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Goodbye, sales and marketing. Hello, integrated commercial models

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Goodbye, sales and marketing. Hello, integrated commercial models 2

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Contents

Executive summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Goodbye sales and marketing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What challenges have companies encountered? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

What is the impact on customers?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

How are these models impacting pharma companies? . . . . . . . . . 11

What does the future hold? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14



Executive summary

In a 2015 survey, a majority of executives believed their companies would be restructuring

their commercial models over the next two years. This change is already happening, driven by

shifts in the healthcare landscape – shrinking brand size, the need to demonstrate value, more

complex medicines and more sophistication in the payer environment, as well as downward

pressure on cost and the impact of digital transformation.

In this evolving landscape, companies are moving well beyond the simple promotion of

products – from ‘pile it high and shout about’ to genuine efforts to develop multifaceted, in-

depth and long-term relationships. They are engaging prescribers, payers and patients – among

many other stakeholders – to better understand their needs and to deliver solutions that are

tailored to the individual preferences of each stakeholder and customer.

To embrace this complexity, internal silos are breaking down. Sales and marketing, already

close companions, are converging into integrated commercial teams. The role of the sales rep

is evolving once again as customer service reps and medical science liaisons engage customers

in more sophisticated ways. Driven by a focus on 'customer experience', companies are

increasingly using key account management and multichannel marketing, while the realities of

patient-centricity are further shaping new commercial strategies.

Beyond sales and marketing, the entire pharma organization is working cross-functionally more

than ever before, drawing on internal expertise from silos as diverse as R&D, health economics

and outcomes research, regulatory and medical, to develop and deliver these new solutions.

Change is never easy and challenges abound. Companies still struggle to create truly customer-

centric digital content, while strategic planning is often hampered by the need to ‘do something

fast’. The logistics of integration are a major challenge, establishing the boundaries between

functions and linking front and back office capabilities. Resistance to change continues to

slow progress, often hidden behind the mask of ‘compliance’.

New models are emerging in forward-thinking companies, offering glimpses of possible

futures, although with no single model coming to the fore many companies lag behind. While

there will always be a place for sales, marketing and medical capabilities, in the near future, all

may be working together as an integrated ‘customer engagement’ department.

DisclaimerThe information and opinions in this article were prepared by eyeforpharma Ltd. eyeforpharma Ltd. has no obligation to tell you when opinions or information in this report change. We would like to thank the authors for the extensive primary research that went into the production of this article. eyeforpharma Ltd. makes every effort to use reliable, comprehensive information, but we make no representation that it is accurate or complete. In no event shall eyeforpharma Ltd. and its partners be liable for any damages, losses, expenses, loss of data, loss of opportunity or profit caused by the use of the material or contents of this paper.

No part of this document may be distributed, resold, copied, or adapted without our prior written permission from the authors.



Introduction

The value of a medicine used to be low down the list of messages that pharma companies

delivered to HCPs, but not anymore. In Europe, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) requires

pharma companies to demonstrate value to the healthcare provider either through improved

clinical outcomes or some other benefit to the patient. In the US, an increased focus on drug

pricing during the 2016 presidential election has led to greater attention on the work of third-

party value-assessment bodies like the ICER – Institute for Clinical and Economic Review –

National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Within pharma, trends towards specialty care and more complex drugs, as well as factors like

patient-centricity and customer experience, are adding yet more layers of complexity to the

job of the commercial team. Traditional simple models of sales and marketing can no longer

deliver levels of success demanded by companies.

The shrinking size of brands is a key driver, says Florent Edouard, VP Marketing GI-RIA,

Commercial Excellence and IT at AstraZeneca. While a few hundred million dollars of revenue

still represents substantial business, it has required companies to reconsider how they can make

the best of available resources to drive efficiency, remain nimble and eliminate complexity.

With healthcare providers evolving and consolidating, the health landscape and systems are

also becoming more complex. Access is not a straightforward business and the HCP is no

longer the only person who makes the decisions about what product to prescribe at a local

level. They have not been relegated in importance but they require much more information on

medicines – and their value – to justify their prescribing choices.

