7 Ways to Boost Medical Reps Productivity & Maximize Sales Force Effectiveness Posted on June 14, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin Once there’s an inquiry about improving pharmaceutical sales representatives’ performance, there’s a need to ask a simple question: “What does it mean to be a pharmaceutical representative? What is exactly a pharma rep’s responsibility zone?”. Looking for the answer, you may find that the key role of a pharma representative is to deliver the pharma company’s ideas and messages to the health care reps in a most efficient, understandable, and intelligible way. So, the best way to help pharma reps improve their service is to provide all necessary information, equipment, and opportunities to improve strategies relating to health care professionals. Let’s explore relevant ways to boost pharma sales performance. Who Is a Pharma Representative and How to Become a Pharmaceutical Rep? The pharmaceutical sector stands as one of the most significant assets in many regions worldwide, rendering it among the most promising industries to pursue a career in. And while there are many great opportunities for scientists and doctors, one role truly stands out: a pharmaceutical representative. A pharmaceutical representative, or ‘pharma rep,’ markets pharmaceutical products to healthcare professionals (HCPs) and educates them about new medicines. Typically employed by drug companies and manufacturers, their main goal is to build long-term relationships with HCPs, serving as a key source of information about new medications available in the market. Obtaining a degree related to this job is a crucial initial step toward becoming a professional pharmaceutical representative. The degree can be in any pharmaceutical-related field, such as chemistry or biology. However, earning a degree is just the beginning; there are several additional steps necessary to pursue a career as a pharmaceutical representative: Getting a certification. Many certifications provide learners with the knowledge and skills of a professional pharmaceutical representative, including information about laws, regulations, and standards. Certification is usually not required to get employed, but it will help your resume outshine your competition; Expanding a network. Attending events in the pharmaceutical industry, connecting with experts on social media, and making your account public are good ways to become acquainted with other professionals in the field and discover potential job opportunities; Acquiring the necessary skills. A professional pharmaceutical representative understands how to present to the public and swiftly build relationships effectively. This doesn’t necessarily require being extremely extroverted, but it does entail being adept at engaging with different types of audiences. The role of a pharmaceutical representative is an ideal career path for individuals intrigued by sales and eager to have a job in the pharmaceutical domain. By honing such skills as salesmanship and effective communication and gaining as much field experience as possible, individuals who aspire to excel as pharmaceutical representatives can quickly become the experts in the field. How to Increase Sales in a Pharma Company in 7 Steps? Now, it is time to delve into specific strategies to take Medical Reps’ effectiveness to another level. Start With a Customer-Focused Pharmaceutical Sales Strategy The professional market situation is the driving force behind business as well as industry communication. So, in order to not spend countless hours trying to reach the doctor, pharmaceutical sales rep needs to shift focus toward the consumer model. That said, sales reps utilizing the latest methods of extended interactions between customers in order to see success come their way tend to be on par with their strategy to reach HC providers. One should not underestimate the power of free individualized interaction between pharmaceutical companies, providers and patients. So, there is a need for companies to make structural changes and research new driven approaches to the customers. Integration of technology resources and insights can be of great help in many ways for a sales representative to turn to the patient-oriented system, to reach the target audience at any time, and deliver required information. In addition, it influences the knowledge building process. Not to mention the prolonged, continuing relationships with customers. Equip Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives The level of tech equipment shows the level of preparedness for companies in the industry. When the medical rep is standing at the doctors’ door, ready to knock and start the communication process, they should feel prepared in the way of presenting information and receiving feedback from providers. There’s no need to overload salespeople with tech stuff for every possible moment of life. However, providing a useful CRM solution and presentation platform is an absolute must-have. CRM allows gathering HCP’s data more effectively, whether it is contact information, job description or specific feedback on a product currently on the market. The high-quality CRM solution should be able to provide med reps with a number of relevant communication opportunities, from making calls via VoIP to scheduling emails and messages. All of it makes the communication between med reps and HCPs more effective and efficient at any time and place of choosing. The smart presentation platform is also a necessary part of the communication technology stack for medical sales representatives. The eWizard platform is the best solution that allows both to manage presentations and show them remotely. Prep Pharmaceutical Representatives Your content database contains many different materials for doctors: interactive presentations, learning platforms, web conferences, training, and many more. It works great for HCP involvement and education, so it should also be available for medical pharma reps. You can provide reps with these materials daily as an educational measure to increase their knowledge by making surveys, videos, presentations, and more. As well as the company’s materials education, you should provide them with the latest information about the pharmaceutical industry and sale tactics. It is urgently important for the medical rep who has not more than 3 minutes with the health care provider but must bring some results afterward. The main idea of improving your representative’s involvement level is never to let them say: “let me check this for you. I’ll get back”. Motivate Pharmaceutical Sales Reps Like any other sales representative, medical representativess highly depend on motivation and feedback. A representative’s work consists of many hours spent gathering information and trying to deliver it in the short term to someone who barely wants to listen. A typical sales representative nightmare looks like this: a lot of time and attention spent on something without getting any positive result. Unfortunately, this is not unusual and may lead to employee burnout, which is unacceptable for everyone. Remember that your med reps’ team is a tool for delivering your message to the audience of the pharma industry. You may want to keep this team as healthier as possible: create a motivational ladder, give promotions, share your business plans, and look for a way to inspire every member. An inspired and motivated employee will look for solutions on his own. Raise Awareness Among Pharmaceutical Sales Reps As everyone has access to the internet — and, accordingly, the ability to self-develop — nowadays, HCPs are no exception when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, it’s critically important to gather intelligent data about HCP’s digital activities, responses, and feedback and provide your sales team with it. It works great even for strategic purposes — tracking med reps’ efforts in the chosen region (for example, by geographical criteria) might be made in a few clicks by just opening the correct sales data. Each team, department, and person in the company should clearly understand their responsibilities, tasks, and how they are expected to perform them. Driving more alignment, agility, and productivity into the team conducts ongoing changes and meets the pharma market’s conditions. Let Pharmaceutical Sales Reps Be Brave Another serious motivational factor is the ability to hear ‘no’ and keep going to the next HCP’s door. Accepting failure is extremely important for every medical representative; no matter how experienced they are, they will always have a deal with the client’s denial. Missing a good potential sale leads to frustration which accumulates and, in turn, leads to burnout — this is a traditional way for any pharmaceutical sales rep to quit their job. So, make your team learn from their failures and how to overcome them. The truth is the more you fail and learn from it, the better salesperson you become. Spend time to each your sales representatives to find a lesson in every rejection, so their delivery flow can be flexible and personalized for any difficult circumstances their customers have. Keep in mind that flexibility goes a long way, too many penalties for not making a plan, your employee will mostly think about how not to be fined instead of looking for effectiveness. Keep The Sales Representatives Motivated Great piece of motivation is always inspiring for every person. Try to motivate them in all possible way. There is no better thing, that the belief of team leader in colleagues. A good manager should be able to motivate people to work and be sure of future results. Colleagues are peers and the whole company – a community, a family. Turn everyday work in enjoying process. Indeed, if to inspire employees to see real future goals and results, they will, undoubtedly, work harder, paying attention to every detail. Takeaways As you can see, there are many ways to influence your medical representative’s sales process, make it more profitable and increase pharmaceutical sales force effectiveness. In a nutshell, the best you can do for your team is to try to walk in their shoes and see this sales process from their perspective. This way, you can learn more about what they need, discover more about the inner world of pharmaceutical marketing and get new ideas to increase pharmacy sales. Does it sound good enough to try? PPlease fill out the form below to contact us and learn about our approaches that will help you be a champion in healthcare engagement and bring your pharma sales force effectiveness to a new orbit.
