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Companies of all sizes in the pharmaceutical, life sciences, and healthcare industries are among the first to embrace advanced technology and its tremendous potential to accelerate drug research and development, streamline drug manufacturing and supply chains, and personalize patient care and customer experience.

In our overview, we collected all the most significant pharma, life sciences, and healthcare trends that will change the game within the upcoming years.

Download this guide to learn more about: 

• Using artificial intelligence to deal with mental health issues, preventing burnout in the workplace, discovering new drugs, and improving medical content production; 
• Next-generation medical education and healthcare powered by metaverse and virtual reality; 
• Omnichannel marketing and how it can increase engagement with healthcare professionals; 
• Patient-centric approach, precision medicine, and personalized patient support programs; 
• World’s leading pharmaceutical companies uniting their efforts to work together towards achieving decarbonization.

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Pharmaceutical procurement is arguably the key factor influencing drug availability, safety, and total costs. Comprehensive procurement process should ensure a timely supply of the right pharmaceutical in the right quantity, meeting approved quality standards. It should effectively manage supplier relationships in an ethical way while also seeking to secure the most favorable purchase price. That said, it is essential that this process was implemented by competent personnel with pharmaceutical, managerial, legal, and financial expertise. Equally important is their access to robust technology and reliable, up-to-date information. 

To tick all the boxes on this extensive list of requirements, pharmaceutical companies should clearly understand all challenges and remain aware of current trends to make procurement both efficient and seamless. In this article, the Viseven team aims to explain how pharma procurement works and to cover effective strategies to transform this process at any level, from local campaigns to national health programs. 

What is Procurement in the Pharmaceutical Industry? 

Pharmaceutical procurement refers to the process of managing supplier relationships to ensure pharma companies receive correct medicines in the right quantities at reasonable prices while the supplier gets a transparent and timely payment. The procurement cycle presupposes all decisions related to selecting suppliers and monitoring drug delivery and distribution. It typically falls into the following steps:  

• Reviewing drug selections. 
• Determining drug quantities. 
• Aligning needs with the budget. 
• Selecting a procurement method. 
• Choosing suppliers. 
• Outlining contract terms. 
• Tracking order status. 
• Receiving and checking drugs. 
• Paying for an order. 
• Distributing pharmacy. 
• Gathering consumption information. 

Key Pharma Procurement Challenges 

There are many balls in the air which pharma brands must keep juggling to deliver effective, safe, and reasonably priced essential pharmacy. Let’s take a closer look at some of them. 

The lack of supply chain transparency 

The lack of supply chain visibility makes it excruciatingly challenging for pharma companies to plan medicine production, forecast demand, and manage their inventory. Without consistent, standardized data, regulators fail to identify drug supply concerns, policymakers cannot make informed decisions to improve supply chain resilience, and healthcare providers (HCPs) are blindsided by the acute shortage of critical pharmaceuticals. The lack of transparency is positively correlated with improper security as well, as it becomes problematic for buyers to protect medicines they cannot track. 

Poor supplier performance 

Poor supplier performance generally results in unanticipated expenses. For example, a pharmaceutical brand can face increased acquisition costs if a supplier has not delivered on time. It also bears extra replacement expenses when drugs are discarded due to improper packaging. 

Hidden expenses can pile up, spiraling out of control due to many reasons related to supplier performance: the lack of appropriate documentation, storage, wrong dosage forms, and the list goes on. Any of these performance incidents may create a serious disruption at any level of the supply chain. If inadequately managed, poor supplier performance may impact drug safety and availability. 

Unexpected geographic factors 

Many pharmaceutical companies relying on global markets for drug materials are particularly vulnerable to shifting geopolitical situations. For instance, depending on sources in tariff-affected countries can substantially increase a pharma company’s operational expenses. 

Climate change is another factor, potentially disrupting supplies and contributing to hefty price tags. Regions which were once the sources of raw materials may be plagued by adverse weather events, hindering production and causing inflated costs. 

What are the Main Pharmaceutical Procurement Methods?

Procurement methods, at any health system level, typically comprise the following categories: restricted tender, open tender, direct procurement, competitive negotiation, and international and local shopping. 

