Digital transformation in sales for technology industry

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hello and welcome to our webinar digital transformations of the commercial model getting the technology right we're thrilled you're here with us today and look forward to addressing your questions during today's session i'm emma noxman and i'll be moderating just a few housekeeping notes we want this session to be very interactive so at any point go ahead and participate in the group chat you can input your questions in the q a widget if there's any questions we don't get to during today's session we'll be sure to follow up after the webinar we have some great related content for you to check out by clicking on the related content icon that you'll see at the bottom of your screen and feel free to click around our new webinar console to request a demo listen to our latest cs podcast and check out other impact webinars we'd love your participation in a brief survey post webinar as well i'd love to introduce our presenters today maria clatchko thomas mache kapil nair hi everyone and thank you so much for joining us i'm maria let's start things off with you today so today welcome uh to our digital transformation of the commercial model webinar we are very excited to talk to you about this because this is the talk of the town this is uh things that people talk uh and ask us all the time so we are very happy to see you here and hope to have a great discussion one of the notes that we made as we were preparing to this webinar is that ing to idc as an industry life sciences lag behind its counterparts such as retail and financial services why is that and and probably we all see it and feel it in our own life we know that retail services such as amazon are completely online now they have sophisticated analytics to uh segment customers and they um accumulate and use vast amounts of data and the same with financial services and some of the other forerunners and yet life sciences are uh quite behind i think the leading companies in this area um the top pharma has gone through significant journey over the last five years to accumulate a lot of data and create some of the sophisticated analytics and customer engagement model and their own decision support tools but many of the emerging farmers are still making the first steps and uh just pulling together their first uh pieces of data to create their first dashboards so overall i think um we are a bit behind but the interesting is uh interestingly it is changing now and uh if before quoted we have some people perceiving this as a nice to have today more and more pharma companies perceive digital as a must-have capability and trying to really catch up was an interesting quote that was said by satya nadella microsoft ceo last year uh where he said that in two months we made more digital progress than in the previous uh two years um and that's true because all of the health care moved due to covet uh on the um online um there was 400 increase in telemedicine call more than 60 percent of doctors prefer virtual virtual visits from the reps and this is here to stay we had a survey uh last year on the quarterly basis so um in summer and in fall and then repeating in the winter uh about the doctor's preferences for engagement with manufacturers with pharma companies and um obviously uh everything went uh very much online and digital at the beginning of covet pandemics but even as we are coming out of pandemics a lot of those preferences are staying put a lot of those preferences are for the long term because doctors now realize how much easier it might be to talk to the rep via zoom or via call you don't have to schedule it and you can get the information that you need at the time when you need it so we expect and our survey recipients have confirmed that uh preference for digital channels will continue uh at the same time uh if you think about usage of the data for um the decision making internal decision making overpowering such processes as supply chain or you know hr analytics manufacturing um many of the commercial processes um that uh that that usage has also growing 64 of um respondents uh have invested in ai programs and data um collection and data transformation programs and yet uh there is still a room to grow a quarter of the companies that were surveyed by uh operational excellence and transformation report lack self-service business intelligence capabilities which means that they may have data but it's not at the fingertip of their decision makers and this is some of these gaps in ability to talk to customers digitally ability to provide the decision support to your um internal headwater personnel all of these gaps are really stopped being nice to have and are must have capabilities now so with that i'll transfer back to emma and she will um tee up the questions that we've collected uh for the last uh for the last month uh from you perfect thanks mariah um so we'll start this off um really interested to set the stage here in your opinion what is the scope of digital yeah it's an interesting question and i think if you ask all three of us here i think you'll get a different answer because if you ask maria she will talk about the scope is all about the customer interactions how do we make that experience better tom will talk about how do we how digital can improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of commercial operations you know bring all of that ai to the floor um so it varies quite a bit uh but what we have seen in commercial there are three broad categories where digital is playing a big role one i would say is bringing a new products to the market these are digital products that are companion apps or perhaps even fda approved therapies which are up and coming and and really becoming a big driver for digital second i would say is