Viseven and Next Pharma Partnership Announcement Posted on May 16, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin Viseven is happy to share its latest business venture – a partnership with NEXT. The two companies join forces to positively impact the future of the pharmaceutical industry and help healthcare providers focus their strategy on patients. The partnership is a sure sign of exciting opportunities for commercial leadership in the pharma and life science industries. The Next Pharma Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia, is expected to be the sharpest commercial event in the pharma industry this year. Viseven will be among the many presenters and solution vendors at the conference. Benefits of Partnership The company continues to focus on the customer experience by sharing insights and providing access to more than a decade of digital communication expertise in the health field. “Such an honest relationship with partners, customers and employees generates amazing results. We at NEXT are very pleased to partner with colleagues from Viseven, who remind us that hard work, innovation and a “win-win” mindset, always create long-lasting relationships!” – Dario Safaric, Chairman at NEXT Pharma Summit The newest digital trends open more flexible ways for pharma businesses to get out of their comfort zone and head to systematic, efficient, and scalable omnichannel strategies and content factories. Digitalization and personalization of content are on the top of the agenda for modern companies. With the support of NEXT, Viseven is going to share its extensive knowledge of building trusted relationships with health care representatives. “We sincerely believe this decision is a sign that helps us create strong bonds between HCPs and pharma companies. The core idea of what we do is to improve the chain of communication between the pharmaceutical business. This partnership is an ideal solution for those who thrive to achieve great results in the field of technology. So, we have an amazing opportunity to share our vision and ideas and deliver more value in customer’s interaction culture.” — Anna Kondrashova, CMO, Viseven. Viseven Integration with Next Pharma Events Viseven’s experts help grow digital maturity in the pharma community via events like Next Pharma Summit. Attendees and followers of events organized by NEXT have an unprecedented chance to discover advanced analytics and learn more about the strategy and discoveries in pharma digital marketing. This May 17 and 18th, attendees from all over the world will head to Croatia for Next Pharma Summit. Solution vendors and specialists will be in Dubrovnik for one of the industry’s most-awaited events. Viseven experts will be there in person to provide all the answers about the company’s solutions for pharma. About Viseven We are a Global MarTech Services Provider for Pharma and Life Sciences with more than 10 years of expertise in the industry. The company’s solutions and products are actively used by TOP 50 Pharma companies in more than 30 countries around the globe. We enable a marketing transformation for enterprises of different sizes and digital maturity levels. Our expertise covers the entire range of relevant aspects, from modular content to customer journey management, aligning tech with strategic goals. About NEXT NEXT events bring together the top people and companies in the global pharma industry. Next Pharma Summit bridges commercial, sales, digital, and patient engagement speakers and keynotes for pharmaceuticals. The summit’s mission is to be the main event and authority for commercial and medical pharma present models and future trends. If you are interested in similar opportunities, please head to our partnerships page
24/7 Content Factory: Center of Excellence in India Posted on May 11, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin We are proud to announce the development of our latest business venture – a brand new Center of Excellence which is much more than just a content factory in Jaipur, India. Viseven is a Global Marketing Technology Services Provider for the Life Sciences and Pharma industries with over a decade of experience creating, managing, and providing exceptional services for its clients in many regions around the world. The Center of Excellence in India is yet another network affiliate on the long list of Viseven support teams worldwide who deliver and provide consistent and fantastic benefits for pharma and life sciences organizations around the globe. Presently, the organization features specialists who communicate with global clients in more than ten countries, including the United States, Canada, Argentina, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. Scaling up Digital Content Factory The Center of Excellence in India will focus on scaling up the digital factory function, growing the client base, optimizing business processes, and bringing in an economy of scale. Viseven will build an experienced team and drive a wide range of initiatives to optimize performance through the intensive structure of state-of-the-art products and processes. The center will also begin to focus on content management strategy, consulting, real-time analytics, automation, artificial intelligence, agile methodology to improve content efficacy, reach, and efficiency. “The world connected by digital capacities leaves no space for uncertainty. This global connection is extremely important to building a secure business foundation for future growth. So, having a team around the world where every person has a remarkable vision and understanding of local specifics can boost chances to find our customer no matter where they are on the map. In the past few years, India gained a reputation as a serious player in the global digital market. We are truly looking forward to connecting our approaches, introducing new members to our team and ultimately saving lives by improving communication,” says Viseven CEO Nataliya Andreychuk Innovation for Life Sciences Companies With the next-generation innovation, Viseven continues to secure its place as a marketing pioneer working to develop a process that is smart, connected content strategy and delivery center which will bring visionary content delivery and management techniques that will allow the marketing company to improve its services for healthcare and patients. Based on the ingenious concept of “Innovation-in-content delivery” Viseven will work with advanced technology tools and domain experts to achieve and rise value to their customers. Viseven Digital Content Factory is a comprehensive set of smart solutions based on a single approach to content management across all brands, channels, and markets. The success behind a Content Factory is a creation of a coordinated team of experts able to cover content requests around the clock. Digital solution managers, liaisons, channel and project managers, and many other specialists ensure agile management and extensive digital content production on a global and local level. “Viseven Digital Content Factory key strength is their ability to run a “follow the sun” approach. Their teams work on the same projects from multiple locations worldwide, which reduces our time to market while providing fast-paced feedback to marketers.” adds Stephane Rochy, Global Delivery Lead at Biogen Local Teams For Effective Content Management Viseven enables an innovative governance system with components where a senior specialist is not only provides advice but is also involved in content production. Continuous service with more facilities for workload distribution provides better brand quality and quickly moves the process of content time-to-market, while a single development standard facilitates the exchange and access of materials, data, and tasks. Independent and unbiased QA experts minimize the risk of disruption to the content supply chain for users, adding a fresh look to content, fostering transparency and quick reaction. Local liaison and channel managers work as one single point of contact that operates in place to minimize confusion around the new processes and the coordination with different stakeholders. They coordinate workflow from first to last, covering: ComplianceFormer projects (continuity = consistency)Facilitated localizationChannel specifics (not to waste effort on the content not likely to perform)All questions regarding implementation steps, use of the platform and all content types, and how it works. This flexible engagement model covers the whole process of content production from localization and adaptation, content delivery for medical approval, and publication to content review. Follow Viseven on social media to stay up-to-date on content management solutions for enterprises and more.
How to Solve MLR Hurdles with a Modular Approach Posted on May 4, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin As the unstoppable technological progress flow changes the focus of our daily lives, it also introduces a fresh approach to the field of digital interactions. It becomes quite a challenge for life sciences organizations to keep up with modern marketing trends, especially concerning the highly regulated and compliant pharma and life sciences industries. If you are familiar with anything that is described as MLR review, you probably already know what it means. This acronym represents “medical legal and regulators review” — a process used in which life sciences companies ensure the compliance of their marketing and promotion materials with internal and external regulations and guidelines. Your business can use another name such as MMLR review or MRC review. What is Modular Content? A typical pharmaceutical company spends a massive amount of time and money creating an efficient marketing workflow that needs to go through the medical and legal regulatory review process to get approval later. This approval is the bottleneck moment in the marketing production process. If the medical, legal, and regulatory representative finds the marketing materials accurate, you’re a winner. In any other case, they send your great content back, and you spend more time and money editing the information provided. Essentially, the back and forth complex aspects of this feedback are the worst scenario for marketing content management with strict deadlines and a personal nightmare for content creative teams. This is where the modular content idea comes into play for pharma and life sciences companies and medical legal review MLR for short. The name should speak for itself: basically, a modular content strategy is built around a block of content that describes different data. Although it sounds simple in terms of marketing operations, this solution allows easy access for the medical legal regulatory review. It directly impacts the compliance and review processes. The modular content approach helps management spend less time and effort on content creation, not to mention the savings for the organization. In this article, we will discover what modular content is and how it helps to solve typical MLR hurdles for marketing content management. If you know anything described as an MLR review, you probably already know it. This acronym represents “medical legal regulatory review” — the