Cost is another driver pushing the traditional sales rep model out of favor, says John Gerow,

Service Team Strategy Partner, Ashfield, noting that it is expensive to keep a large sales team

out on the road. Time is another factor, with doctors often dealing with a greater administrative

burden than in the past, restricting the time available to meet with reps.

Digital is taking its time to filter into pharma’s consciousness. “They haven’t cottoned on to the

way digital is changing things,” is the verdict of Paul Runeckles, Head of Marketing and Sales

Operations, Europe and Canada at Merck Serono. “The old world of ‘throwing lots of reps at it’

has gone, yet pharma comms is still prehistoric, or in the Stone Age at least.”

Resistance to the power of digital is inevitable – as with other industries, pharma is comfortable

with its ‘push’ model, whereas digital is a ‘pull’ model that sees people go to the place they

find the most value.

Above all, patient-centricity is changing the way pharma operates as it comes to realize that

what matters most to physicians are their patients. “People tend to think ‘customer-centric’

but it is important to think ‘patient-centric’,” cautions one senior executive.

Florent Edouard, AstraZeneca

John Gerow, Ashfield



Goodbye sales and marketing?Customer experience (CX) is growing in importance as a consideration for pharma in its dealings

with HCPs and patients (Michels, Rebhan, Ghosh, 2014). In other areas of their lives, both these

groups access services instantly, ordering cabs, booking flights or having restaurant-quality

food delivered to their homes through easy-to-use apps. They expect the same experience

from pharma companies and don’t see why they should be forced to wait or have their

interaction mediated through a rep.

Patients in particular require their ‘moments of truth’ – those interactions which are of most

relevance to them – to be handled by pharma with care and with insight into the problems

they face (Kumli, Felber, Gittermann, 2016).

For this reason, whatever channels pharma uses in its interactions with customers, the general

movement of travel is towards adopting a more individualized approach – whether convincing

HCPs of a drug’s value, using patient data to inform patient support programs or attracting

patients to clinical trials. To deliver this, companies are increasingly looking at how to integrate

different functions into a single commercial team.

Key elements of such integration will be multichannel marketing (MCM) and key account

management (KAM), already widely employed in the industry, says Rick Edmunds, Leader of

Pharma Life Sciences for Strategy&, part of the PWC network. “Most pharma companies have

moved to a KAM approach, in addition to direct physician detailing,” he says. “However, while

they have adapted their channel model, they are still struggling with how to evolve the value

proposition side of their customer approach to this newer channel.”

For Steve Wooding, Head, Global Commercial and Market Access Strategy Organization at

Janssen, thinking of ‘commercial’ teams as ‘market access’ teams can help focus thinking around

the need to integrate functions such as sales, marketing, medical affairs and regulatory. “People

talk about strategic marketing and selling but that model doesn’t really work anymore,” he

says. “We’re tending to back away from the notion of marketing and sales and taking a broader

view of access.” (See box).

In a similar move, Merck Serono’s KAM team in the UK has brought together sales, market access

and reimbursement using a relatively simple project plan, which the company believes can be

followed across different countries, territories and franchise teams. “There is an element of

Pharma comms is still prehistoric, or in the Stone Age at least. Paul Runeckles, Merck Serono

Rick Edmunds, Strategy&

Steve Wooding, Janssen

Case StudyJanssen: The Access ModelOn the basis that integrating disciplines will serve customers better, Janssen is moving

towards a broader view of access. The company has brought together teams from

commercial strategy, medical affairs, health economics and market access, new business

development and business intelligence to create an integrated market access function.

marketing and sales thus sit within the access unit, disseminating information and

communicating with customers, thereby ensuring consistency of messaging.

Under a heading of market access – or even ‘patient access’ – the idea is to design a model

to facilitate the greatest interaction in what is increasingly an HTA environment. Although

HTA tends to be thought of as a European phenomenon, some observers feel that since

insurers and other US stakeholders make decisions based on factors such as price and best

supporting data, the US system is not so far from HTA by another name.



getting people to speak the same language, understanding the needs of the person they are

talking to,” says Runeckles. “Face-to-face contact is still king, but close behind comes digital

and online contact.”