• Restricted tender: Suppliers must go through the prequalification process to prove their past supplier performance, manufacturing practices, and financial viability. 
• Open tender: Any supplier representative can submit their offer, following terms and conditions outlined in the tender invitation. 
• Direct procurement: Drugs or materials are sourced from a single supplier at the negotiated discount or quoted list price. 
• Competitive negotiation: The buyer turns to a limited number of suppliers (usually at least three) to negotiate the price or achieve certain service arrangements. 
• International or local shopping: Like competitive negotiation, the company reaches out to three suppliers on average; however, price negotiations are not allowed. 

Logistics Solutions to Improve Pharmacy Procurement Process

With the rising number of sensitive medicines, how can the pharmaceutical logistic cycle keep expenses down while still complying with all safety requirements? Let’s discover the main approaches to accomplish this. 

Implementing innovative technologies 

Cutting-edge drugs, such as stem cell therapy or large molecule biologics, require innovative transportation methods to keep the damage risks close to zero. Technologies allow pharmaceutical companies to collect and analyze a massive amount of data to ensure proper drug safety. 

One of the most common use cases is Internet of Things (IoT) sensors placed on containers and packaging to track humidity and temperature in real-time. The importance of these solutions becomes all the more striking when one realizes that a staggering $35 billion is lost each year due to inadequate temperature regulation during shipments. Not only do sensors enable companies to comply with quality standards but also timely respond to risks during the actual transportation. For instance, technology makes it possible to modify a vehicle’s route or recharge the batteries in a temperature-controlled container, if necessary. 

Widening the scope of supply chain partners 

Expanding the network of suppliers is associated with tangible benefits, such as cost optimization and efficiency. For instance, a global life sciences (LS) company could choose to partner with their suppliers to perform safety tests. Instead of sending these materials to their own laboratory once they receive the packages, they could trust the tests done by the suppliers. By opting for this kind of collaboration, these companies can considerably trim off their transportation costs and speed up time-to-market. 

Collaborations with competitors or stakeholders in other industries can help address high costs of low volume drugs. Pharma brands can share trucks or temperature-controlled containers for airfreight, thereby significantly lowering transportation expenses. 

Digital Transformation in Pharma Procurement 

It is no secret that the coronavirus hit the health sectors the hardest. The pharmaceutical industry had to quickly find ways to optimize its procurement processes in order to tackle the hurdles the deadly virus brought upon businesses. Data analytics, e-procurement platforms, and blockchain technology emerged as the major trends to prevent procurement disruptions and boost supply chain resilience. 

Data analytics 

There is a reason data is called the new gold. For example, data analytics tools help businesses make more informed decisions regarding supplier negotiations. To choose the best supplier, businesses can analyze hundreds of options and sort them out in strategically important clusters. This categorization allows them to settle down on the right vendor based on the prices and upcoming purchases. Having the best supplier for a particular situation cuts down the total costs and time spent on negotiations. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms also take a lot of legwork from supplier management. Take, for instance, a pharma company that purchases ingredients for its new medicine. It has 200 suppliers in 120 strategically important clusters, with each supplier in numerous clusters. Advanced analytics solutions give the company a bird-eye view of each vendor’s performance in terms of quality, risks, price, and sustainability. 

Additionally, many companies introduce data analytics technology to cut down their transportation costs. To give you an example, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, Moderna, relies on Looker, an AI-powered data analytics solution delivered by Google. The following tool allows them to identify the most cost-saving logistics route for each of their 60,000 shipments per year.  

E-procurement platforms 

Pharmaceutical and LS enterprises leverage e-procurement solutions for a plethora of reasons. These include enhancing strategic planning, driving operational performance, and automating labor-intensive tasks. 

The range of functionalities within e-procurement platforms notably varies. Certain platforms focus on facilitating compliance with regulatory benchmarks, while others, much like well-known sites such as Amazon or eBay, connect users with verified suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers. Additionally, some digital solutions are designed to help to classify medications and store relevant details about them, such as active ingredients, dosage forms, and pricing. This not only saves a fair bit of time but also eliminates errors from the manual process of cataloging. 

