Blog
Moore's Law and The Sales Cycle
How to transform customer engagement strategies for an omnichannel world
AJ Ploszay, Senior Vice President, Digital Office IQVIA
Apr 07, 2022

Data-driven innovation is moving at a more dynamic pace than at any other point in human history, and healthcare is at the forefront of this trend. Approximately 30% of the world’s data volume is now being generated by the healthcare industry, and by 2025, the compound annual growth rate of data for healthcare will reach 36 percent. This acceleration provides life sciences companies an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine how and where they engage with customers and the messages they send.

The question now is, how can life sciences companies take advantage of this confluence of activities to drive a more successful and sustainable business model?

Technology gives us the power to personalize interactions, and to bring the right message to customers at the point of decision-making through whatever channel is most relevant to them. These channels can include face-to-face meetings, Zoom calls, webinars, emails, virtual presentations, help desk support, and other interactions.

The platforms exist to make this customized engagement a reality. However, it is only achievable if business leaders are willing to change their behavior and create a company culture where the field force and marketing teams are incented to embrace entirely new ways of working.

We’ve seen many industries adopt e-commerce, data-driven advertising, and customized selling as ways to better engage their customers. However, the life sciences industry has been slower to accept the digital transformation of sales and marketing.

Push and pull

In many ways, life sciences is among the most innovative industries in the world. We bring together the greatest scientific minds to cure diseases and control pandemics, often through groundbreaking collaborations, as has been the case with COVID-19.

But companies in this industry are less adaptable when it comes to how they market and sell life-saving solutions. We’ve long relied on a business model where customer engagement requires face-to-face interactions instigated by a field force whose sole job is to drive awareness of new medicine through a push-based model for sales.

It was a reliable strategy for decades, but it is no longer enough. Life sciences professionals were pushing for more digital interactions before the pandemic, and shutdowns caused by COVID-19 only accelerated this demand.

To succeed in the marketplace today, business leaders must shift to an omnichannel approach that delivers information and personalized content via whatever live and/or virtual channels most appeal to their customer base.

It’s been a slow transformation, but we are beginning to reach the tipping point. C-suiters see the value proposition of providing custom experiences to meet the needs of every customer. By providing clear and succinct information across all channels, they ensure patients get the right medicine at the right time, while the business maximizes the sales potential in their value chain.

Purpose-built

The good news for business leaders who are ready to begin this journey is they don’t have to start from scratch. The technology already exists to enable this transformation, though it’s important to choose wisely.

Many tech companies offer generic sales and marketing platforms that can be adapted for any industry. But the life sciences include a unique and highly regulated sales environment that requires solutions that are purpose-built for their client interactions.

Partnering with human data science experts like those at IQVIA ensures that the solutions deployed will meet the needs of clients, the field force, and the patients we all serve. Through these partnerships, life sciences companies are able to tap into the much larger ecosystem of data, analytics and advanced technology necessary to evolve their sales strategy for the future.

Pick and choose

IQVIA has gone through the digital transformation process with many customers, which has helped us build a differentiated commercial engagement model that focuses on seamless engagement via every channel. Whether marketing teams are engaging with patients directly, meeting with healthcare organizations, or talking to individual healthcare professionals, our orchestrated solutions allow them to deliver the right message, at the right time, via the channel that is most likely to impact their treatment decision-making process.

And the personalization of customer engagement has only just begun. We will continue to develop modular, interoperable capabilities, giving customers the flexibility to choose the data, services, and technology that they need today, and to build on those solutions as their needs evolve. In this way, we can meet the needs of big pharma companies and emerging biotech alike, ensuring a custom solution for every company.

Related solutions

Contact Us