The nature of face-to-face contact is changing, he adds. In the UK, a look at open-source

data made available by the NHS to improve healthcare delivery has shown Merck Serono that

patients are often caught up in primary care for a long time – 8-10 years from the appearance

of symptoms to sitting in front of a specialist. As it would clearly be more cost-effective –

and better for the patient – to speed this up, the company’s KAM team works with clinics to

understand referral pathways and identify patients in primary care, then, once patients are in

treatment, the KAM works with payers, each leveraging the other’s expertise. Merck Serono

offers patient support to shoulder some of the increase in cost. What’s more, multichannel

communication, such as sharing scientific publications, sending email newsletters to certain

customers or using targeted mini-websites, is also part of the mix. Although these are relatively

simple things, they tend not to be not done particularly well in pharma, says Runeckles.

As has been widely noted, while most pharma companies talk about the importance of

patient-centricity, the strong sense from informed observers is that many are only paying lip

service. However, some companies are waking up to the idea that they need to concentrate

on ensuring that patients’ moments of truth – for example, when they feel vulnerable or

confused – are memorable for the right reasons. Support could be something as simple as

offering easy access to an online ‘product champion’.

"Face-to-face contact is still king, but close behind comes digital and online contact.Paul Runeckles, Merck Serono.

Paul Runeckles, Merck Serono

Case StudyAstraZeneca: One Brand Team AstraZeneca in Japan has codified cross-functional working with the creation of its One

Brand Teams (OBT). For every brand, a core group of representatives from R&D, medical,

marketing, sales, operations and commercial excellence works together to design and drive

programs. Each OBT has a leader (the brand ‘CEO’), who could come from any function and

whose job is to ensure that the agenda is driven and that everyone understands their area

of accountability.

There is an element of entrepreneurship about this – in effect creating micro-companies

within an overarching structure – with P&L responsibility, and control of clinical studies,

marketing, sales and so on. Their remit is to achieve success for their brand from two years

before launch to five years afterwards.

It has taken AstraZeneca two years to set up and run the OBTs, while extra training has

been required, not least in becoming less risk-averse and more actively interested in other

people’s roles. Leaders have been moved between various functions to help this process.

Among the most complex issues was the push to ensure that everyone understood the

need to apply a rigid framework, in order that the country’s management team could see

at any given time what was going on with the development of each brand.

For the customer, the advantage is complete alignment on product positioning and

supporting material. “Once you work like that, you can put the customer at the center,”

says AstraZeneca's Edouard.



In the US, where direct communication with the patient is permitted, patient-centric efforts

will inevitably take a different form to those in Europe but the goals remain the same. Patient

support, education and adherence initiatives continue to become an integral part of what

pharma is trying to achieve, wrapping support and a focus on outcomes around the product.

This is not to say that the traditional one-to-one rep interaction does not work, says Janssen’s

Wooding – in different countries and at different stages of a drug’s life cycle, it is still an

important cog in the wheel. However, its ubiquity has receded; moreover, what reps are

required to say has changed as treatments have become more sophisticated.

There is also an increased emphasis on communication that does not directly touch on the

product. Customer service reps – often with no pharma background but hired for their service

sector experience – are an indicator of this trend. “Service reps focus on supporting the

interaction that HCPs have with their patients; the objective is to provide value to patients,

not to promote a brand message. As a result, this model resonates really well with clinician

customers,” explains Ashfield’s Gerow.

The medical science liaison (MSL) role has also risen in pharma, responsible for facilitating

the flow of information about a particular therapy area. “Some physicians prefer informing

themselves online, on their phones or by going to meetings – or they want to have scientific

conversations with MSLs,” says Sebastian Heinzmann, a consultant at InterPhase Consult.

An early forerunner of the current trend towards greater integration of commercial teams

is the regional account director (RAD) model first pioneered by Takeda 12 years ago. RADs

developed a local business plan with the agreement of the senior leadership team, and were

then measured against it, with P&L responsibility. They had access to senior internal decision

makers and were tasked with building relationships with purchasers. Rather than being micro-

managed, RADs were free to act on their own experience and local knowledge, hiring nurses

and pharmacists, for example to help with medicines management schemes, and hiring sales

reps to get pull-through on a local formulary.