MLR process in which life sciences companies ensure the compliance of their marketing and promotion materials with internal and external regulations and brand guidelines. MLR reviews are sometimes called MMLR review or MRC review – your business may use either one to describe regulatory compliance. The solution to the MLR review process Content creation takes a lot of time and money, and marketing teams spend a lot of resources trying to find an idea and make it attractive as well as sales-worthy for healthcare providers and the life sciences industry as a whole. When this highly creative and useful content gets cut or even declined by the MLR reviewers, it becomes a major pain for the entire marketing department or even the company. This pain is associated with hindering many processes in the organization, impacting the marketing production process, missing deadlines, work-overs, limiting efficient marketing workflow, and more budget spending. MLR review solutions can be unpredictable, so the modular content was created as a fresh approach to overcome typical MLR process hurdles. This approach makes the life of both MLR review team and content management creative teams – easier. A module is a stand-alone piece of digital content that consists of the main claim and supporting text or media. The easy-to-use blocks separate the content inside the module.These blocks can be predefined and organized according to the main content requirements and used in various forms, from SMM content and emails to interactive presentations like an eDetailer.Among the many advantages of the modules is the possibility of quick MLR reviews approval. Life Sciences Companies’ Problems Solved Time A large amount of original and creative marketing content management takes time to be created and thus approved. It can take up to a few weeks for MLR reviews and its representatives to check the compliance and approve every page or piece of your training materials or guidebooks. Suppose, for some reason, the medical legal and regulatory approvers declined a significant amount of content. In that case, you need to launch the production cycle once again: content needs to be reworked following the medical legal regulatory review solution and applied to the MLR review for approval once again. If everything is fine this time, you get your smooth process ready to go. Otherwise…welcome to yet another round. So, a module is a great solution to eliminate the many complex aspects — it needs to be approved to fit compliance and regulations only once. When it comes to creation, it won’t take time to use prepared assets and templates. Your organization needs to align it with the regulatory policy and send it for review. Once approved, such a module is automatically highlighted for medical legal regulatory compliance representatives, reducing the risk of MLR decline and starting rapid process innovation for life sciences and healthcare professionals. Workload fatigue Workload fatigue is simply a human factor in content management. When you begin to research and write a large amount of information, your eyes may get clouded with words and digits, and anyone in the organization can make an unconscious mistake. This is an unfortunate part of the process for both MLR and content makers: when the marketing team spends weeks creating something useful and original, an exhausted copywriter or designer makes one mistake that entirely spoils and wastes these work hours. Another example: a stressed and overloaded with tons of work regulatory compliance representative declines some presentations because of some small things they found incorrect. Both cases aren’t pretty for management in the face of processes like missing deadlines and budgets. The good thing is that module is built on expertise and templates. Template structure makes it easy to create and edit. Also, it uses only pre-approved information for medical regulators, so there’s no need for additional research or a second check once the module is approved. Such simplicity reduces the possibility of decline because of incorrect information or human error; accordingly, it makes the regulatory compliance i.e., MLR process, faster. Global to local scaling The pharmaceutical business is something that can be scaled up and down. Whether your company works globally or locally, each market has its own medical legal regulatory specifics in different territories. So, every time the management needs to reposition your product in a different country or state, you must change your marketing strategy to follow the local specifics and compliance requirements. It can become a real struggle for the management and content team to re-target the materials for a new market and apply them to MLR review as the content needs to be compliant. Again, the structure of modular content is flexible when it comes to changes. The blocks, templates, and informational fields drive rapid process innovation and can be easily replaced with the required ones while still be in compliance with MLR standards because of the pre-approved and localized content. Different HCP fields It may happen to promote one product in different HCP fields. For example, if you are going to promote the same treatment for different medical fields like endocrinology and gastroenterology, the MLR process will be applied for both directions separately. It requires additional expenses for the management on content creation and doubles the risk of being rejected by MLR in pharma, as each medical field has its requirements. At this point, the module also can be adapted accordingly to the specific case. To avoid many regulatory affairs, you can create a separate module template personalized for different cases and pre-approve it accordingly. Outcome As you can see, the modular content is quite a solid solution to the most common problems related to the MLR review process. The pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated, and thus, the medical legal regulatory process is very demanding for a business presentation, marketing, and promotional materials. Such circumstances make it difficult to develop high-quality content, adapt it to different MLR requirements, and avoid losing time and money. This is where modular content changes the situation. It is flexible, smart, and easy to develop for every case. The simplicity and interchangeability of data inside the module is the core idea that makes modular content a good communication tool that makes the medical legal regulatory review process easy and predictable. Pre-approve content modules for further reuse. Make the MLR approval process predictable — fill out the form below to get personal expertise!
Pharma Content Localization: Best Tactics in 2024 Posted on April 22, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin Global pharma companies seem to be in a position of advantage when it comes to entering emerging markets (now also dubbed “pharmerging countries”). Why, with bigger R&D possibilities, more advanced digital maturity stages and communication strategies, it seems fulfilling the mission of drug accessibility is as easy as pushing a button at the corporate HQ. At the same time, there are nuances to observe besides translating global content into target language – and at many organizations, the current processes of localizing content simply don’t allow to plug in the additional expertise. This leads to inefficiencies along the way, from internal constraints at local level to inexplicably lower-than-projected ROI. Here, we analyze the benefits of a well-thought content localization strategy – and localization management tools that can help. Global companies, local markets Spending on medicines is growing unequally across the world. According to prognoses, the US share will increase from $485 bln in 2018 to $625 bln by 2023, while the pharmerging countries are expected to spend up to $385 bln, rising from the 2018 baseline of 286 – growing by almost 1/3. Now, these are pre-COVID estimates, but the pandemic has not removed the underlying factors (such as aging populations and consumer awareness) to a considerable extent everywhere. Some more recent research has found the emerging markets will yield CAGR of 10.4% in the half-decade from 2021-26. At the same time, while COVID has not disrupted this growth, it has changed things a lot when it comes to actually penetrating these markets. Traditionally, the use of conventional (but costly) channels of communication like medical reps, has been low in many regions, or field force were insufficiently furnished with visual and other promotional aids. The push toward digital that occurred in Q2-Q3 2020 has given the potential to level the capacities here. Granted, global companies still have the advantage of more mature omnichannel engagement strategies – but simply importing them along with content would be a major mistake. Regional specifics are crucial to make these subtle customer journeys work properly. Meanwhile, the established local markets are growing, too (somewhere in the middle by CAGR), but also much more saturated both with products and communication. Treating these like secondary to global markets by underlocalizing the communications is becoming unacceptable. What is this ‘underlocalizing’, then? Localizing content vs. Localizing strategies While agencies collaborating with pharma have long emphasized that localization does not equal translation, adding the extra parts (like content transcreation, more sophisticated local campaigns) has been reserved to the more conscientious marketers within pharmas themselves. In many cases, operationally, “localization” was a term only applied to content – and content translation, while local affiliates were either copying the global directives, or ignoring the best practices from HQ to go on doing things in the way it had always worked on the spot. Ideally, though, there is a difference between localizing content – and localizing entire strategies. In a particular country, content types and even entire channels preferred may differ from what is expected at HQ, socially acceptable touchpoint frequency may vary from culture to culture, etc. What’s more, even when there is understanding of these two “localizations”, the strategic one invariably influences the content localized. Failing to establish a firm link between them results in squandering opportunities. This is the case of a company localizing wrong content, or a really energetic local manager with a genius strategy being bound to use only partly suitable (but shiny) materials. Establishing this link requires understanding of what content there is already plus the local specifics. In some cases, this leads decision makers to establish local content hubs (or appoint special local liaisons at their Content Factories). Localization besides translation No matter how proficient a translator is, there are things they simply cannot do with words to provide the native look and feel. Someone will have to dive into design and code to fully adapt these. So, what exactly is it that requires content to be transcreated, and not just translated? Visuals. This umbrella term encompasses a lot of factors: what is the visual to text ratio that the customers are comfortable with? What are the