the efficiency and effectiveness of how commercial processes are working bringing some of these automation ai components to elevate that third key one is the commercial essentially the customer interactions and the customer experience which maria's favorite topic is and making sure that you are delivering right insights and write content to your customers and understanding their behavior to uh improve your improve their experience with the interactions you have day in day out now these three topics are broadly um we have seen quite a bit getting traction in digital perfect thank you so much and um tom we want to know how does rethinking the digital change commercial operation um the change in commercial operation is going to be significant um as maria mentioned first of all we've seen quite a bit of an increase in the investments in this space we haven't seen true digital transformation yet but um i think it's only a matter of time before i get into this let me give a little bit of definition because commercial operations is one of these uh spaces as kapil says that means different things to different people so when i say commercial operations i view it in the broad sense of the term including activities like channel investment optimization field force design sizing structure alignment incentive compensation all the way to commercial execution and that when you view it in this sense of the term commercial operations has been somewhat insulated from digital transformation but that's going to change and we feel that's going to change because there's lots of room to improve if you take commercial operations today this is a space that is highly fragmented that is heavily siloed it's a space that is structured in cycles that are discrete dated based on data that becomes old very quickly and results in guidance that becomes irrelevant very quickly also to the different actors in your go to market strategy and digital gives organizations the opportunity to improve on all of that so first of all digital gives you the opportunity to address the silos digital will enable pharma organizations to enable truly holistic truly omni-channel go-to-market strategy and address and lower some of the big traditional silos that exist in pharma between sales and marketing for example but the second piece also is that digital is going to enable pharma to evolve from this set discrete process that is dated into a more continuous more agile operation that enables organization to have an understanding of the reality on the ground at all time and to provide guidance on how to react to this reality on the ground so in summary i think we feel the impact is going to be substantial it's going to be for the good uh and it's going to allow organizations to be more holistic in their go to market but also more dynamic absolutely so i mean tom what you described obviously sounds like a huge change so i'd be curious to see how companies handle that maria what have you seen in your experience when they are making this shift what do people need to keep in mind yeah it is a very big change and um and i think the biggest thing about it is that it's a different paradigm it's not a lot of people go into this digital transformation with the thinking that they're going to do exactly the same things that they did before but digitally and it's not that right amazon is not digital barnes noble it's a different business model it's a different uh you know it requires different capabilities and um uh you know i'll tell a quick story from my personal experience close to health care not quite pharma but um you know um pharmacy so you cbs and and then the um walgreens uh they did a lot of investment into digital um creating digital transformation and yet you try to order [Music] you know pills from them digitally and you will run into problems you know you will have to call or you will have to go like if you try as i have tried uh to get all my uh prescription delivery online um you will not succeed it will be hard whereas there are completely digitally enabled pharmacies like capsule where i now switch to capsule and there i never call anybody i've never talked to anyone it's all through text through text my doctor sends them a prescription and through text i order it to my house and it comes and that's it right so it's a very different business model it requires that you have all the capabilities lined up to it how you talk to customers how you supply how you kind of how your supply chain works right how you deliver this so um the difficulty of that is that you have to imagine reimagine your company from the top so one of the pieces that we see people who are kind of closer to this transformation is the sponsorship has to be from the top it has to be the sea level believing in the new business model and then there needs to be a very focused team who is um cross-functional who can talk about uh customers who can talk about supply chain who can talk about manufacturing who can talk about all aspects of the system and how they gonna work for this digital experience right and if your digital experience if you're trying to do this digital experience for a hospital or for a doctor or for a patient right those are very different digital experiences those are different use cases so there needs to be a focus on imagining these use cases and really uh lining up all the capabilities that you need to deliver them and many of them you already have or you will have but some of them and those are those pieces of information how the information flows and how it connects and how the customer uh will um uh will utilize it right those are the pieces that that need to be reimagined so basically it requires high level commitment and sponsorship um it uh you need to shrink the change so you need to maybe start with one business unit or one brand that is in the most need of