The RAD model has since been refined and KAM is still evolving, so companies are only at

the beginning of this learning curve, with some starting to use data from sales reps to inform

their approaches, and piloting schemes around predictive analytics. However, this is not highly

advanced as yet.

While there is experimentation in creating cross-functional teams, the diversity of the

market means it cannot be as simple as moving from model A to model B. “We’re not simply

We haven’t seen a ‘SWAT team’ added to the general team. It is more of an evolution towards the clinically oriented rep.Rolf Fricker, Strategy&

Case StudyThe Orchestrator of ChannelsThe proliferation of new channels open to pharma, along with the increasing availability of

data, will require a “completely new type of animal” to manage it, says Andy Holgate, SVP,

International Business Development at Ashfield.

This ‘orchestrator of channels’ will be a RAD or KAM who has the experience and authority

to act as lead co-ordinator, bringing together the skills of head office marketers who have

access to Big Data so they can profile populations, and the skills of those on the ground.

Thus, this model balances the use of data to segment at a macro level with the use of

people who know their customers best and understand the nuances of the market in a

specific territory. Local knowledge and pragmatism will be a key element of this approach.

Sebastian Heinzmann, InterPhase Consult



substituting one model for another,” says Strategy&’s Edmunds. Yet, sales forces are evolving;

for example, some observers have identified an increased use of clinically expert talent in the

rep role, reflecting a greater emphasis on specialty brands as the importance of primary care

products is reduced. This suggests that customers are demanding this extra capability and a

higher degree of specialization in the field in order to discuss the value of a medicine. “We

haven’t seen a ‘SWAT team’ added to the general team. It is more of an evolution towards the

clinically oriented rep,” says Rolf Fricker, Partner/Vice President at Strategy&.

In short, pharma is shuffling its existing cards rather than inventing a completely new game.Rolf Fricker, Strategy&



With digital, there’s the potential for your own internal ‘dotcom bubble’ if you’re not careful.Steve Wooding, Janssen

What challenges have companies encountered?A report on new commercial models for pharma published last year found that the clear

majority of executives expected to restructure their commercial model in the next two years

(Danner, Edmunds, Fricker, Padilla, 2015). Yet, the report also found question marks over the

effectiveness of digital.

The type of digital content that (up to now) has been generally created by pharma is not

customer-centric, which is a symptom of a structural problem, says Rick Edmunds of Strategy&.

People are asking for something with a broader reach than pharma can generally provide; most

of what pharma produces is not service, it is just a digital version of promotion. “It’s a mistake

and we are trying to avoid this,” says Yves Lavail, former Executive Director of Commercial

Operations Europe at BMS. “The same message as before is just being pushed through 10-20

channels. The customer is not pleased.”

Also, while using patient data is an obvious way of getting closer to the customer, pharma

companies have been reluctant to share, suggests Strategy&’s Edmunds. Consequently, they are

not seeing the benefits that can flow from collaboration with third party experts.

It is perhaps small wonder that quality control has been lacking in the stampede towards

digital. One pharma company’s head of global commercial excellence admitted that the

company had produced “thousands of apps” but that “nobody cares if they are being used

or not”. Companies need a clear understanding of what they are doing and why. “With digital,

there’s the potential for your own internal ‘dotcom bubble’ if you’re not careful,” says Janssen’s

Wooding.

The desire to ‘do something fast’ is understandable, given the speed the world is moving.

Yet, to succeed, companies need to be talking to clinicians and national/international payers,

while, at the same time, fully understanding the payer pathway and patient journey, says Merck

Serono’s Runeckles. Companies need longer and deeper trusted conversations with these

audiences; understanding who you are talking to and what they require from you are crucial

parts of the process.

While it is highly likely that insufficient time is being spent on planning for new commercial

strategies, it may not actually be realistic to have everything in place in advance, given the

rapidly changing landscape. “It comes back to communication,” says Runeckles. “With any big

project, there are lots of moving parts.

The logistics of integrating commercial teams is another major challenge, says Interphase

Consult’s Heinzmann. Within the boundaries of compliance, sales and marketing have

traditionally been quite closely aligned, but integrating other siloed functions – market access,

medical, clinical – into a new team across the organization is another challenge entirely. Even

if that is achieved, linking up front and back office functions presents fresh challenges, warns

Runeckles.

