What are the biggest challenges biopharma companies face in achieving commercial excellence today?

The medicines landscape has evolved rapidly over the years. Biopharma companies have now shifted from mass market production to specialty-focused portfolios, which has created increasing complexity for scientific content, Go-To-Market models and more layered ways of working for all stakeholders involved. 

This has also consequently impacted the way biopharma companies launch and market new products to customers. Brand launches in the current age now need to be more innovative, differentiated and personalized to deliver commercial impact. At the same time, biopharma companies need to become more efficient and effective and leverage the right data to inform a successful commercial strategy.

The industry currently lacks a single, unified way to talk about common data elements for the life sciences market, and there is no one single standard when it comes to data associated with healthcare professionals (HCPs). This is a critical aspect that needs to change. A connected engagement model is critical for driving efficiency and removing silos and will be crucial if biopharma companies want to remain relevant in such a competitive industry. This is something we are looking to help enable the industry to get better at. 

How vital are data-driven insights for a successful brand launch, particularly in engaging HCPs?

The right data is critical to every step of a successful brand launch, from market landscaping, to identifying the right HCPs and crafting the right personalized engagement strategy, and continuously optimizing a launch once it has begun. A solid data foundation will also empower biopharmas to make more informed decisions for commercial excellence. 

At Veeva, we believe that good data is better than more data – high quality HCP data will make the industry more effective, and the right software to support this will make brand launches and commercial operations more efficient. Leveraging the right data will help pharmaceutical companies build more productive field teams through greater HCP segmentation, curate content that is relevant to their target audiences by understanding HCPs’ interests and motivations, and build a more engaging customer journey that will ultimately deliver a successful brand launch that is competitive with their peers. 

How does a common data architecture help break down silos within life sciences organizations?

As the industry continues to evolve and adopt new data and software into their organizations, various names and formats are often used to describe the same information. This poses a challenge for efficiency and interoperability for the life sciences industry. Currently no other industry standards exist for operational data about healthcare professionals (HCPs), healthcare organizations (HCOs), clinical operations and products & diseases.

A Common Data Architecture (CDA) for life sciences will help the industry get more efficient by providing high quality and standardized ways of working. This ensures that software applications, data products and people in the life sciences industry can operate and work together with greater consistency and accuracy, increasing speed, efficiency and quality of data management. 

Our goal at Veeva is to create the taxonomy in data by establishing a CDA for life sciences to improve the industry collectively. By doing so, create a common understanding within and between organizations in the space so that they can build, maintain and develop more accurate integrations and analytics projects that will ultimately impact the industry positively.  

What emerging trends will shape biopharma companies' commercial strategies?

As the industry grows more competitive, we are witnessing a shift in priorities for biopharmas to reinvent their business model so that they can deliver impact both for patients and investors. Pruned pipelines, a greater focus on new treatment modalities such as gene therapy and precision medicine, and more specialty-focused portfolios will have an impact on the way biopharma companies go to market with their solutions. 

As a result, we’re witnessing a shift in the way biopharma companies interact with their customers. As compared to mass market production from before, these new emerging fields of medicine have greater emphasized the need for continuous and compelling HCP engagement and education. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted every facet of our society, and the life sciences industry is also no different. We understand that biopharmas are looking to leverage Generative AI in their operations, and we aim to support customers and partners as they develop GenAI solutions with our Veeva AI Partner Program and Vault Platform capabilities. AI enablement is critical for existing platforms, and Vault CRM provides biopharma companies with a choice of which engines and technologies they want to leverage, so that they can focus on delivering more customer centric engagement models. 

Why is digital transformation crucial for biopharma, and what risks do companies face if they delay adoption?

Digital transformation is now imperative for the modern biopharma organization – however, the speed at which they do so, and the solutions they adopt will have a lasting impact on commercial success. The technology, tools and operating models to fully realize an ambitious digital and analytics transformation must be carefully considered. 

The right digital foundation should eliminate inefficiencies in workflows commonly found in legacy systems and manual processing, and should also provide more comprehensive and fully integrated data that can help to accelerate insights and provide the right benchmarks and building blocks for innovation. Having the right digital infrastructure and platforms to unify sales, medical, marketing and regulatory teams can have a profound change on a biopharma’s success. It can shrink timelines for drug discovery and clinical development, and also provide robust insights and analytics needed to take these drugs to market successfully by enabling more successful marketing and holistic campaigns. 

Most biopharmas would have already begun the process of digital transformation – however, it is critical that the industry makes a concerted shift from legacy to connected software and data to streamline workflows and improve overall organization effectiveness.