Andrew “AJ” Ploszay, PhD, is the Senior Vice President, Digital Office & Chief Digital Officer at IQVIA.
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In the past 18 months, companies — regardless of their industry focus — have experienced a rapid evolution in how they operate, interact with customers and manage their workforce. The pandemic has propelled new business models and transformative initiatives that allow for greater innovation, scalability and flexibility. And we’ve learned that speed is the new business requirement. The world now moves at a more dynamic pace, faster than at any other point in human history. The capabilities at our disposal — be it data, analytics or technology — have increased at the speed of Moore’s law, causing some firms to struggle to adapt to the rate of change.
In the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry, the core capabilities of companies have not changed (medicine development, regulatory oversight, etc.), but how firms engage with healthcare practitioners and customers has begun to evolve. The 100-year-old process of face-to-face interactions just doesn’t work anymore whether due to the pandemic or the individual’s desire to just find the information online.
This leaves companies struggling as they face an uncertain future. Executives planning for 2022 have been forced to make an educated hypothesis of, “I think this is what’s going to happen, and I need to invest in a certain set of capabilities based on that scenario.” This new model of customer engagement and operations has pushed firms outside of their comfort zone and encouraged executives to embrace data and analytics technology in a way it never has before.
Integration of these solutions into everyday processes is the future. Be it data, analytical capabilities or automated technologies, the world is demanding that information be integrated to deliver at the pace or rate of change that is occurring in the market. Without these rapid insights, companies may fail to properly engage their customers and lose their industry leadership position.
Those executives who see success in engaging with their customers and adapting to this rate of change have embraced two concepts: humility and emotional intelligence.
Gone are the days when an executive could strategize success by sitting in an ivory tower and coming up with their best plan. The world has evolved at such a rate of change that life science executives now need to adopt a new way of interacting and forming partnerships. Organically tackling a challenge is no longer possible. Data, analytical insights and partnerships will help increase the speed of change as these companies lend their expertise in the form of technology solutions and customer engagement.
Successful customer engagement — be it a patient, healthcare professional or healthcare organization in the life sciences market — happens when executives embrace emotional intelligence and truly understand their needs, personalize outreach and react at the speed of change to their feedback. These insights come when the use of data and analytical capabilities are adopted. It brings intelligence back into the organization along with the agility and dynamism to pivot. Large, siloed organizations will encounter challenges to do this successfully unless change is embraced and a new rate of business speed is implemented.
Life sciences businesses face a primary challenge: The way they have done things in the past is at odds with how they need to work in the future. From a change management perspective, it may sound messy to say get out of your silos, smash things together to form a new process and abandon the tried-and-true way. However, executives need to ask themselves if they have the emotional intelligence and humility to admit they cannot organically tackle those things alone. The reality is the capabilities that they have developed organically are not going to be the capabilities that they need to have moving forward.
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