As with all change, it is crucial not to underestimate the importance of personalities; some

people will seek to block innovative ideas if they feel their own empire is threatened. “Pharma

is its own worst enemy sometimes,” admits one senior pharma exec.

It takes time to assess how any integration strategy is impacting customer relations, says Lavail.

“General managers have targets to reach and require short-term action to deliver quickly. Their

attitude might be characterized as: ‘If I don’t make this target, then I won’t reach the end of the

year, and, if I don’t reach the end of the year, I’ll never see the benefits of a CX program anyway.’

Yves Lavail, formerly of Bristol-Myers Squibb



Senior management must understand this contradiction and act to ensure that there is a happy

marriage between short-term and long-term priorities.”

Measuring success is a continuing issue; in many industries, the concept of net promoter score

(NPS) is common currency, unsurprisingly given that studies have shown a positive correlation

between NPS and organic growth. “Outside pharma, everybody knows NPS but, inside pharma,

the majority of people haven’t even heard of it,” says Lavail. “You do it for drinks or cars but

not drugs, yet it’s the same; physicians handle your products.”

Pharma can often hide behind ‘compliance’ when it should be taking steps to find out what its

stakeholders want, he says. “Show me the legal text that says that you can’t ask the customer

whether he is satisfied with your company. It’s good for Coca-Cola but not us? How many

pharma CEOs are missing out on using NPS?”

What is the impact on customers?Patients and their care givers want better health outcomes, as does the HCP, while healthcare

systems are trying to get more patients through the system at a lower cost and with better

outcomes. Integrated commercial teams could be a step towards achieving a range of

stakeholder demands, says Runeckles

Take patients first; if R&D can work with medical and commercial to develop a greater

understanding of what motivates patients – for example, through advisory boards, focus

groups and patient panels – this would, in turn, help to create clinical trials that attract a more

representative group of patients and, importantly, achieve full recruitment in a shorter period

of time, says Heinzmann. When it comes to doctors, a greater emphasis on individualisation by

the new commercial teams may help to convince HCPs that pharma is adding value.

Yet, pharma needs to understand the pressure their customers are facing, says Runeckles. In

the last five years, there has been a move from nurses simply visiting patients’ homes and

administering the product, for example, to initiatives which make use of various touchpoints

with the patient, such as apps, helplines and proactive text messages from a specialist nurse.

In the North America marketplace, companies such as Biogen have, through its Biogen ONE

support programme, helped multiple sclerosis (MS) patients navigate reimbursement while

offering disease education and nursing support. Its regional support nurses (RSNs) work with

neurologists and MS clinics to co-ordinate the services which patients need; patients can

contact them directly, establishing a relationship which aims to keep them on therapy.

While pharma’s customers routinely receive both face-to-face and online communication,

in future these interactions should be tailored to meet their preferences, says Runeckles.

Through this kind of segmentation and real-world data (RWD), it is possible to show how

interventions are working, plus patients can be tracked to the pharmacy level, thereby closing

the loop. Getting the pharmacy involved creates another interaction with an HCP, as well

as producing data; for example, a pharma company can see whether an asthma patient has

picked up eight inhalers for the year rather than 12, which allows questions to be asked and

help offered. Such programmes would be much more ‘two-way’, from patient to provider.

“One of the most difficult things to do is stopping patients dropping off therapy,” says Mark

Gibson, Director, International Business, at Ashfield Healthcare UK. “Pharma has done patient

programmes before but they are often not as targeted or specific as they should be.”

It is worth bearing in mind that, for greater commercial integration to work, there must be

something in it for the prescriber, he adds. Doctors will appreciate information – such as

how to manage side effects more effectively – that improve or enhance the patient pathway.

Show me the legal text that says that you can’t ask the customer whether he is satisfied with your company.Yves Lavail, formerly of Bristol-Myers Squibb



Above all, pharma’s customers benefit through receiving instant information; the ability to

connect with people quickly and to respond fast is important.

