Digital: Customer-Centric Transformations

The world is rapidly changing with numerous and frequent digital transformations. How can these be implemented and utilised effectively to ensure customer-centricity in the pharma sector?

Rob Verheul at Graphite Digital

Contemporary customer experience is all about creating value for customers, with companies in many sectors delivering incredible results by building their digital offerings around user needs. In the pharmaceutical industry, there is appetite to follow suit, but to achieve the success and build the connections witnessed in other sectors, organisations must shift to a customer-centric mindset. This is proving a struggle for pharma companies, as they are (by law) disconnected from their end user, and those customers have typically been reluctant buyers.

Historically, companies have not had to create value beyond the product itself. Healthcare systems have previously desired solutions to healthcare conditions, keeping companies removed from patients and healthcare providers, and negating any requirement for customer-centricity. However, the rise of digital products and increased focus on customer experience – both of which are driven by customer connection, insight and the exchange of value – necessitates a step change. While this is a small step for companies in other sectors, it is a giant leap for many in pharma – and it has been an uphill struggle.

There is no lack of people who think and care about the customers within pharma organisations, but organisational structures and commercial incentives still seem geared towards a product launch ‘push’ rather than the ‘push and pull’ required in contemporary digital relationships.

While many leaders are keen to adopt a customer-centric model, rigid business models and a risk-averse environment are creating a disconnect between intention and reality. To close the gap, those leaders need to act and ensure that all projects for digital transformation have appropriate executive sponsorship and clear signposting for what they are designed to achieve.

“...leaders need to act and ensure that all projects for digital transformation have appropriate executive sponsorship and clear signposting for what they are designed to achieve”

There are three tenets of digital transformation central to ensuring that pharmaceutical companies are on the right track: technology, processes and people. These elements come together to form a global digital experience framework, bringing together design, implementation, change management and governance to ensure that digital products deliver what the end user, whether that is a patient or a healthcare provider (HCP), needs.

Currently trending approaches for digital communication all require customer-centricity, with personalisation and more touchpoints for consumer-facing content presenting opportunities for pharmaceutical companies.

While product development will be a critical factor, and many leaders will likely be keen to pursue opportunities for digital therapeutics and software as a medical device (SaMD) – it is important that they are able to walk before they start trying to run. Tools and platforms are usually the biggest internal barrier to digital transformation. When companies dive in the deep end they often find that they are blocked by legacy systems and technologies, and need to invest in getting their digital house in order before they can reach the fullest extent of their potential. The lack of alignment between technologies can also result in a disjointed experience. For HCPs, who are often time-poor, stressed and distrustful of pharma-provided content as a baseline, a subpar experience can have a significant negative impact, while patients can become stressed and confused by unclear or inconsistent content across digital services.

Until these issues are addressed, companies are unable to make full use of their data, both to inform their product development and to enhance customers’ experiences. As pharma organisations invest in their digital tools and systems, they will be able to make data-informed decisions when it comes to engaging with their customers and end users, and ultimately build better and more customer-centric products.

Once pharma companies have laid the groundwork and have the technology, tools and systems in place, they will experience greater agility and will be able to process data on the scale required to deliver industry-leading products that meet users’ expectations. With greater personalisation and an ever-increasing need for consistency, taking a systematic approach to digital builds will be critical. Choosing the right technology and approach can make or break the success of a digital product, and with the constantly evolving needs of end users, using a design system model is often the most practical and efficient route. Working with digital building blocks that can be easily switched out or amended across multiple content streams can help to streamline development and facilitate quick and efficient up-scaling, while also delivering a clear and consistent experience for the customer.

Establishing processes to help digital transformation run smoothly is critical, and even more so when customer-centricity is part of the equation. When assessing new providers, tools and systems, it is important to have a clear idea of the features they need to deliver to meet customers’ needs, both now and in the future. This should be the first step in any procurement process.

Planning – and researching – will underpin the success of digital transformation. To become customer-centric, it is critical to understand what your end users will need and how your products will fit within their day-to-day lives through a programme of qualitative and quantitative research. When it comes to product development, continuous measurement and improvement will help to keep the project on track. After all, how do you know you are on the right path without knowing where you are? Researching an initial proposition and then validating the design with the proposed users is an important part of the process that is sometimes skipped because people make assumptions based on their own understanding or experiences rather than those of the intended user, or the cost and time required feels prohibitive.

It is a common misconception that speaking to patients and HCPs first-hand is hugely time-consuming and expensive, but it can be delivered in a lean way to support digital transformation projects. Baking even small-scale research into the process ensures that your digital products keep up to date with evolving consumer needs and remain customer-centric. In drug therapeutics, the approach has typically been to develop a product and move on to the next, but this mindset does not work when it comes to digital products. And often, the reason that digital products fail is because they are launched and considered done and dusted, which results in poor results for both the users and the company. After launch, companies must have processes in place to monitor how the product is used, identify areas for improvement and build a plan for continuous improvement.

Pharma companies are – and will continue to be – commercially driven, but where they were previously disconnected from the end user, the shift towards more digital communications and therapies requires teams to think about how they can start to engage and connect with both HCPs and patients. Commercial success now depends on customer-centricity, especially as the number of channels and touchpoints available for engagement continues to increase. To those on the front lines of product development, it is clear that a mindset shift is needed, but too often we find results are measured in ways that could potentially impede product success.

It is critical that pharma companies strike a balance between commercial and delivery, aligning what is needed to meet customers’ needs with existing priorities to ensure that everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. Showing how a commitment to customer-centricity contributes to broader business success is the best way to bring stakeholders onboard and to achieve this, research and detailed analysis is required.

As well as securing buy-in from stakeholders, companies must remember that digital transformation cannot succeed if the team does not know about the changes that have been made, or how they will impact their role. Onboarding teams from the beginning, updating them regularly and ensuring they receive appropriate training is critical for seeing return on both investment and effort.

The trends for patient empowerment and personalised medicine are not going anywhere. As the pharmaceutical industry continues to shift, driven by the needs and expectations of increasingly tech-savvy customers, businesses’ priorities will have to adjust to keep up. Legacy systems need to be updated so that companies can seize the opportunities emerging in the pharmaceutical sector. With solid technology that can support data analysis and digital products on the scale required, how processes that govern future development – and the people responsible for overseeing it – are managed, could make or break organisations. We are in the midst of the biggest shift ever experienced by the pharmaceutical industry, and it is unrealistic to expect to continue as normal in the face of mass digital transformation. Customer-centricity needs to underpin organisations’ plans as they undergo these changes, leading to a sector that delivers results for both companies and their customers.