preferred data visualization types? For example, while most countries accept the traditional pie charts, graphs, bar charts, etc., the more recent infographic designs are not universally considered aesthetic. Also, do the visuals correspond to the local realities? This has been a pitfall for some AVOD advertisers in Latin America, where 70% users feel underrepresented in the content.Psychology. This includes things like casual attention span (the amount of time a person is willing to dedicate to information before deciding whether to get invested in it). Further down the list are common attention or reaction triggers, as well as perceptions of tone of voice. Some cases are really like an extension of the linguistic T/V phenomenon (like tú vs. Usted in Spanish). This atmosphere of (in)formality exists even beyond words, when HCPs sometimes consider the tone of voice unacceptable or slightly off.Objective regional specifics. Epidemiology of the target condition(s), dominant patient profiles, official guidelines and which are recognized more, affordability, insurance policies – all of these impact the phrasing and choice of key messages. If some material layout proudly presents a box with text saying, “recommended by [association]”, and you have to remove it, what will go there?Coding it all. Supposing you have found the necessary expertise to truly localize the content in all details, who is going to work with all the code? This is the place where the “give-it-to-an-agency-once” model may prove inefficient, because the coders and project managers will perform better when immersed in the context. Additionally, for some content types, it is better to code (and test) with the dominant target platform and device in mind. Making content localization more efficient All of this influences the efficiency of any localization strategy. Needless to say, no matter how developed a strategy can be in the marketer’s mind, the end implementation ultimately can be thwarted by something as simple as ineffective workflows and blown budgets. But how exactly to fix the issue? In practice, whenever Viseven experts are approaching the global content localization solution issue (be it within a Digital Content Factory project or an omnichannel campaign scaled to multiple countries), there are two efficiency factors: internal and external. In the basic ROI equation, you can increase the return by either reducing the initial investment or making sure the net return figure is higher. The “internal” factor is the bottom of the equation, the initial allocation of costs, time, effort (we’re being multidimensional here). You can reduce this by eliminating the “waste” byproducts and processes in something like a Lean approach. This means providing more convenient virtual workplace, establishing better workflows, and so on. On the other hand, the “external” factor in localization efficiency addresses the net return – that is, how much this localized strategy or content yields in the field. To raise this figure, one needs to go beyond localizing content to localizing strategy and tactics (that is why we talked about it earlier), as well as account for local realities. So what would the recommended to-do list look like? Actionable steps Provide convenient UX for translators. Even in cases where localization does equal translating things, there are plenty of nuances that only translators know about. For example, it is often necessary to see where a string of text fits into the visual layout provided by the creative. On the other hand, simply commenting on a PDF file is also inconvenient, especially if the PDF is of a pharmaceutical eDetailing presentation loaded with small print and subscript/superscript figures. When a translator is working, their speed is limited by small distractions like having to format the text or checking the contextual placement. Even when each individual moment of such actions only takes up 2-3 seconds, they add up to much more in the process. This is why we enabled several localization modes in our eWizard content authoring platform to provide a convenient interface.Provide a content authoring platform to implement visual changes. For changes besides translation, the visual design component is important. Even when it’s simply the question of removing a text box or changing the amount of text, such alterations impact the layout. When such changes accumulate (and they do once you want to localize in earnest), giving each and every one of such edits to a developer team as a separate request is no longer feasible. Implementing a low code/no-code content editing platform allows to be flexible on this sort of issues and minimize the investment in paid time and effort.Provide possibility for fast pre-MLR review by local experts (and streamline collaboration between them and project management). There are things that MLR review turns into edits, but which could possibly be nipped in the bud if only someone had a look before submitting the material. Informally, many specialists already do address their colleagues in the know before passing assets to MLR: “hey there, what do you think of it.” This spares time, as the correction loop before MLR is often shorter than after it. Making this practice the norm, and facilitating it with proper tools can help reduce localization time and effort. We even integrated a functionality for pre-MLR review into eWizard platform with interactive preview and commenting mode, notifications, and so on.Provide a platform for content reuse (not to code or recode from scratch) + single standard and access to well-arranged DAM. This is a practice that allows to address both internal and external efficiency factors. Content reuse approaches (from block-based to modular) allow not only to save costs and time on development itself, but also to cover a larger amount of smaller segments with personalized messaging. Instead of a presentation or two plus an email or two, you can enter a local market with a truly personalized campaign (or at least a personalizable one), where you recombine pre-approved modules to deliver messages the way it’s already being envisioned in global offices across companies. Organizationally, to enable this, you need a platform to work with modules, a DAM system that supports them (Veeva Vault PromoMats), integration between the two, and expertise in onboarding the local markets to work in this paradigm. Conclusions At the first glance, ensuring proper localization at all stages may seem a daunting task – but ensuring efficiency with several pinpointed tactics will result in less troubles than continuing to work in the conventional ways. To make this transformation as easy as possible, we at Viseven have supplied the necessary functionalities inside eWizard content authoring platform. This allows us to provide localization services for our customers much more efficiently than before – and also helps many companies to streamline localization themselves. Learn more about how this works and book a free demo, where you can also ask our expert about other available options to facilitate localization. Fill out the form below to request a consultation from Viseven’s expert!
New chapter: Stay on Top of Pharma and Life Science News with Viseven Posted on April 8, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin When changing the mindset of the whole world (okay, not the world but a vital industry), your most important task is not to hamper your own progress and to change yourself. Unluckily, this is the destiny of many of those who facilitate changes – talking about changes but not being subjected to them. Our path is different as many of our initiatives this year start – no, not from scratch, but a new bright page in Viseven’s book of achievements. Viseven gets a new look: follow our website Once you are here, we guess you already appreciated the new, upgraded look and content of our website. We’ve worked on it in order to introduce you to the thousands of changes, innovations, and big and small improvements that our services have received over the past year. Going through this, some chapters are giving you a correct picture of what we do for life sciences as the trailblazers of their digital transformation, some are telling the stories of our mutual growth, some are showing the concrete impact of our mutual efforts, and, of course, in Hogw…. we took care that help would be given to those who asks for it. Thus, don’t hesitate to investigate each corner of our website and ask us directly, clicking the get a consultation button once our assistance is required. Viseven unveils the latest updates on digital marketing in pharma Next in line for an upgrade is our newsletter that starting this month becomes even more personalized and spreads even more news about our daily lives, captivating pharma events, and first-hand experience on digital transformation behind the scenes of the biggest pharma companies today. This publication is all about what’s new and fresh in life sciences’ digital excellence: omnichannel campaigningfine nuances of content governance and productionpersonalized experiences in HCP communicationmodular projects and more. [Spoiler alert] Along with some interesting videos and many insightful readings, those who will subscribe to our newsletter this month will be among the first who will be aware of all the intriguing details and process of preparation for our upcoming session at Next Normal on April 28. Save your seat as our best minds on modular and omnichannel content will share our best insights with speakers from Teva and Sanofi. This time, we are also ready to announce unprecedented webinar series that was on our minds for a long time. Subscribe and learn what is the Modular Content Lab and how this brand-new format of sharing innovative takes on content creation in pharma will introduce pharma to a future era of communication. This was just a snippet – for more information, subscribe now!