How are these models impacting pharma companies?Pharma is a naturally conservative industry and change management is a major challenge. By

integrating teams, you are changing the way colleagues interact with each other, and with the

outside world. This requires people to step outside of their comfort zones, with all the usual

potential for disquiet and pushback.

With reps, for example, focusing on the disease and not the product during a call is a major

shift, yet, many experts believe that this will increasingly need to happen if pharma is to offer

more value-added services through customer service reps. To meet the challenges of a more

complex pharma market, companies will need people who have the skills to talk to a wider

range of customers. They will need to be comfortable with multichannel marketing, especially

digital, and have the ability to reach a range of HCPs over a diverse area.

“We’re looking for someone who is comfortable with technology, simultaneously managing a

laptop, phone and iPad, delivering promotional calls over the phone or a web platform, rather

than face-to-face, says Karen Bell, Business Development Director at Ashfield. “The type of

individual who will be successful in 2020 is very different from the one who was successful

10-15 years ago.”

There is a constant struggle to understand the art of the possible, says one pharma executive.

“The first answer from medical or legal is often ‘no’ because it is easier to say that something

can’t be done.” Resistance to any change is inevitable in some quarters of an organization and

respondents report that there is still some way to go in terms of lining up people internally

to pull in the same direction. Pharma’s existing models are, broadly, financially successful; that

being the case, the reasons for change may seem opaque to some. “People like ‘the old share-

of-voice model’,” says Janssen’s Wooding. “But there is no doubt that there is a need to change.”

While patient support, education and compliance programmes may be useful differentiators

in more expensive products, there is a need to keep them separate from the company’s

commercial offering. Far from being a problem, this means others within the organization will

also play a role; for instance, someone from Medical can talk to a health centre about the

product while marketing works on broader brand messages, leaving others to handle issues of

quality, governance and cost-effectiveness.

The question of who owns these activities may also provide a catalyst for change, says

Ashfield’s Gibson. In the past, a lot of patient support programmes have sat under marketing,

but these are increasingly falling under medical, he says. Training is needed to help medical

people to communicate with stakeholders they are not used to dealing with.

This may only go so far, since it is possible – indeed, probable – that the changes required by

the new integration models open a skills gap in many areas. In truth, new models may call for

skillsets that simply do not exist currently within pharma. “Companies need to look at how

they structure themselves and the skills they need to be developing within their teams or

recruiting,” explains Ashfield’s Bell. Hiring from other industries or taking graduates – in much

the same way as pharma has from the service sectors for customer service reps, for example

– is an obvious way forward.

Whatever internal changes are made, everything must come back to demonstrating value. In

Europe, where the market has been heavily driven by payer demands for several years, this

The type of individual who will be successful in 2020 is very different from the one who was successful 10-15 years ago.Karen Bell, Ashfield

Karen Bell, Ashfield



comes as no surprise, but this is something to which even the US market must now give due

consideration. “There are three certainties in life; death, taxes and HTA,” says Janssen’s Wooding.

What does the future hold?In both the short and long term, there will always be a place for sales and marketing, says

Merck Serono’s Runeckles. While storytelling and communication will remain vital, “who tells

which part of the story will change, within compliance restrictions,” he says. For example,

medical functions are likely to become more customer-facing, as different kinds of customers

come to the fore. Market access is likely to take a greater role in communication.

Internal training will need to reflect this, says Janssen’s Wooding, while cross-pollination of

ideas within an organization will be helpful. For example, while medical and market access

teams will require training in communication skills, they will be able to provide expertise in

area such as the science behind drugs and how to measure cost-effectiveness.

Many of senior leaders interviewed for this paper believe that both cost and changes in

technology will continue to drive change. A field-based pharma rep is about twice as expensive

as a remote rep, and the way that people communicate is changing making a rise in digital

contact inevitable. People expect fast response to questions and requests for information, and

that information will be better differentiated. The data that allows companies to do this will

be increasingly prized.

Perhaps the most sensible – and manageable – way of looking at this situation, is to think of it

in terms of a continuing evolution. Frightening though it sounds, the ultimate goal might even

be to lose some of the traditional departments that have contributed to the fragmentation of

approach to customers. “In the future, there may not be separate sales and marketing; it may

just be the customer engagement department,” suggests Ashfield’s Holgate.