this um and uh of course it's a um it's it's a new way of working required it's not just organizing kind of people the same people doing slightly different things it's reorganizing around those use cases and creating new teams who come with different expertise and enable that change and we do see some companies doing it kind of starting to do that more more effectively and we expect to start seeing it more perfect and i think maria that example you gave about the pharmacy completely resonated with me so i think that's a really good point to think about making that shift so thank you for that um and obviously with the shift to digital outcomes tons of data so i'd be curious to know what kind of data is needed what do we recommend is maybe a nice to have or essential data so phil do you want to tell us a little bit more about all the information that we're getting out of this yeah i think in 2006 somebody coined this term data is the new oil um and uh i know we're still talking about that and it is true i actually think that data is better than oil because see with like oil data is abundant it's not going to go away and you know you could reuse it over and over uh unlike coil and actually it gets better the more you use it the data gets better but the more of your algorithms are using so i think it's it's better than oil not just you know new oil yeah [Laughter] so coming back to the basic of the data i think for commercial if you look at sales activity which is coming out of your crm market access and and your master data these are the basic bread and butter that you want to start with another key thing that is important is all your omni-channel data which is every all your touch points whether it's from campaigns various websites ads you name it all of these um data that you're collecting that's is a good starting point for you to start your journey now you talked about what nice to have what are the new things that we've seen quite a bit of clients investing into is the visibility of the patient side to understand the journey so if you have patient support programs or perhaps claims or emr data these are also you know a key component that will enable the patient journey however i will mention it that there are therapeutic areas like rare disease or oncology over there these patient actually data is a must-have it's becoming a more not a nice to have but in some other therapeutic areas you know it could be a nice to have to give you an edge another nice to have component is if you have supply chain data or perhaps starting to use public data which can give you a huge upside once you blend all of this data together and as i mentioned the data is new oil it's the same thing you have to be able to find a way to extract value out of this oil and and the same way you need this data to come together it's not just important to have this data but to have it and integrated at one place and be able to access it absolutely i i could not agree more and i love that analogy about oil um so tell us you know in that vein too what capabilities and building blocks are really needed for digital to kind of harness and put the oil in the engine there to power that power yeah so so uh certainly if you have a bicycle this oil is not going to help you uh you will need an engine to harness the power as you said and what we would recommend i mean i've seen that the intake uh a platform that is integrating all your data uh especially at cloud is is a foundational component and why at cloud i mean you need something that can expand as your needs expanding as you're venturing out into new data sources into new um therapeutic areas so cloud is the way to go and also it helps you reduce your upfront spend uh with the you know just get you jump start second thing is a customer 360 degree view and when i say customer it could be an xcp or an accounts or you know payers it's essentially all of your customers in in this space that you want to have all the touch points in one place and and that allows you to have the interactions uh and and be able to see and touch it um then there is uh once you have all of this data you want to make sure that you have been able to catalog it be able to tell what data is what how can you use it what are some of the rules behind it to be able to build trust in this data and be able to understand the level of quality that you're providing for this data and last but not least the apps and the tools that are needed to be able to use the insights in your organization there are many many apps and analytics that are already being provided on the cloud by various vendors that are already pre-built out there you can leverage them or there are apps which are open source which allows an analyst or data scientist to be able to touch and feel and experiment with this data and and perhaps eventually industrialize some of the good use cases that you have so those are some of the things that allows you to bring the data together uh understand the data and be able to have trust in it and be able to make sense out of it perfect and i love that you brought up the point about analytics too which is the perfect segue and looking at it from the digital experience so maria i would really love to know from your expect from your perspective you could share an example relevant to your space about the typical analytics required that you've seen well there is really a lot and it's kind of hard to see the role but if we are here kind of focusing on specifically commercial and uh um uh i think there are a few uh building blocks of analytics that uh right now most of their uh advanced companies already have and maybe some of their um others catching up uh so um you know next best action is one of these uh analytical um uh pieces that um we we see more and more companies have uh and it's a complex ai driven model that can suggest