case study:
Product launch and beyond: How emerging pharma companies can build and maintain launch momentum
Beghou Consulting helps emerging pharma companies maximize launch success with custom technology solutions.
CHALLENGE: MAXIMIZE SUCCESS AT PRODUCT LAUNCH
A successful product launch is critical for achieving a new product’s full potential. Get all the components right, and the company is primed for long-term market impact and commercial success. Fall short, and the company will fail to see a meaningful return on the significant time and money it invested in developing its new product. And, for emerging pharma companies – which often must make do with fewer resources than their Big Pharma counterparts – the stakes are even higher.
Everything from the competitive landscape to the company’s omnichannel marketing strategy contribute to the results of a product launch. Robust technology that eliminates siloes and provides valuable insights is crucial to an efficient and effective launch. And, while Big Pharma typically already has legacy systems in place, emerging companies have an opportunity to implement custom systems that are tailored to their needs and set them up for future growth.
Implementing technology solutions and processes must be done thoughtfully and strategically. An out-of-the-box solution can sometimes be easier in initial implementation but typically does not meet the various customer data management, analytics, and reporting needs of a company’s home office and field teams. These larger, out-of-the-box solutions aimed to cover generalized enterprise needs often can’t accommodate customizations to support change management and company growth, which could ultimately hinder launch success.
APPROACH: TWO TAILORED SOLUTIONS SUPPORT PRE- AND POST-LAUNCH EFFORTS
So, how can an emerging pharma company maximize success at launch and set itself up for future growth? We recently worked with a company to implement two custom, cloud-based solutions for launch. This company’s experience highlights the importance of implementing technology that fits an organization’s needs and improves efficiency and communication across teams to allow for an organized, strategic product launch.
Launch Tracker
First, the company created a launch planning tool which provided a one-stop-shop for all pre-launch activities and allowed for seamless communication across departments.
The tool included calendars and timelines, outlined launch processes, tracked critical pre-launch events, highlighted priorities, and incorporated a communication center to allow for cross-department planning. Having all of these pieces in one place allowed users to see how their scope of work impacted other departments that they may not otherwise work with. The launch tracker also incorporated dependencies and an alert system to notify users across teams if an event impacted the overall launch timeline. For example, if the Market Access team has not completed calls with key payors, the field force may need to reschedule calls to HCPs about the patient access process until the Market Access team has finalized GPO agreements. With the launch tracker, users on the sales team would be alerted to this change in the timeline.
By eliminating silos with a company-wide launch tool, each department can easily collaborate on launch activities with an inside look across all other departments. Stakeholders across the organization could monitor timelines and goals, and identify and resolve challenges quickly.
CRM System
In addition to implementing the launch planning tool, the company also put in place a robust customer relationship management (CRM) tool customized specifically for the organization’s account-facing processes. This tool stored profile and supplemental detail about health care systems and practitioners that all field teams could access. It also tracked information about HCP interactions – such as emails, in-person visits and marketing touches – and provided easy access to digital marketing materials, such as educational content.
Essential to any CRM tool is adherence to data firewalls between commercial and medical teams. Designed with ease of cross-collaboration in mind, the CRM tool’s permission structure for data visibility was customized to ensure relevant data shared remained consistent and standardized between the medical and commercial teams, while adhering to compliance regulations. The customized permission structure ensured the system maintained a single source of truth, which allowed the company to establish high utility of key metrics while removing redundancy and subsequent likelihood for errors that often arise when duplicating multi-audience metrics.
RESULTS: ELIMINATE SILOS AND IMPROVE EFFICIENCIES FOR LAUNCH AND BEYOND
Implementing the product launch tracker and CRM tool helped this emerging pharma company manage many overlapping and heavily interdependent initiatives that are inherent to launch preparation.
The launch tracker allowed all departments involved in the launch to better understand goals, dependencies and timelines, and gain a more comprehensive view of launch preparations. The tracker facilitated better communication and coordination across teams to ensure preparations moved forward smoothly. Further, it offered executives a high-level view of launch preparation milestones, while allowing business leads and analysts to dig into details of various projects where necessary.
Post-launch, the CRM tool helped sales reps manage their relationships with customers by providing key customer data management functionalities and activity logging capabilities in a clean, easy-to-use interface. Enhancements including email functionality and a digital marketing aide repository were added to expand the options reps have to engage with customers. The CRM tool further built upon goals of cross-collaboration by giving various teams a single source of truth about customers and commercial activity.
By building tailored technology solutions to support both pre- and post-launch activities, this emerging pharma company was able to improve coordination across various teams, streamline commercial efforts and create systems and processes that will continue to grow and adapt along with the organization as they further their foothold in the market.
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