Why Pharma Lags in Omnichannel: Execs Point to Internal Collaboration Gap
Internal divisions between commercial and medical functions are proving to be a significant hurdle to Pharma companies effectively engaging with healthcare professionals (HCPs), a panel of industry executives agree.
“Marketing in Pharma is complicated, that’s what makes it interesting” said Ben Myall, CEO of Everybody, introducing the Reuters Customer Engagement Europe conference, an event which saw speakers repeatedly raise the issue of internal collaboration as the main stumbling block for omnichannel engagement.
Pharma is failing at omnichannel engagement… we can do better
Mykola Melnyk
Mykola Melnyk, VP, Head of Commercial Excellence, Greater China at Sanofi, shared a number of stats that clearly demonstrated the challenges the industry faces in engaging with busy HCPs.
A key point he shared is that just 2% of healthcare professionals’ lives, if we are lucky, is spent with pharma.
“True omnichannel engagement is not just a marketing message, but a two way conversation”, said Mykola. “This conversation should include non-promotional medial content, sales messaging or a Q&A – whatever is most appropriate for that customer.”
The future of work is cross functional
“The future of work is cross-functional. HCPs see us as one company, they don’t care if it’s commercial or medical.” said Amanda Logue, AstraZeneca’s Global Head of Medical Information and Communications.
“Our communication has to be as targeted and tailored as the therapies were developing. If we’re truly customer focused there should be no glass wall between us.” said Amanda.
An audience poll suggested that for approximately 2 out of 3 pharma companies in attendance, “Medical and Commercial are two distinct and independent functions”, a structure that panellists agreed is a barrier to progress.
“We all want Patient-centricity but we’re siloed. Disagreements within the organisation are against the customer experience we want to deliver” said Ricardo Jorge Castrillo Pelaz, Chief Commercial Officer, Ferrer.
Why is there an unnecessary compliance barrier between functions?
In many cases the barrier between medical and commercial have been caused by over-zealous interpretation of regulation, said Danie du Plessis, EVP, Medical Affairs, Kyowa Kirin.
“Perceived compliance obstacles are created by us in most cases. It is our own risk averse interpretation that gets us to a point of not doing stuff. We can and should push the boundaries between promotional and non promotional.”
He explained that in the UK, the regulation is that anyone could do either activity as long “as not at the same time”. Yet as a result all companies have separated roles to keep out of trouble.
“We need to get back to the middle, to educate and help people think for themselves. At some point on this patient journey, when the time is right, we can go into promotional mode.”
“We are over-engineering the separation. We spend too much time talking about what we can’t do, rather than what we can.”
Strategies for driving collaboration
Speakers raised a number of strategies for more effective collaboration between the functions, including:
1. The importance of a shared ‘North Star’
“The whole organisation needs to understand customer experience business imperative.” said Ricardo Castrillo
“At Novo Nordisk we try to give all teams (medical, commercial, IT, HR etc) a mandate to execute for the customer. It creates an environment that prioritise what matters.” said Mathieu Gilbert, VP, Strategic Projects, Novo Nordisk
“We need common goals and objectives, a new incentive system that is shared from leadership to the field. Metrics shared throughout functions that people can strive to meet and helps get people working together.”
“Everybody in BeiGene has a shared goal to get medicines to patients fast and there efficiently” said Josh Neiman, BeiGene, SVP Chief Commercial Officer.
In his presentation, Josh shared that this company-wide commitment leads BeiGene to designing faster processes, such as having marketing materials approved within 48 hours.
2. Key Account plans are effective in driving collaboration
“What’s working well for us at Ferrer is Key Account planning. Marketing, access, sales all work together on approach for an account, and together agree the tactics we will follow. This is a very powerful exercise that draws out tension, discussion, and ultimately agreement to align functions” said Ricardo Castrillo.
An audience poll revealed the importance of Key Account Managers in bringing functions together around a customer, with over 50% agreeing that the Key Account Manager is the primary orchestrator of field activities.
3. Share insights across teams
“If we keep patient outcomes and how we can add value to HCPs in mind, we get to real insights…not seperate marketing or medical insights” said Amanda Logue.
“We all need to learn how to really listen for those insights. Anyone with an external interaction, whether that is meeting in corridor or advisory boards, and bring them together. It’s the only way to move forward. It isn’t about who reports to who.”
4. Have modular content ready for any use case
Pharma produces a huge amount of content yet, 77% of content targeting HCPs is “never or rarely used”, according to Veeva.
In the battle for attention of HCPs, “Modular content is the opportunity.” says Luca Frangoni, Global Head of Content & Omnichannel Excellence at Boehringer Ingelheim.
“We need to get better at personalisation by moving away from a ‘one size fits all’ content approach, to producing pre-approved channel specific snippets of content. Modularising content helps with customer engagement but it needs to be properly tagged, segmented and distributed – which is also challenge.”
Mathieu Gilbert added that “we often don’t get feedback on content, which presents a challenge. If we can tag content and see what works, then the better it gets. We should get back to basics – we need feedback.”
5. AI is important.. but get the organisation right first
“We must grasp the opportunity that AI presents” said Florent Edouard, SVP, Global Head of Commercial Excellence, Grünenthal in his opening presentation.
“However, I’m deeply convinced that if your org isn’t properly setup you will miss the AI train.”
“I recommend we fix the basics first. For example, do you know how to do Omnichannel ROI calculations well enough? Is our customer experience good enough? I recommend you get these basics right first, then get ready for the AI era.”