Pharma Consent Management Based on Omnichannel Approach Posted on April 7, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin Looking at the night sky, we might think about the horizons that technologies open for customer interaction and what lies ahead. Today the variety of channels available for customer interaction captures the imagination, however, without a sufficient amount of data, we can compare our audience to distant stars that we try to reach in the dark. Thus, the way organizations are collecting, managing, and utilizing users’ data in the era of digital omnichannel technologies has become a serious competitive advantage allowing them to provide something extra to the customers. How is it for pharma companies that have followed the path of digitalization but remain especially burdened in terms of different regulations? Let’s talk about how omnichannel technologies address these issues, introducing the secure basis for pharma communication in terms of regulatory compliance. What is the HCP consent management in pharma? Pharma’s regular operations are closely related to the procedure of consent collection. This is an obligatory practice as the data they possess is under the label ‘sensitive.’ Thus, at all times, the biggest possible threat to the pharma company’s reputation was the disclosure of confidential information. Under consent collection, we mean the generally accepted procedure when a physician or patient provides a legal basis for further communication with a particular pharmaceutical brand, providing their personal information like gender, age, location, email address, interests, etc. The marketers use this information to provide them with targeted ads and commit to processing and storing the obtained data properly, providing the correct operation of systems and tools that collect this data. This process is supported by General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR. This remarkable regulation obliges all brands you interact with to first ask consent before processing your data. Another urgent regulation is California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA that is aimed at protecting your right as a consumer enabling you to opt out of further communication and use of your data at any time. The consent policy may vary in complexity depending on the regulatory bodies of different countries. Usually, the compliance departments in pharma companies are responsible for ensuring that all the activities of the company are clearly regulated and comply with all laws, and regulations. However, despite that, pharmaceutical companies annually pay billions of dollars in fines for violations of rules or regulations. Consent can exist in several forms: Partial communication consent that allows communicating to HCP only via a channel where the consent was collectedHolistic communication consent that allows communicating to HCP via all channels – emails, SMS, etc.) Consent to process personal dataConsent for tracking a CLM activity for an account The rise of omnichannel communication has offered a wide range of opportunities for improved customer experience, however, at the same time, it comes along with many challenges of consent collection for numerous pharma companies. What’s wrong with pharma consent management? Making the transition from in-personal interaction to digital, we have inherited a huge amount of data that, if used correctly, allows us to deliver HCPs the ever-personalized content. We got an extra bunch of channels to deliver the right message to the HCPs, however, their newly acquired digital consuming habits have migrated from ordinary life to professional activities, and now they spend much of their working time balancing between devices. Now half of the HCPs said they want to receive promotional content on their mobile or tablet. Another 62% of HCPs and 57% of HCPs opt to get clinical and medical content on computers/laptops. This causes problems for pharma companies as it damages the environment in which they are accustomed to living. In the days when communication with a doctor was based mainly on personal communication, the process of gaining consent was strikingly different from what it is today. With the splash of digital activities, there was a need to manage huge amounts of data across multiple channels. For pharma, it has become a real challenge as there is still a huge gap in how to set up consent collection via digital channels. On the other hand, there is a tangled mess of regulatory measures in the industry that have no right to be violated. Are you aware of these problems? There is no centralized place for managing consents. The data is gathered through many different systems significantly complicating the tracking of the consent’s status. It’s hard to put together the customers’ data and align different types of activities. It all results in a time-consuming process requiring the intervention of many professionals. According to statistics, about 30% of data loss occur when connecting the data from one platform to the next.The other obstacle is the absence of valid customer data to start with or the availability of incorrect data that contains errors or typos in names or addresses.And the most common issue is when we simply have no idea what to introduce to the doctor and have a lack of content that would potentially interest the HCP. How the process of consent collection looks like? The consent collection process depends on the type of interaction, whether it is face-to-face or virtual interaction. As you may understand, it also depends on the Customer’s requirements, country legislation, and regulations. As, for example, certain countries require reps to send confirmation to HCPs for capturing consent. This can also be done via email. Other countries have regulations requiring HCPs to verify their email addresses when giving consent to receive email communications. In simply regulated countries, only 1 checkbox is required in the form to receive consent and communicate via all channels. In countries with more complicated regulations, 2 checkboxes are required. The difference in the number of channels that will be engaged in a communication. Usually, the subdivision is as follows: 1st checkbox – a consent to communicate via the current channel2nd checkbox – a consent to communicate via other channels Also, the variety of tools that can be utilized for consent capturing. During the face-to-face meeting, consent is usually gathered with CLM (mobile part of the CRM). During virtual interaction, we can reinforce it with emails, landing pages, webinar registration, or filling out a form to download any materials which always results in better HCP engagement rate (43% of HCPs agree). In the end of the journey, customer data is transmitted to a customer’s CRM or consent management system. Prerequisites of Consent Collection Today, buyers are happy to provide their data in exchange for personalization to the brands they trust. However, in the pursuit of personalization, we should not forget about the importance of following all the rules of customer data management for HCPs. According to the GDPR, subscribers must have full control over the information they share and have easily searchable access to documents explaining the purposes for which their data will be used. The process of consent collecting should be transparent The main rule of CCPA must be observed that implies that before users consent to the processing of their data, they have the right to be informed that at any time they may refuse to communicate further. The right to be forgotten All materials and language you use to gather consent should be clear, understandable, and should not include vague, difficult-to-understand forms, wording, and terms. The process must be clear and eligible Earlier, in the article ‘Ensuring data security and compliance in pharma’s digital transformation’, we talked a lot about how to achieve security in personal data management and derived a golden rule for working with customer data, which read as follows: The customer should always be provided with transparency on what their data is used for, what channels will be engaged, and see what’s behind each tick they put into a checkbox. Omnichannel consent journey Earlier the routine communication of pharmaceutical companies with their target audience is based on personal communication. This was the case until the surge in digital activity and companies began to communicate with doctors through digital communication channels. This way of communication has settled in and turned out to be the preferred mode of communication to both parties. Pharma companies have reaped the benefits in terms of significantly higher engagement rates, while HCPs have found the optimal way to communicate with pharma brands without significant damage to their schedule. This can be traced in numbers saying that 50% of HCPs would like to engage digitally and remotely given their tight schedule. On the long road to obtaining a doctor’s consent, the biggest obstacle for a medical representative is primarily to get to this doctor, fit into the schedule and persuade them to give consent. Note that the last HCPs do without much enthusiasm. Thus, the most justifiable method is to collect consent through at least several channels. It turned out that the easiest way to get to the HCP is through their daily habits. The wide range of channels they use every day provides various opportunities to show up on their radar. It takes is qualitative content and an understanding of where to sell it. 61% of HCPs said they want pharma sales reps to have a better understanding of their needs and the needs of their patients. This is where the omnichannel stepped in and thrived introducing the new look at targeted digital HCP engagement. The ability to build a detailed customer journey allows to capture each interaction and consent in detail and provide the customer with the rights information through the right channel. For pharma companies, this means a large financial investment in terms of change management and the involvement of professionals who understand the specifics of the pharma industry and the process of collecting consents as well. A million-dollar issue? Not really since annual fines paid by pharmaceutical companies for non-compliance reach $9.6 million. How does it work? Becoming a trusted service provider takes compliance with certain communication rules, among them, are: The engaging contentThe trust and transparency The right time and channel The modern customer got used to the convenience of communication and independent choice of the appropriate format. The main idea is to communicate via social media, context, and target ads to the potential audience and provide some useful materials relating to their therapeutic area. Emails are the preferred channel for many HCPs. We can use them to introduce many types of content like webinar recording, presentation, and other useful materials. The engagement may also occur through landing pages, social media, posts, and many others. For example, pharma may develop a webinar involving KOL to expose the depth of the problem and build trust in the product showing its expertise. It would be a good piece of scientific content. To make it saleable on the market, it is crucial to present it to the right segment of HCPs through the channel they use. When in a certain country, we may have one checkbox, the flow is relatively simple. When there are two, the information in the customer’s account in the marketing automation system must be collected in separate fields. This, in turn, requires expert intervention, a specialist who can reconfigure these two fields in the automation system’s code, avoiding critical errors in the account. In some cases, companies reaping the benefits of the omnichannel approach may immediately define the target segment of HCPs and create the interactive content to satisfy their basic request a priori; conduct A/B testing, set the right targeting, and create the highly personalized social media marketing campaign. The advanced agencies on the market are distinguished by combining the technical and marketing expertise when it comes to omnichannel. This is especially graphical when it comes to consent. As a global provider of omnichannel services, Viseven implements Consent Collection and Management projects for global pharma companies considering their specifics and marketing goals. Fill out the form below to get a personal expertise and reap the benefits of digital communication in the most compliant manner.
