Digital Intentions Aren't Enough!

From smart phones to smart cities, from banking to education, digital is fundamentally altering our world. Technology is already impacting healthcare, the digital imperative will disrupt the commercial landscape in Pharma, which means companies must evolve rapidly to thrive with new business model.

Digital is already a hot topic in the pharma industry and every marketeer understand that digital will play an important role in the era of increasingly informed customers and disruptive tech entrants in healthcare domain. From last few years, globally, Pharma companies are rapidly moving towards digital to reach and engage customers.

A recent study by EY “Reinventing pharma sales and marketing through digital in India”, has highlighted the adoption of digital by Indian pharmaceutical companies and it is evident that Indian Pharma is lagging in digital journey against its global peers. As per the report (with no surprise), less than 10 per cent of Indian Pharma companies have a comprehensive digital strategy in place. It is observed that digital intent among pharma leaders is strong but execution is one of the key challenge being faced by many organizations. The report also refers to the Digital Maturity Index to measure digital readiness and sales and marketing plans. The five stages of digital maturity reported by EY are Beginners, Conservative, Explorers, Practitioners and Disruptors. Report highlighted, that in India most players are beginners and conservatives, with very few evolving into explorers wherein at Global most companies are explorer and companies making a move toward being digital practitioners.

I believe, our commercial landscape needs to be transformed with digital revolution and we should focus on customer experience (CX) as the primary driver of our commercial model. We need to move away from the “push” mentality of the past towards “pull” model. But this requires profound changes in our thinking and execution. It will impact every corner of our organization: our strategy, our people and skills, the products and services we offer. In other industries, multichannel marketing has evolved into “omnichannel” and the focus is now on CX. Now it’s the turn of Pharma to embrace Digital. As organizations move forward in this journey; Pharma leaders need to acknowledge that digital transformation is a journey, its not about just sourcing technology and it may take up to three-to-five years from going digital to being digital. We need to develop strategies that embrace digital beyond the mere development of digital add-ons to the current commercial strategies. As report also highlighted that most of pharma companies are trying to be customer-centric but with lack of strategic context, we must recognize that technology is not the strategy rather, it is an enabler.

It will be interesting to watch how pharma companies in India and globally transform their commercial models in the digital world. The report also highlights some interesting commercial trends that will reshape the future of pharmaceuticals sales and marketing.

Read full report from https://goo.gl/EebQDt