Customer Centricity in Life Sciences

April 16, 2012

By Melonie Warfel  

April 16, 2012 | Guest Commentary | A fundamental requirement for success in the life sciences industry is the ability to communicate effectively and in a timely manner with all customers (i.e. health care professionals and patients). In an ideal world, life sciences companies would have all the information about any given customer at their fingertips. However, even if this were possible, the information is of little value if you cannot utilize it to better serve your customers at the point of interaction, across all contact channels and organizational silos.  

Although the idea of customer centricity has been around as a concept for some time it has proven to be a difficult hurdle to overcome. According to Wikipedia, “Customer centricity refers to the orientation of a company to the needs and behaviors of its customers. Through this approach the customer becomes the central platform from which the organization operates and any decisions taken are viewed from the customer's point of view.” 

The traditional CRM model for the Life Sciences industry was for armies of sales representatives to educate Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) on new products with the goal of having those KOLs influence the prescribing behavior of the “whitespace” physicians and other prescribers. Sales representatives relied on back-end applications to provide them with information on their customers, but there weren’t applications that could provide a 360-degree view that allows for true customer centricity. 

Drivers for Change  

There are multiple drivers for changing this behavior. The Internet has provided a fundamental driver by providing on-demand product information to multiple customers.  No longer does the information on products flow from the sponsor to the KOL to the prescribers. Thanks to the Internet’s pervasiveness, patients are far more vigilant and informed–often approaching their prescribers with information on new compounds and procedures and demanding consideration of these products for treating their diseases. 

Additionally, there have been increasingly stringent regulations concerning the reporting of adverse events. Here, technology has provided the foundation for reporting of adverse events from patients, health care providers and clinical investigators; now, this information is readily available to everyone.  

Another driver is the advent of “The Sunshine Act” which requires manufacturers to report gifts and payments made to physicians and teaching hospitals. The goal of The Act is to ensure transparency regarding the relationship between sponsors and physicians or research facilities.  Failure to accurately report on these activities can result in:  

  • Financial penalties;   
  • Damage to corporate image and reputation;   
  • Increased scrutiny by government agencies.  

Benefits of a Customer-Centric View  

A true 360-degree view that provides customer centricity presents relevant customer data from multiple legacy sources including contacts/accounts databases, prescriber data, sampling, clinical, safety and past interactions from all channels (including social media such as Facebook and Twitter).  To be useful, the presentation of information should be tailored to the customer and specific situation in order to provide a foundation for appropriate action. The customer-centric model paves the way for personalized service experiences with increased production line efficiency. Ideally, integration of all systems in real time provides a single interface to manage customer interactions, resulting in reduced response time and more consistent service. By intelligently automating core business functions—such as information around clinical trials and adverse event case management—this new approach can transform the way organizations interact with customers, business partners and regulators. The result: streamlined operations and faster time to value by bringing new products to market quicker.  

For example, advanced business process management technology enables organizations to directly capture business requirements, manage validation activities and projects within the same system, and automatically produce specialized documentation and audit information. This enables increased agility, visibility and control. Process-driven customer interactions provide situationally appropriate processes that dynamically change based on the customer and situation, ensuring organizations deliver appropriate information at the right time, over the most relevant channel. Those who take this approach can provide flexible and adaptable rules specialized for various regions, allowing for the automatic adjustment of processes to account for new information, regulatory mandates and other criteria. They can thereby respond dynamically and proactively with recommended next-best actions that align the process with the user, intent, situation, expected ROI and other business metrics.     

The move toward a more customer-centric organization can be achieved by leveraging advancements in technology to support agility, transparency and collaboration across the organization and with external customers. The progression of creating a true 360-degree view of the customer is well under way and will accelerate as life sciences organizations discover the transformative nature of this approach as a way to grow market share.   

Melonie Warfel is the Director, Life Sciences Industry Solutions at Pegasystems. She can be reached at Melonie.Warfel@Pega.com