How to Create Patient Journey Mapping for Better Healthcare Experiences? Posted on March 28, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin Now is the best time to time to implement patient journey mapping in healthcare. According to a survey of 30 US-based health system leaders conducted by Deloitte, 77% of executives said they are actively reimagining their customer journey planning, switching from treatment to achieving and maintaining health and well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transformations most stakeholders in the global healthcare system have been waiting for years. In a time of record burnout and intent to leave the job across most healthcare roles, healthcare providers and professionals have access to data-driven solutions that have moved healthcare services beyond physical facilities. Today, the care process is not only about an in-person visit to a medical facility but omnichannel experiences, automation, applications, call centers, and wearables. Hence more healthcare providers and professionals have started to embrace the benefits of patient journey mapping. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of a customer journey in pharma, determine why an organization needs a pharmaceutical customer journey, and discover how to do patient journey mapping according to the latest practices and trends. What is a Patient Journey Map? Also called a healthcare customer journey map, a patient journey map is a plan that allows healthcare providers, payers, and public organizations to improve the patient experience and develop a holistic approach to delivering personalized care based on understanding patients’ lifestyles, preferences, and needs. What is Patient Journey Mapping? Patient journey mapping is the process of creating a patient journey map that deals with each patient’s problems at each stage of their interaction with a healthcare organization. The Stages of Customer Journey in Healthcare Here’s how patients interact with care providers: Stage 1. Pre-Visit Research The customer engagement journey starts with a stage when the patient suspects they have some symptoms and goes to social media, forums, and other communities to search for a treatment that doesn’t require professional medical assistance. Stage 2. Getting in Touch At this stage, the patient realizes they can only do with professional medical care and addresses a healthcare provider directly via an available communication channel or stumble upon the provider’s website after they follow a pay-per-click (PPC) ad or engage with any other means of online or offline promotion. Stage 3. Care and Treatment After the initial contact, the patient visits the provider’s physical facility and goes through the assessment process with one or several healthcare professionals who provide the care and treatment necessary for the patient’s full recovery. Stage 4. Post-Visit Treatment and Retention The patient follows treatment recommendations and adjusts their lifestyle to recover from disease under the provider’s supervision. To provide professional care, the provider remains available 24/7 via phone and online. The provider may also engage with the patient via preferred channels in the treatment process to ask about the patient’s condition and provide extra information that would be useful and engaging for the patient to gain the patient’s trust and retain them. The Challenge of Patient Journey Mapping: Low Digital Maturity Healthcare has a big future where automation and technology will predominate. In 2021, the worth of artificial intelligence in the healthcare market amounted to $11 billion worldwide. Statista predicts the global AI healthcare market will face a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37% from 2022, amounting to $188 billion by 2030. A substantial shift from traditional to digital is now forcing healthcare organizations to redefine how they provide patient experiences, which may be a significant problem due to low digital maturity. On the other hand, fierce competition and continuously growing access to technology have already encouraged many healthcare organizations to understand their target audiences and engage with them on a personal level. In a world where patients have high medical awareness and demand patient-centric treatment, a patient journey map is essential for building a successful marketing strategy within a healthcare organization. The Benefits of Patient Journey Mapping Here’s why a healthcare organization needs a customer engagement journey map: The Culture of Innovation and Digital Maturity Patient journey mapping encourages healthcare providers to deploy an innovative vision as a part of their growth strategy and cultivate an interest in technology among multiple stakeholders, which increases the organization’s digital maturity and provides a standard for continuous improvements. The creation of a patient journey map involves the implementation of advanced technology. Chatbots personalize communication with patients. Artificial intelligence generates actionable insights. Automation accelerates data processing. Data Management and Consolidation in a Single Environment When a healthcare organization creates a patient journey map, it completely changes how they work with all available information, including patient data. Patient journey mapping fosters healthcare providers to implement a single ecosystem that integrates all the activity areas that affect patient care at all stages of engagement and interaction. A Complete View of Patients and Enhanced Teamwork An integrated ecosystem gives organizations a holistic view of their activities and optimizes connections among multiple teams where professionals with varied expertise cooperate to create a patient journey map. It eliminates misunderstanding, leverages resources, and streamlines patient care. Personalized Patient Care and Experience at Scale Patient journey mapping helps organizations quickly address the personal needs of each patient, modernize patient flow, design insight-driven predictive models to identify patterns and trends and prevent disease in the future, and make better decisions to create better outcomes and retain more patients. Improved Patient Retention After implementing patient journey mapping, providers can develop more effective patient retention strategies. A 360-degree view, personalized care, and advanced technical infrastructure lay a strong foundation for gaining patients’ trust, spreading the word about the organization, and solving business pain points. The Elimination of Business Pain Points Along with eliminating the pain points of patient engagement, patient journey maps also help identify pain points inside an organization and improve productivity, accountability, financing, and processes. High Standards for Marketing and Content Creation Patient journey mapping standardizes how an organization plans, produces, manages, distributes, and delivers content. Such standards improve the quality of content and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, prompting an organization to keep an eye on the latest trends in healthcare services promotion and digital technology. How to Create a Seamless Patient Journey Map? Here are the actions necessary to implement customer journey mapping in healthcare: Track Existing Patient Journeys Before healthcare providers begin mapping patient journeys, they ask healthcare professionals to share information about the care journeys they usually go through with their patients. Such information is necessary to analyze the patient experience they currently provide and improve it in the future within a healthcare journey map designed by the care provider. Collect Patient Feedback Regularly After gathering input from healthcare professionals, care providers also collect patient feedback. It helps care providers improve their services by identifying gaps during healthcare journey mapping and discovering the information necessary to segment patients into a few target groups and create patient personas. Identify Patient Personas A patient persona is an image of a typical patient created using data and qualitative research. Personas are profiles that include all essential patient information, such as demographics, goals, habits, potential pain points, current problems, level of digital maturity, and other characteristics crucial for care providers. Patient personas give care providers a deep understanding of the actions necessary to expand its online presence and boost the current number of patients, discover the possibilities of patient retention, and improve coordination between stakeholders from different departments and teams. Patient personas allow care providers to know how to create an exceptional patient experience, specifically create the right content that helps solve patients’ problems, send personalized messages at the right moment via the preferred channels, and provide better services that meet specific needs. How many personas does a care provider need? The number of patient personas depends on the number of criteria the organization considers missing to view the big picture. Build the Patient Journey Funnel Also called the healthcare journey funnel, the patient journey funnel is a scheme to visualize the critical engagement stages between patients and a healthcare organization. There are four main stages within the patient journey funnel: Acquisition (Awareness). A patient knows that healthcare organizations provide different solutions and services. The main goal of a healthcare organization at this stage is to promote its solution and services on the official website, third-party websites, search engines, and social media using high-quality content at a large scale and the latest practices in digital marketing.Consideration (Interest). A patient with a health problem is looking for a solution. The main goal of a healthcare organization at this stage is to get the patient interested in the organization’s solution and services by highlighting unique benefits and advantages competitors don’t have.Conversion (Decision). After considering the services and solutions of a healthcare organization and its competitors, a patient persona with a health problem is ready to decide about treatment. At this stage, a healthcare organization’s goal is to encourage a patient to engage with a healthcare organization using any preferred communication channels, such as email, phone calls, messaging apps, online chats, PPC ads, SMS, and beyond.Retention (Loyalty). A patient uses the services and solutions of a healthcare organization. The main goal of the healthcare organization at this stage is to create long-standing and personalized relationships with the patient by establishing continuous communication that brings value so that the patient will address the organization as soon as a new medical issue occurs. The patient journey funnel helps healthcare providers identify gaps in marketing affairs, fulfill the needs of different groups of patients, and increase patient satisfaction. Consolidate All Patient Data in One Place Care providers can successfully implement patient journey mapping only in a single healthcare system that integrates data sources such as: Electronic health records (EHRs) include information about health issues, ongoing care, medications, and other clinical data.Engagement history includes patient feedback, information about patient touch points with a care provider, preferred communication channels, current needs, and other essential details that facilitate retention and increase loyalty. To build an integrated healthcare system, care providers use software that automates patient acquisition, improves patient flow, and streamlines post-visit patient experience. Build a Sufficient Digital Infrastructure A digital infrastructure plays a vital role in the patient journey mapping process. It helps internal stakeholders from multiple teams and departments connect, coordinate actions, and create personalized patient experiences at a large scale using a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. With custom CRM solutions, care providers use automation to personalize communication, get a 360 view of each patient to improve treatment and support, implement marketing campaigns and analyze their performance, and gather insights that help healthcare professionals continuously enhance patient journey maps. In the healthcare industry, mobile apps developed according to specific needs and integrated with CRM platforms are another software that can significantly improve interactions between care providers and patients within journey maps. Patient apps automate data collection, introduce telemedicine services, improve health outcomes, and personalize care. Create a Healthcare Customer Journey Map with Viseven With years of expertise in creating customer journeys in healthcare, the Viseven team can help your organization provide a unique patient experience by designing an efficient communication plan based on your brand strategy. Whatever the level of complexity and scale, our specialists can create a successful patient journey map and develop a digital infrastructure for it where your team will use automation, create personalized marketing campaigns, and analyze results using an effective KPI system. If your organization needs more details on healthcare journeys and their realization, please contact us now. Our patient journey mapping specialists will reply shortly and provide professional consultation on delivering an exceptional patient experience. Customer Journey Mapping in Healthcare: Case Study Viseven helped many organizations in the healthcare industry and many different enterprises in the life sciences industry with no experience create customer journeys based on unique goals and needs. As a result of cooperation with a top 50 pharmaceutical enterprise that needed a user journey map for multiple scenarios, the Viseven team reached: 98% goal accomplishment196 new registrations Download this case study to read how an organization can triple the number of website registrations within 30 days using a combination of two communication channels and high-quality content within the omnichannel customer journey map. Good luck with creating your customer journey map in healthcare!