the best sequence of interactions the best touch points what is the channel of the touch point uh and even lately what would be what should be the content of the touch point right and that next best action can uh involve many sub components uh depending on what the uh what your drug requires right and what kind of um events are meaningful so these various event predictors are kind of part of next best action but they also can be valuable in their own right um and right now there are so um so many amazing uh predictive models that we've seen recently right uh ability to predict the next uh patient for the rare disease ability to uh prevent the switches that the doctors make and you know get off and on the brand um and uh propensity of doctor to uh you know put on the next level of therapy uh for various uh next uh to select the the next brand uh depending on various content that that he receives and and many many others um and there uh and another line of analytics that is very quickly uh evolving is the content analytics right so more and more we are able to uh see what uh our doctors our patients click on uh and uh what type of content they uh prefer the interesting thing that blew my mind recently was that apparently people open emails differently some people like would open with identical emails some people would open it if there are human faces in the header and some people would not and other people would open it if there is some science like some uh you know petri dishes on it and and some people would i mean it's just amazing how much of of um things that we think never think about and never think it matters but it really does matter and so we can meaningfully and and significantly increase the level of the um acceptance of our message or opening of our channels by analyzing what each particular customer is looking for what are their predilections are what content they react to and also what their questions are so it's it it's just amazing what what can be predicted dynamic targeting is another piece where uh i think uh in the olden days and tom has mentioned that right in the olden days we were doing targeting once a quarter and now that's not good enough right we have data that comes daily we have um you know things change uh customers move events patient events happen so our ability to say hey this week focus on x right um that is that is very critical and we believe that it gives you again significant lift versus the quarterly targeting so uh i mean there are many many more uh and um and again it's just amazing to see how uh analytics has evolved in the last like literally three years right like three five years maybe uh but but but it is uh an arms race right now between the companies to create the smartest analytics and to uh to drive as much as possible its decision making and uh engage with customer engagement with more and more sophisticated analytics absolutely now it's very interesting the way we consume content and all of the data points there um so i'd like to shift soon into some of the questions from our audience but control quickly some of this sounds expensive so can you talk about if small pharma can afford all of these capabilities um so a short answer is absolutely um i actually work with many many small pharma and emerging pharma companies helping them launching their first product and uh i remember the whole digital and omni channel used to be yeah we will launch our product we'll get to it afterwards but now since the covet actually everybody's asking that hey what digital capabilities omni channel we will launch when we uh launch our product so it is changing it's sort of becoming their must-have now and frankly i actually look at emerging pharma in the small format they have advantage over the big guys i mean they are so nimble decision making is quick three people get and bring a pizza and they can make a decision versus the big guys would have this month's worth of committees and you know meetings that are going on and business cases so that's where they are you know moving forward and how they can afford it many of the capabilities that i mentioned earlier or even the analytics that maria were talking about they're available on the cloud by either many softwares or service vendors and these products and emerging pharma companies the small pharma they don't have any baggage they don't have any prop large investments made in other things so they are very quick to jump on these capabilities and and buy these and be able to jump start their programs at a very little cost because all of this is available as a subscription basis so yes i've seen them working as a matter of fact i would say over 90 percent already started their journey uh into the digital and and a few of them i've seen they have seen tremendous results and and you know easily beating the big guys into this game very very quickly nice yeah that's impressive small but mighty i like that um the question from our audience tom this one's for you um they're asking do you have more examples of how to measure effects for instance like customer satisfaction of a numerous amount of hdp's well um to take on the pill if data is the new oil i would say measurement and learning is the new gold so with digital uh there's there's a whole lot of new data that's available to measure the impact of your campaigns you have things like emails website clicks videos seen banner ads viewed and all of this data gives your organization the ability to understand the engagement that they're creating uh in the customer base and i i think there's there's some some really good techniques um attribution models to understand the impact of each one of these individual tactics and how they contribute to the end effect um but one of the things that we would recommend to organizations to want to to have a more holistic understanding of the