Successful commercial execution in the biopharma industry can transform patients’ lives. The process from identifying healthcare professionals (HCPs) to educating them about treatment options requires real-time, connected coordination across marketing and sales teams for maximum effect. Despite digital transformation efforts accelerating, many companies still struggle with disconnected teams and processes. A digital divide exists between brand strategy and sales execution. Biopharma companies fail to coordinate their digital engagement for nearly three out of four doctors The result: missed opportunities with physicians and limited commercial impact.
Well-executed AI initiatives can bridge the digital divide and help biopharma shift from static strategies to dynamic, data-driven commercial models. Marketing and sales teams can then quickly adapt to changing business requirements, seamlessly connect strategy to execution, and take a data-driven, predictive approach to meeting doctor and patient needs.
Traditional HCP targeting is decades-old and slow, using decile-based analysis to identify and prioritize physicians. External consultants typically spend months reviewing backward-looking prescription data. By the time sales gets their target lists from marketing, the information is stale because of the time lag and manual effort involved. When market conditions change, an entirely new analysis must be done, taking even more time.
If AI is used in commercial operations today, it’s a black box and largely remains a consultant’s playground. Now, off-the-shelf, scalable AI solutions can automate in near real-time what takes consultants months. It can evaluate hundreds of thousands of physicians and millions of de-identified longitudinal patient records across many regions to determine the best doctors to target, understand their prescribing behavior, and determine what outcomes were for patients.
The best part? An AI-powered approach delivers real-time insights for marketing to make immediate adjustments. Teams can quickly pivot in response to market shifts, competitive changes, and evolving brand objectives.
Commercial teams have accumulated numerous tools such as CRM, business intelligence, sales planning and forecasting, virtual engagement, and content management tools to enhance field performance. Sales teams use an average of 10 tools, but this fragmented approach makes it hard to gather and deliver insights to the field in a simple, user-friendly way. Understandably, when it comes to AI, biopharma is hesitant to introduce yet another tool. To further bridge the gap between brand strategy and field operations, AI must integrate into the ways sales reps are already working. For example, companies can leverage their existing data, run AI, and deliver intelligence to CRM, which is at the center of every sales rep’s workflow, without significant change management or disrupting their current tools. AI-driven insights can be seamlessly blended into sales reps’ routines as they prepare for their week, day, or individual calls with HCPs.
Marketing and sales play critical roles in keeping physicians informed about possible treatments for their patients. The pace of innovative new medicines and therapies make it hard for doctors to stay up to date. Data shows that when digital-savvy doctors get the scientific information they need, they’re more likely to adopt new treatment options.
This is why biopharma companies should invest heavily in their field force. While AI is revolutionizing drug discovery and clinical trials, it remains largely untapped in commercial operations. There is a significant opportunity for AI to replace old ways of working, automate them, and make them much faster and much more efficient. The future of patient care hinges on closing the digital gap between marketing and sales. Every biopharma marketer and sales rep shares a common mission to accelerate time to therapy for patients everywhere.
A more efficient and data-driven process closes gaps in care and enhances healthcare delivery. In the long run, AI can help drive more efficient healthcare systems, enable HCPs to better serve their patients, and contribute to the broader mission of making healthcare more accessible and effective for everyone.
Philip Poulidis
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