Wartime life and work: How an IT company with a large presence in Ukraine keeps operating during the Russian invasion Posted on March 11, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin On February 24th, 2022, between 4 and 5 AM Kyiv time, Russia started bombing Ukrainian military infrastructure. Russian forces did not stop there, though. Putin’s regime launched a war against innocent Ukrainian civilians. The Russian army continues attacking Ukrainian schools, hospitals, maternity clinics, kindergartens — killing children, women, elderly people, leaving civilians with very few options to evacuate to safety. Viseven is a European company with offices across the world, including Ukraine. Up until Russia’s war against the country, Viseven also used to have an office in Moscow. The company terminated all ties with Russia and Belarus, as well as contracts involving both aggressor states’ clients. Since the onset of the war, Viseven started relocating its Ukrainian staff to safer cities within the country. The company’s CEO, Nataliya Andreychuk, says the safety of their employees is a top priority. Keeping that in mind, the company continues to run its daily operations, with most professionals working remotely. What are their experiences? How do the people behind the projects live? Here are some of their stories. Yevhen D, Chief People Officer: I was in Kyiv as the bombs hit. I did not evacuate the greater Kyiv area and am currently working from a village near the Ukrainian capital. I often hear heavy artillery fire, military planes flying overhead, and explosions as I log onto my computer. But I have to continue to join conference calls with the team, granted many of the typical work-day calls start with a simple “How are you, and was the night okay where you’re at?” I have to admit, it is hard to be productive, but keeping yourself occupied can also be helpful. My message to the world? I am angry at Russia… forever angry. Nataliia S, Office Manager: I am currently coordinating relocation efforts to the safer city of Ternopil in the western part of Ukraine. In fact, I was already in Ternopil researching potential office spaces in case of a Russian invasion when the rockets hit my beloved Kyiv. My son, whom I left with my parents, was with them when the bombs started falling from the sky. I had a phone call with my parents, who said something blew up fairly close by. I must be honest; there is no time to be sad. I have to remain strong for my child, family, and country, despite the panic, fear, and anger that continue to run through my mind. Currently, I am helping Viseven staff who have evacuated from cities under Russia’s massive attack. The typical office space no longer looks like it: mattresses, pillows, blankets – all to help people feel safer and more comfortable while trying to maintain some sense of normalcy during air raid sirens. Employees are scared and fearful. Everyone saw how rockets were flying into residential buildings, hitting civilian infrastructure, Russians are bombing hospitals and schools. So, keeping things running may be difficult, but it is necessary to keep going in times of war. Many of the professionals not directly involved in organizing the relocation effort had to make their own decisions in the first days. Yevhenii B, Content Author: In some incredibly horrible way, my first day at the company coincided with the first day of the war. The evening before now seems somewhat comical as I was so excited about how my first day at the office would go, how I’d introduce myself to the new team. All my dreams were to fit into a new team. That night I couldn’t sleep, countless times repeating various ways of presenting myself. I couldn’t sleep because of this feeling of some huge wave of changes that were coming into my life. With these thoughts and the pleasant anticipation of the future, I fell asleep. At 5 AM, there was a loud explosion. My life is now divided between BEFORE and AFTER: for me, my family, and my motherland Ukraine. On that very same day, I hastily packed my things and returned to the small town near Kyiv, where I’ve been living and working for the past 14 days of the war. Some days are “hotter”, some days, there is aggrieved silence – scary as it seems a beast is lurking. During these 2 weeks, invaders’ bombs have dramatically changed the city. The infrastructure continues to suffer much. I have somewhat limited access to the Internet. My new teammates turned out to be real enthusiasts who find great relief in our work, thereby contributing to our victory. While occupants are destroying our homes and trying to separate us, we are building bridges with each other and quickly becoming a real team. Yuliya S, Communications Manager: I joined the company on March 2nd, 2022. I was at home with my husband, 18-month-old son, and our family dog in Vasylkiv, one of the first cities hit by Russian rockets on February 24th. I will never forget the sound of the 5 explosions I heard. My brand-new two-story home shook, the windows shook, the doors rattled. Luckily, my great-grandmother, who survived the Second World War, left me an apartment in Ternopil decades ago. As a Canadian-Ukrainian, I choose to remain in Ukraine and help with volunteer efforts as much as possible. I am also actively doing TV interviews to convey that Russia is a terrorist state. The Russian army is attacking innocent people, bombing schools, hospitals, clinics, killing children, women, and the elderly. Russia needs to be stopped! Putin must be stopped! As far as working from home during the war – it is difficult but helpful at the same time. This is certainly not how I envisioned my first week at work. Since Russia viciously attacked Ukraine, most of our daily work meetings start with a conversation about the war, and today, a simple “How are you?” means so much more than ever. Since the Russian attack, some of Viseven’s Ukrainian employees have combined their daily work with volunteering efforts. Some have chosen to evacuate to other countries in Europe, while others have joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the Territorial defense. Viseven employees continue to work and deliver the best possible results while supporting Ukraine from different locations across the country and the world. Viseven specialists are arranging their work in different ways according to their (very different) physical locations. The prevailing sentiment is working as hard as possible to ensure things keep functioning in this difficult time. Hanna S, SMM Manager: I stayed in Kyiv, Ukraine, till March 1st and managed my routine workflow under ballistic missiles, sleeping at ground zero in the garage for five nights. I decided to evacuate my kids spontaneously as the explosions became too close to my house, though the day before, I stuffed my fridge with food for the nearest time. Being on my way to Berlin, the most challenging thing was to stay calm. What’s more, there were no charges or sockets for smartphones/laptops in random trains, only those I took beforehand. Staying in the info flow and in touch with parents who decided to stay in Kyiv and teammates to cover daily tasks are extremely important no matter what. My message to the world is clear – stand with Ukraine, help Ukrainians get rid of the evil that Putin’s regime brought upon the whole world; otherwise, the butterfly effect may be the size of a tsunami… Denys M, Product Manager: I am currently in the city of Zhytomyr, where the Russian armed forces targeted both military and civilian infrastructure. Russian missiles recently destroyed a local school, an oil depot was also hit nearby, and air raid sirens go on and off. Despite the obvious dangers, I try to focus on the positive. I manage to attend online meetings and calls even from the corridor where my family shelters when the air raid sirens go off. I also do my best to find time to volunteer and assist people in need during the war. I was also instrumental in coordinating the company’s message to foreign governments about Russia’s attack on Ukraine. As far as work goes, it’s important to hang in there and envision a brighter future ahead. Please keep doing what you do best, commit as much time as possible to your job to maintain the processes already in place, and of course, believe in Ukraine and its incredible people. Ukraine will stand! Some have stories that could fit into action movies – and would really prefer them to be just that: movies. Nevertheless, they keep on working. Dmitry Sokolov, Brand Manager It started early in the morning on February 24th: I was lying in bed and heard an explosion. After a few hours, I was at my sister’s apartment at the other end of Kyiv. We decided to move to the Rivne region with her husband and toddler son on the following day. We encountered a Ukrainian tank at a crossing several kilometers outside of Kyiv. When it was right in front of our car, some sort of projectile came out flying from the wood nearby, exploding next to the tank. We were only 7 meters away from it. The nights in Kyiv afterward were unnaturally silent, with the only sounds being the trembling window glasses and the creaking swings at children’s playgrounds. The days were divided between remote work (through secure systems) and getting each other to calm down. Later on, there was no running water. The bombings got even more intense, so we got back on the road. We made it. I am now working in full mode; at least the routines were not disrupted. Alla Manokhina, Head of Design : On February 24th, I woke up early to make some breakfast for kids, going to school the first time after the quarantine. Suddenly my mother-in-law called saying – “What are doing? What school? THE WAR HAS STARTED. Kharkiv, Kyiv, Zhytomyr and others were bombed this night.” I told the kids that no one was going anywhere, and our lives changed that day. The first days were rather calm in Zhytomyr. Every day, we met with the teams to check if everyone was alright and who could work. Some of the guys volunteered from the first days, while others stayed in place to work even during air raid sirens. I decided to relocate with my kids and pets once the shelling intensified. I drove to the other side of the country to stay at the apartment of my teammate. These days we all try to pitch in and help each other as much as possible. I chose to go to Poland to keep my children safe. To be honest, I keep thinking about the people left in Ukraine – parents, relatives, friends, colleagues; checking the news, calling at night after the news of ongoing air raids to make sure that everyone is okay. And hoping that it will be over soon. Russia’s war on Ukraine is not only a local problem. It is a global disaster with horrific consequences for the world. The war that Russia started will go down in history as one of the darkest moments for humanity. Putin’s regime is killing innocent children, women, and men, threatening the very foundations of democracy and human rights. Viseven is a global company that has offices in many countries, but our Ukrainian staff is an integral part of the company’s success. We call upon the world to stop Russia’s war against innocent people. We urge you to speak out, protest, write to your leaders, ask NATO to close the sky over Ukraine, supporting the people that are courageous enough to stand up to the Russian aggression.
