LIVE on June 13 2024 