impact of a new program is to be a little more scientific about it to conduct true scientific experiments maybe implement in the form of early experienced teams and then do true test controls to compare how these programs are faring compared to the rest of their organizations so i think there's there's a lot of good techniques to to really assess the impact the last thing that i'd say on this is when you think about measurement you can't continue to measure only on a yearly basis or a quarterly basis you need to have a measurement program that is continuous that allows you to have a real-time understanding of the realities on the ground so that you can take action in in a short amount of time to respond to a given situation that has occurred on the ground perfect no i love that and i like the slogan you came up with i think we should put that on the shirt i think we have time for about two more questions here um one looking at evolving technology and how companies can keep up so compels tell us a little bit about that um how can organizations enable data and analytics capabilities and keep up with things that are constantly changing yeah i mean that's holy grail right the faster better cheaper way to get there um i i think one of the things we've seen a big shift uh personally i have not seen anyone coming up with these multi-year programs and you know building these uh giant capabilities because frankly nobody has patience these days uh you know everybody's looking for a fast turnaround time to market is key so those big programs are gone those days are long gone um a lot of time and now uh the the quicker way to implement this is looking for a platforms that are already available on the cloud um and look for something that is more verticalized so don't look for something that's plain vanilla and you're still figuring it out how to you know design it for your organization there are many platforms out there which are verticalized and provide you accelerators frankly to do your bread and butter stuff very very quickly out of the box bringing best best in class practices which industries already following so leverage some of those don't need to reinvent the wheel if it's already you know done for you uh then focus on some of the use cases don't try to you know boil the ocean pick something that you have you know a good sense of what what value it will generate and frankly look for stakeholders who are ready to jump in to this digital revolution with you because as you heard earlier change is very difficult this is not the same all the way to of doing things you need a mindset which is different and you want a partner that's going to work with you and once you show success build uh you know capability and credibility you build on top of it incrementally add value and and continue to develop that and focus on you know what is more important um to you in your organization whether it's compliance whether it's uh you know making sure that all the good data is coming together and you are enabling data science so some of those goals you need to align together and and that should do it i perfectly i think that's a great idea partnership is definitely key um in the same vein too we'll end with this question for you tom um just thinking about where to get started we have a senior leader who is in the audience that needs to implement a new technology infrastructure but just has no idea how to get that going so what advice will you leave our audience with today to begin to make these changes so we've talked a lot about data so that would be kind of a good place to look building your data capabilities um building your learning engine would be another kind of good area to explore or things like building kind of your agile local and omni-channel planning capabilities all of these i think are good places to start but i think one of the things that i would advise anyone who is starting in this is uh first of all to not reinvent the wheel right i think you don't want anyone to get engaged in an initiative where they're going to take three years to build something that already exists and and build something that will only be a pale comparison compared to the capability that that already exists so do your due diligence do a robot robust buy versus build analysis uh to make sure that you're really investing your dollars uh where it counts and then last thing that i'll say maria touched upon upon it is you know a digital transformation program is a program that's gonna encounter some resistance right you're as you're building something that's gonna change the way a good part of your organization operates you're going to encounter resistance so make sure that you prioritize also change management make sure that you articulate where you're going a long-term vision that addresses the potential resistance that stakeholders may have and highlights the value that these stakeholders may get in the new capabilities make sure also that you recruit senior level sponsorship to make sure that you get the right level of support once you hit the bumps and then make sure that you're proactive in your communication but good luck i think these are a few ideas uh hopefully they're useful perfect one one thing i learned is don't do it yourself find a good partner this thing you know there are many of them who have already done it in the journey don't do it on your own very sage advice i like that a lot um we're at times so for those of you that we didn't get to your question today we'll be happy to follow up uh after the session so we hope you can join us again june 9th for our next webinar emerging pharma first launch and partnering insights from 2011 to 2020. so maria time to pills you were amazing presenters today thank you so much and we hope the audience enjoys it thank you for having us thank you thank you everyone thanks everyone you