Digital Transformation in Pharma: Barriers and Impact Posted on February 22, 2022 by Andrii Nikulin Over time, pharma gets under fire due to its excessive talks about ‘digital transformation.’ It needs to be clarified what these words refer to and whether these grandiloquent statements work for actual doctors and patients. How many healthcare professionals and patients have yet to see the impact of digital technologies in the healthcare industry? Has it already improved pharma’s daily operations? Let’s figure out where the pharma sector is on the road to the digital age, how this process is changing how they do business, and how it affects the HCPs and patient engagement. What is Digital Transformation for Pharma companies? “Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer, and I can see that in the minds of every CEO I talk to.” Marc Benioff, Chairman, and Co-CEO, Salesforce. Digital Technology in the pharmaceutical industry pushes us to change, poses challenges we don’t want to take, and makes us move forward. These changes may be dramatic. But when life wants us to grow, it makes us change to remain competitive. The problem is that digital technologies are changing faster than we are, leaving us with no choice but to keep pace. When we speak of digital transformation reshaping, we mean the natural evolution of existing processes with new technologies, introducing patterns and strategies that enhance customer experience, and building a genuine dialogue with the customer. In the pharmaceutical sector, this process was launched three years ago, when the pandemic, without much readiness, forced life sciences to increase their digital innovation culture drastically or, in particular cases, grow it from scratch. Looking back, we may go through all cliches of that period, but the digital shift declared a standard of communication with customers. Digital Transformation Barriers: where are we? Where are we now on the road to digital success? Despite being spurred by the pandemic, the digitalization process runs slowly. In terms of pharma digitalization, there are still many regions on the map where companies’ digital development level is consistently low. This map shows how pharmaceutical companies assess their readiness to become digital organizations. According to this map, the digitalization process among countries remains uneven. This is primarily associated with the poor scalability of implemented solutions among the regions and resilience to changes. Now, 1/3 of pharmaceutical companies believe they need to be better resourced for digital engagement. The other 40% report a need for more talent and the right technology for transformation. It’s important to understand that each industry has its own specifics and digitalization in pharma won’t be as smooth as anywhere else. However, this process highlights the areas where the mindset change should happen and what soft spots digital business processes transformation is designed to cover. How does Digital Transformation reshape the Pharma industry? Digital innovation in the pharma sector can help companies perform better by increasing productivity and reducing costs through collaboration, digital technology centralization to optimize delivery, and empowering a company or department. supply chain A global pharmaceutical company is experimenting with VR in its manufacturing operations. Managers can cut training time in half by creating virtual training programs that render production environments and speed up the path to excellence. streamline processes and marketing efforts Another biopharmaceutical company reduced its marketing spending by 20% by building a global system. The move followed a duplication analysis, in which the company found that up to 60% of localized asset-creation activities were duplicative. The company now has a centralized content center to deliver standardized marketing materials in flexible formats to more than 40 local markets. acquiring talent more efficiently The medical company double-checked the licenses of applicants for a nursing license during the interview. This included visiting the verification website, taking a snapshot of the applicant’s license, and storing the information in the applicant’s file. The HR bot was able to automate 80% of the process. Robotic process automation resulted in a 65% reduction in labor costs and a reduced risk of errors. This freed up the equivalent of one full-time job, allowing employees to focus on more critical activities. Disruptive Technologies and Market Dynamics Digital technologies can help companies deliver a competitive, digitally enabled, engaging, impactful experience to customers, the workforce, and ecosystem external partners. Key disruptive technologies include using digital tools to engage patients and other stakeholders remotely, involving social and other community networks, and personalizing experiences with user data to deliver excellent value. Creating a platform for customer experience. The Patient Service and Care Management Platform delivers consistent patient experiences across all channels and enables treatment adherence and care coordination with an entire network of healthcare providers for each patient. Through connected apps and devices, it supports digital therapy, helps improve patient outcomes, and helps health professionals coordinate patient care management. The platform analyzes internal and external data to gain insight into patient care and interactions and can integrate with the platform to analyze real-world data. Connecting patients, biopharma, caregivers, health care providers, and other stakeholders. The platform helps biopharma companies build partnerships with advocacy groups and providers to enhance patients’ experience with complex, chronic, and terminal diseases. It supports a next-generation digital healthcare network focused on patient support and digital engagement. Patients who consent to share their data receive information and updates from the sponsoring organization (typically biopharma companies and patient advocacy groups) to help navigate their disease. Optimizing the content provided to health care practitioners. A large global biopharmaceutical company has created a self-service portal for more than 30,000 practitioners across Europe to access digital marketing and sales materials in various media. The content shared with each practitioner differs based on previous browsing habits, allowing for custom targeting and enhancing the effectiveness of the marketing approach. Artificial Intelligence in the Pharma Transformation Over the past few years, the use of Artificial Intelligence in the Pharma industry and Life Sciences has become a trending topic. Many pharmaceutical companies are progressively implementing more efficient automated processes that include data-driven decisions and use predictive advanced analytics tools. The next step of this advanced data analytics approach will consist of artificial Intelligence and machine learning. Some of the ways AI is being applied in the pharmaceutical sector today include the following: Manufacturing process improvement Drug development Processing biomedical and clinical data Rare diseases and personalized medicine Identifying clinical trial candidates Predictive forecasting Drug adherence and dosage From early-stage drug discovery to prescribing options, the use of Artificial Intelligence is growing steadily within the pharma industry, with an estimated market volume reaching $10 billions by 2024 (including diagnostics, AI-based medical imaging, personal AI assistants, genomics, and drug discovery). Can we hold the digital transformations back? Remember your life before the pandemic; now, it seems like a dream to you, right? Like no other, these two years greatly impacted our lives, habits, and priorities. In 2019, marketers expected a quick end to the pandemic and a return to routine communication with customers. After three years, again like a dream, the pandemic is slowly receding (at minor restrictions). It begs the question: do we need to digitalize further? And will this process be slowed down now? No. Because the digital shift catalyzed some fundamental changes. Pharma marketing has always been a complicated environment characterized by complex relationships with its target audience. However, the shift towards digital innovation in pharma has exposed many problems that previously needed to be tracked. Searching through the old reports is like getting into a time machine that can take us back to changes that have taken place. The retrospective looks as follows: In 2019, 77% of pharma companies reported issues with content localization/translation. Only 28% could repurpose their content with a little manual effort. Back then, 62% say their organization has yet to make plans for using AI-driven content technologies. The most significant impact of digital technology in the pharmaceutical industry was on HCP engagement. Before COVID-19, 64% of meetings with pharma sales reps were held in person. During the pandemic, this shifted to 65% of meetings being held virtually. The old patters revolve primarily around internal content production issues in the pharmaceutical industry and don’t consider the main factor – HCP’s experiences. Today, searching for personalized experiences for the customer is the cornerstone of all companies that want to withstand competition in the market and have a serious competitive advantage. In the end, we should remember that technology exists to make our life easier. In life sciences, the ultimate goal of Digital Transformation is to introduce new technologies that will allow space and time for more strategic decisions on customers. These technologies should solve the long-standing issues of MLR optimization, content and taxonomy management, and multivendor environment support. Transformation in the Pharmaceutical sector: what it refers to Pharma often speaks clichés, but most critics are associated with a lack of clarification of what it refers to. The pandemic exposed many problems in pharma that, in the new era of communication, cannot remain unresolved. We’ve tried to highlight them all for you to see that Digital Transformation usually touches people, processes, tools, and content, areas where innovations are needed to simplify the internal processes that often hinder the natural evolution of companies toward strategic marketing. Why do we need it? In communicating with our customers, we should remember that the biggest shift occurred in patients’ mindsets. Not speaking their language, we can compare our audience to distant stars we try to reach in the dark. The main driver of prescriptions in the pharma industry is loyalty. The main factor that affects loyalty is the message your brand translates. Feel free to learn about it by checking our pharma digital transformation case study. Companies that help with pharma digital transformation Such professional services companies as Mckinsey, Vaimo, and Viseven are driving Digital Transformation by offering an end-to-end content operating model that is aligned with strategy, and ready for scale and innovation adoption. Viseven combines technology and marketing expertise mastering the entire chain of enablers to deliver a best-in-class digital experience. Contact us to learn more about how we enable digital transformation for pharma businesses of all sizes and maturity levels.