By Dr. Andrée K Bates, May 2011
Are you noticing that you are suffering from data overload? The Pharmaceutical Industry has a lot of data but much of it, although interesting, is not being used effectively to create both a competitive advantage and reliable results. It is easy enough to tell if yours is.
Can you answer ‘Yes’ to these questions below?
- Is your brand’s sales and market share steadily increasing share more than your competitors?
- Is your CFO constantly increasing your budget more than other brand’s budgets?
- Is your brand team the toast of the company?
I hope so. However, in many cases, the data is not allowing these results as actionable insights that lead to growth are not being pulled correctly from the data.
The Pharmaceutical Industry is the largest sector of purchasers of CRM data, which promised to provide a flow of information and usable insight… but, in many cases, this has not happened. Instead, companies have struggled with complex, and largely unused, installations. Unfortunately, the end results have been wasted money, lost revenue and no real improvement in results. The Industry is also a heavy user of market research data but again, much of it - although interesting - is not bringing the required insights to accelerate the growth of brands.
Whilst both research data and technology can bring vast improvements to results, one also requires measurement and insight to understand who the really profitable customers are, or can be, what these customers really want and need, what is really influencing them to prescribe, whether you are providing it and, if not, what you need to change in order to do so and what would make them loyal to your brand. In order to do this, analytics of some kind is required. The biggest underlying problems appear to be:
- Not effectively understanding the real drivers of behavior and focusing on what people say rather than understanding the real underlying causes of why your customers are doing what they do (resulting in the market share result you have).
- Not linking the marketing activities to a financial metric of value to the company.
- Not having robust measures (marketing metrics) in accessible desktop portals that not only the marketers and analysts have access to, but all key members of the company team, including the CEO and CFO and CMO, which they can access instantly, look at where the results are, what this means to the company and see the value being realized.
While most companies do have analytics of some kind, and each face their own specific challenges, the most common issues contributing to the above appear to be:
- Difficulty in selecting the right data to use. There is data overload and often the data that is available is not the data required to make the decisions that will allow the brand to grow. Choosing what data to focus on is critical.
- Focusing on the wrong metrics. Focusing on sales calls per day, for example, rather than also focusing on the quality of the calls and their impact on sales and how that can be driven more. Or focusing on ‘intent to prescribe’ rather than what drives actual results. It is not ‘intention’!
- Focusing on too many metrics. Many metrics are often used, but these often are not really mapped against key business drivers, and some may even be conflicting.
- Using the wrong analytical approaches for the Industry. Companies relying on historical data in their analytics when their environment is dynamically changing, or looking at marketing intervention triangles in a multi-channel environment and so on. The analytical technique must fit the Industry environment in which you are operating.
- One off solutions. You can’t go to the gym once and expect to be fit and healthy. You can’t conduct an ROI analysis and expect to know all your ROI moving forward. Any analytics must be connected to the business process, decisions and objectives or the impact will remain limited.
- Resistance. So many marketers rely on ‘gut feel’ and intuition. That can be valuable with some Managers who have a very strong grasp of the market but unless these are combined with the precision of fact based mathematical analytics, they will not reach optimal results.
These are only a handful of the most common issues we see. There are more. The Pharmaceutical market is moving rapidly and the environment is complex, requiring the analytics to get the right information at the right time to the right people to allow actionable, reliable results.
So, what’s the solution?
It depends what you are trying to achieve but the book ‘Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning’ outlined a three-part formula:
- 1. The processes have to be repeatable and organized in a disciplined manner
- 2. The most suited people for the job must be properly led and organized
- 3. The technology must be one that everyone can easily use
How can this be implemented? Let’s look at a case study to find out.
CASE STUDY: Early in lifecycle but growth not matching competitors
BACKGROUND
This brand had been launched for 2 years and had grown to a degree but not by an impressive amount as anticipated. Its key competitor was sitting on a huge market share and continuing to grow while this brand struggled along at a very modest market share. A plethora of analyses had been conducted and followed but the brand continued to struggle and not grow.
ACTIONS
94.8 Dashboard Analytics were then employed as a last resort measure to attempt to impact the brand's growth before a decision as to whether to continue marketing the brand or not was made. Key barriers to uptake of the brand were uncovered that had been previously thought not to be a problem in their other analyses. In addition, a tricky but significant issue was also uncovered for this brand. The team took all the data and ran extra mathematical analyses on it to see what was underlying this issue and how it could also be dealt with.
The results of both sets of analytics were then utilized to make recommendations as well as an action plan for the brand, which was easily accessible via an online portal dashboard. The dashboard allowed for scenarios to be tested (e.g. ‘if I move the slider for my market share up by 1%, what changes would I have to have made to get that result?’) for greater interactivity and buy-in from the team.
RESULTS
The brand doubled in market share within 2 months of implementation of the recommendations and after 6 months had increased by 8% market share.
CONCLUSIONS
To reach this optimal state, difficult decisions often have to be made. However, sales and marketing actions built from this foundation can support or cause changes to strategies driving intelligent actions, and guide tactics that result in reliable outcomes and results. Although all the pieces of the puzzle are within reach, they must be put together into a clear, understandable and meaningful picture.