Prior to e-procurement, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a global pharma brand, used old school paper cataloguing and communications over the phone. This made the procurement process more expensive, time-consuming, and ridden with errors. Soon they realized they needed to shift to an e-procurement platform to easily manage content in any lab supply firm worldwide. Their solution now allows them to create requisition, approve, distribute, and make receipts with just a few clicks.  

Blockchain technology 

Blockchain remains one of the main tech stories in pharmaceutical procurement. Blockchain refers to a secure database, where real-time information is available to all parties. This, in turn, makes it possible to share anything valuable, including drug provenance or current temperature, improving supply chain safety and transparency. 

For example, blockchain is actively used to monitor every step in the cold chain, from manufacturing to delivery, using smart contracts. If specific conditions are met, these contracts are automatically put into effect. This way, pharmaceutical companies can determine the step in the drug delivery process when a temperature-sensitive product becomes degraded. If fluctuation in temperature occurs, they can identify those responsible for the damage and request compensation. 

Since the record in the ledger cannot be manipulated or erased, blockchain helps to address another elephant in the room – drug authenticity. In 2021, in North America alone, pharma companies suffered from 2,440 incidents of medicine counterfeiting. With blockchain, every step a pharmaceutical product takes in the supply chain journey is documented through an immutable record of events. 

Merck, one of the oldest pharma manufacturers, partners with IBM, Walmart, and accounting leader KPMG to take advantage of blockchain technology. To build trust with its customers, the company gets rid of any intermediary that disrupts transparent data flow in their supply chain. Due to blockchain, pharmacists and healthcare providers (HCPs) can use an application to track the vaccine packages and get the full history of their journey, from suppliers to their offices.   

Ensure a painless pharmaceutical procurement process 

With rising incidents of counterfeiting, safety concerns, and high production costs, pharma companies absorb a disturbing realization: regulatory compliance alone will not solve all problems in the procurement process. It will require investments in cutting-edge technologies to ensure supply chain visibility, supplier high performance as well as resilience in the face of unanticipated geopolitical shifts. 

Viseven, with over 14 years of experience, has consistently delivered innovative digital solutions to pharmaceutical and LS enterprises worldwide. Over this period, we have established long-term partnerships with more than 150 clients, including 50 globally renowned industry leaders. From idea to realization, we can help to build procurement solutions of any complexity. 

Need a hand with software development? Please, contact our team to start cooperation. 

As the pioneer in client relationship management (CRM) software, Salesforce is now one of the leading platforms offering a rich collection of products, solutions, and tools far beyond CRM possibilities. According to Fortune, Salesforce is the second most innovative company in the United States, followed by Alphabet.   

Throughout the years, Salesforce gained a reputation as a trusted advisor and partner among thousands of companies across the world’s fourteen largest industries, including life sciences and healthcare.  

In this article, we’ll explore typical cases of healthcare companies using Salesforce, review the functionality of Salesforce CRM and the solutions for different sectors within life sciences and healthcare, and discover how Salesforce supports healthcare companies and communities. 

How is Salesforce Used in Healthcare? A Few Typical Cases

For years, Salesforce’s mission in life sciences and healthcare has been the same – to be one of the main drivers for digital transformation and put relationships with organizations at the heart of activity.  

The number of cases of using Salesforce in healthcare is numerous and diverse. Professionals of all sorts use Salesforce in healthcare organizations of all kinds. Both enterprises and non-profits entered the Salesforce environment to match their needs and fulfill their goals.  

A non-profit organization that raises money to enhance the quality of children’s healthcare used multiple Salesforce products to build an advanced data-driven system based on a database of 700,000 donor prospects.  

After using Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud to track donor activity, the organizations added to the cloud CRM analytics and Einstein Discovery AI (now Einstein GPT) to get a 360-degree view of the donor pipeline and actionable insights for its optimization.  

The largest non-profit provider of behavioral healthcare in California used Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud to meet the increasing demand for mental health services and automate their workflow. The provider’s team used to spend 80 hours processing a list of potential clients. With Salesforce, they do it for 15 minutes.  

Humana, a US-based health insurance company, took advantage of a few Salesforce products at once to build a single view around their customers. The Humana team integrated with:  

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud to personalize 60 different prospect journeys and attract 1,000 interested employer leads per year;
• MuleSoft API to boost delivery speed four times;
• Salesforce Health Cloud to provide doctors with patient data, such as medical history, medications, and lifestyles;  
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud to make sure that patients receive their prescriptions at the right time.  