There are three certainties in life; death, taxes and HTA.Steve Wooding, Janssen



Conclusion

There is no single model for how companies are integrating their commercial teams. With

multichannel and digital as well as reps to deploy, pharma finds itself with a broader arsenal of

weapons with which to talk about the value it brings, so no single model will suit all companies.

However, there is a common factor between the models that pharma is currently trying on for

size – each is designed to create the maximum interaction with the most important customers

in a therapy or geographical area to ensure the most productive relationships possible.

Most pharma companies expect to restructure their commercial model in the near future, and

two major reasons for this state of flux suggest themselves. The first is that pharma companies

are only just getting to grips with the changes required, the second – and perhaps more

compelling – is the general realization that this process of change does not stop. Adaptation

and evolution of pharma’s commercial model is, and must be, ongoing.

The influence of existing innovations such as the customer service rep and regional account

director are likely to be recognizable in the new integrated solutions. Pharma needs to build

up the clearest possible picture of who its customers are and what those customers are trying

to achieve. Organizations must know where those customers are on their journey – what their

ideas, beliefs and goals are at any given time. Only then can pharma give them the information

they require at the time they need it. There is much more that pharma could do to work with

healthcare groups and there needs to be a greater understanding that there is only so much

money available in health systems.

Pharma has woken up to the fact that its customers need to be given a positive experience, and

that cross-functional working offers one way to deliver it, using the varied and complementary

expertise of its internal units to deliver information that HCPs, payers or patients want, at a

time that suits them and in a way they prefer.

Most companies are towards the bottom end of this curve; the pharma industry is conservative

and has, in many ways, not moved with the times. Even among those companies which are

embracing new ways of working, there is no consensus.

For these changes to work, “You need complete and visible sponsorship from the leadership

team,” says AstraZeneca's Edouard. The problem is that many of those now running pharma

organizations have come through the ‘golden age’ of pharma and so may be reluctant to

change. However, change must come; it is not only sales and marketing that need to be brought

together – it is the whole company.

You need complete and visible sponsorship from the leadership team.Steve Wooding, Janssen



Acknowledgments

With grateful thanks to our contributors, without whom this white paper could not have been

written:

�� Florent Edouard, VP Marketing GI-RIA, Commercial Excellence and IT, AstraZeneca

�� Yves Lavail, former Executive Director, Commercial Operations Europe, Bristol-Myers Squibb

�� Paul Runeckles, Head of Marketing and Sales Operations, Europe and Canada at Merck Serono

�� Steve Wooding, Head, Global Commercial Strategy Organization and Market Access

Organization, the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson

Additional thanks to:

Karen Bell, Business Development Director; John Gerow, Service Team Strategy Partner;

Mark Gibson, International Business Development Director; and, Andy Holgate, Senior Vice

President, International Business Development, at Ashfield, part of UDG Healthcare plc.

Stephan Danner, Partner, Vice President; Rick Edmunds, Leader of Pharma Life Sciences; and

Rolf Fricker, Partner/Vice President, at Strategy&, part of the PwC network.

Sebastian Heinzmann, Consultant, InterPhase Consult

ReferencesDanner, S., Edmunds, R., Fricker, R., Padilla, N. (2015) New Commercial Models: What’s working and what’s not. PwC. Available through: http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/reports/new-commercial-models [Accessed October 21 2016]

Davis, A. (2014) The skill set of KAMs of the future. eyeforpharma. Available through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a39coQBM16E [Accessed October 16 2016]

Kumli, F., Felber, M., Gittermann, V. (2016) Embracing customer experience in the pharmaceutical industry. EY. Available through http://performance.ey.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2016/08/EY-Performance-Embracing-customer.pdf [Accessed November 24 2016]

Michels, D., Rebhan, C., Ghosh, P. (2014) Beyond the pill: How to improve the customer experience in pharma. Bain & Company. Available through: http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/beyond-the-pill-how-to-improve-the-customer-experience-in-pharma.aspx [Accessed 24 November 2016]

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eyeforpharma - White Paper - Goodbye sales and marketing