Accelerating Pharma Transition to Omnichannel and Content Excellence in Australia: Which Path Will You Take?

With COVID-19 fast-tracking the pharmaceutical industry’s uptake of technology, a slow but sure shift to an omnichannel mindset has become increasingly important for success. For a more personalised HCP experience, it is vital for pharma companies to understand how to engage through the right channels with relevant and compelling content.

Earlier this month, Veeva’s APAC commercial team facilitated a discussion with representatives from the Australian pharma industry to share our thoughts on the latest market data and trends while also gathering valuable customer feedback.

Hybrid Engagement is Here to Stay

Veeva’s Australia Pulse data (May-June 2022) indicates that nearly 34,112 HCPs interacted with pharma at least once, and greater than 434,000 multi-channel interactions were recorded across 10 discrete channels (physical and virtual). This shows that expectations from HCPs on how they should engage and receive information is now changing, with many preferring a mix of virtual and in-person meetings.

HCPs with the highest level of industry engagement leverage the highest number of channels – this trend was apparent across multiple specialties like cardiology, dermatology to super specialties such as oncology and psychiatry. However, channel adoption varies significantly across top pharma companies, providing an opportunity for many to enhance the quality of engagement by adding more options to their HCP channel mix.

73% of participants at the event recognized that failure to get foundations right in setting up omnichannel marketing has become a big barrier to success. They noted that having access to the right solutions can enable the creation and easy push of tailored content to HCPs. Organisations that prioritised putting in place platforms with the right capabilities were able to efficiently engage HCPs with personalised and relevant content. This way, they can easily track success and effectiveness by measuring share of voice and rep productivity across various channels. As such, they are able to better measure HCP interaction by aligning execution metrics to recognition and rewards.

Balancing Push and Pull Strategy

While the goal is to engage on multiple platforms and increase touchpoints with HCPs, it is also important to avoid overwhelming them with content and to ensure every engagement is both meaningful and effective. Engagement should move away from the traditional one-sided “push” and instead shift to a more two-way conversation that empowers HCPs with the ability to access required information at a timing that is most convenient through a channel of their choice.

In addition, HCPs will still want the option to engage across multiple channels as they continue to derive higher value from these interactions. Therefore, once channels of engagement are in place, Digital Asset Management as a capability will remain a key differentiator between pharma companies to improve speed, consistency, efficiency and value to HCPs.

Making Informed Decisions with Data and Insights

67% of participants at the event felt that enabling data driven insights would be the next step towards establishing themselves as a digital transformation leader in the industry. Aside from laying the foundation with the right solutions and platform, having a detailed understanding of industry benchmarks and actionable insights will better inform marketing strategies and approach.

Learn more about how you can lead the way into the future of life sciences engagement at our upcoming APAC Commercial Summits in Sydney on 12 September 2022. Sign up here to register or contact us at apac_summit@veeva.com for more information.