Lilly, an American pharmaceutical enterprise, used the Customer 360 platform to develop and launch over 50 apps to achieve a higher level of customer-centricity and improve internal coordination across departments and locations.

Salesforce CRM for Healthcare: Solutions’ Overview

Salesforce healthcare CRM is a product used by top enterprises in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, and life sciences industries. They opt for the platform for high targeted care opportunities, cloud data security, patient engagement, remote patient monitoring, and many other goals.  

Salesforce implementation in health care narrows down to six sectors of activity: 

• Providers.  
• Payers.
• Pharma.
• MedTech.  
• Public Sector Health.

Every sector includes solutions developed specifically according to its needs and particularities.

Solutions for Providers 

Scale Patient Access and Services solution allows healthcare providers to receive a holistic view of patient data in a single place, including risk level, outreach frequency, contact preferences, conditions, caregivers, medications, allergies, member details, electronic health records, coverage details, care requests, cases, and engagement history. 

Also, providers can easily find and schedule appointments for patients and empower them to complete pre-visit and post-visit activities. 

Personalized Patient Acquisition & Outreach solution allows healthcare providers to generate demand and nurture relationships using marketing tools to collect and segment customer data across multiple channels, manage omnichannel campaigns on a single platform, and create personalized journeys for new and current patients based on their preferences and needs. 

With this solution, a patient can quickly find and schedule appointments, while a healthcare provider can share surveys to collect feedback on treatment and improve future experiences. The solution also includes CRM analytics for Salesforce Health Cloud that allows care coordinators to monitor all the data in a single place to measure the effectiveness of created journeys and improve them. 

Solutions for Payers

Trusted Contact Center solution allows healthcare payers to leverage customer support and increase agent productivity with the advanced member service console powered by Salesforce Health Cloud, launch an AI-powered chatbot to simplify communication and create personalized experiences, and see all available information about each member. 

Connected Network Management solution allows healthcare organizations to ensure quality outreach by creating tailored omnichannel journeys based on the provider’s personal and professional information, such as network preferences, specialty, NPI number, and primary service locations. Organizations can use pre-built integrations to simplify credentialing, while an intuitive dashboard will help them optimize contracting activities. 

Scale Member Management solution allows different types of managers to improve their cooperation, guide members through their journey, and improve health outcomes using a complete view of the customer, which provides relevant member information such as preferences, member plans, and health timelines showing clinical and customer service events. With CRM analytics for Salesforce Health Cloud, managers can identify high-risk members and measure care program success across member populations.

Solutions for Pharma

Enhance Patient Services solution allows pharmaceutical companies to establish closer relationships with patients and providers using a single platform to deliver personalized engagement and support programs for better adherence with automated workflows. 

With clinical, social, and adherence metrics, coordinators can receive all the necessary insights to offer patients the best actions and recommendations. With CRM analytics for Salesforce Health Cloud, coordinators can track and monitor patients’ care plans and prioritize patients who face health barriers. 

Scale Advanced Therapies solution allows stakeholders to track the chain of custody in real time, manage sell orders, and quickly identify and deal with issues to avoid expensive delays. 

Based on patient appointment information, treatment coordinators can use pre-built and automated workflows that calculate the appropriate appointment chains to get patients scheduled faster. Laboratory technicians can easily verify patient data, record vitals, confirm cold chain complaints, and print unique sample barcodes. 

With the help of these codes, manufacturers can receive all the information they need to update the record and its status. If delays occur, stakeholders can receive actionable insights from Einstein GPT. With the integration of Slack, stakeholders can enhance collaboration, receive updates, and eliminate bottlenecks.  

Accelerate Clinical Trials solution allows life sciences companies to unite with trial teams and speed up innovations by configuring all the necessary apps and letting everyone cooperate at each clinical trial phase, such as study analysis, site selection, study initiation, and trial implementation. 

Teams can store all critical documentation, access it anytime, and share it with researchers and other stakeholders. Analytics enables every stakeholder with a complete view of every activity and empowers them with real-time updates on study initiation and subject enrollment to define the next best steps. 

Salesforce Health Cloud keeps all clinical data safe and provides the trial team with enhanced collaboration opportunities, while Salesforce Marketing Cloud personalizes emails and SMS to keep trial participants up to date. 

Solutions for MedTech

Drive Intelligent Sales solution allows sales teams that offer medical devices to connect with each other, get a complete picture of a customer, and find the best leads to close more deals faster.  

With an advanced lead nurturing system, sales and marketing professionals can engage with the right prospects by delivering the right message at the right time. They can work in one place to coordinate their actions and monitor leads, conversions, and campaigns.  

Artificial intelligence helps MedTech companies to capture events and contacts, see new opportunities, and prioritize sales efforts.  

Modernize Commercial Operations solution allows companies that sell medical devices to consolidate all data in one place, assign tasks, automate workflows, and receive insights for better decision-making. 

Working together in one place, multiple teams can optimize manufacturing and scheduling for prosthetics and implants, check product availability and prevent delays, use forecasting algorithms to analyze and improve performance, enhance document management, negotiate complex deals with intelligent quoting, and beyond. 

Optimize Field Inventory Management solution allows medical device sales representatives to view upcoming visits to medical specialists and the necessary products with automated authorization flow and intelligent sales.  

A mobile app provides reps with a comprehensive view of their product data, such as quantity, serial numbers, order amount, shipping addresses, customer signatures, and consents for billing. With a built-in barcode scanner, reps can enter product serial numbers. 

The solution can help MedTech companies manage product shortfalls, reduce discrepancies, and simplify inventory cycle counts analysis.

Solutions for Public Sector Health 

Streamline Crisis Support Coordination solution allows healthcare organizations to help patients deal with psychological health conditions, crises, and treatment by creating end-to-end journeys. 

Salesforce help crisis specialists of different levels and areas optimize their operations using pre-built tools, evaluate health risks and manage them with surveys, triage logic, and recommendations from artificial intelligence. 

Build Integrated Care Programs solution offers the same opportunities as Salesforce solutions for providers, so we’ll skip it and move next. 

Manage Health Data with Transparency solution allows local health authorities to provide advanced patient care, predict better health outcomes, and improve patient satisfaction.  

A disease surveillance app allows healthcare organizations to engage patients who address their problems online and in real time with the medical specialists they need. With an advanced command center, healthcare professionals can provide personalized care by seeing the patient’s healthcare journey, checking procedure manuals and best practices for specific investigations, connecting to department communication channels, and viewing current tasks. 

Now that you know the solutions offered by Salesforce for healthcare and life sciences companies, let’s find out more details about the communities that support them. 

Salesforce Communities for Healthcare, Certified Third-Party App Developers, and Mentors 

For companies and non-profits in healthcare and life sciences, Salesforce offers a variety of resources to learn more details about using its products and solutions. 

Trailblazer Community is a place where employees of a healthcare organization or company can connect with their colleagues who are already taking advantage of Salesforce and discuss all interested topics.  

For instance, if your team wants to know more about Salesforce healthcare automation, they can find the discussion group they need by choosing specific filters. 

IdeaExchange Community is a forum where Salesforce users share unique experiences to use products, services, and solutions more effectively, eliminate issues that occurred during their workflows, and discover something they didn’t know about. 

Also, Salesforce launched its Salesforce+, the free streaming service that highlights a long list of Salesforce offline events, which is helpful if your healthcare business is interested in the environment. For instance, if you’re wondering about the Salesforce healthcare technology roadmap, you can watch nine episodes from the Dreamforce series.

Salesforce Healthcare Benefits – Are They Real?

Salesforce has a massive impact on the healthcare system by providing everything for healthcare workers to improve patient communication, medical services, and patient experience. 

It’s so groundbreaking that, for instance, primary care physicians don’t have to see patients personally because they can access all healthcare information and nonclinical data they need, such as care journeys, patient profiles, and social determinants.

Salesforce is also a good choice for any company that works in pharmaceuticals, MedTech, and insurance. The software incorporates multiple systems powered by next-generation functionality to let a business see the big picture, increase productivity, eliminate data silos, and reduce spending.

Viseven team has certified Salesforce specialists on board. Get in touch to see how we can help with the SF product suite or integrations.