Viseven at CPHI Korea to Witness Growth and Evolution in Pharma Posted on September 7, 2023November 12, 2024 by Andrii Nikulin On August 30 – September 1, the Viseven team, including Yiseo Cheon, Account Manager, and Suyoung Kim, SDR Team Lead, attended CPHI Korea, one of the main conferences facilitating Korean pharma’s evolution. CPHI is a global platform that unites over 100,000 professionals from the pharmaceutical industry, hosting events in Spain, North America, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea. The events cover every step of the pharma supply chain: ingredients, machinery, equipment, technology, package and contract service suppliers, distributors, and buyers from the pharmaceutical industry. This year at CPHI Korea, over 300 exhibitors represented 14 industries: active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) generic APIs custom manufacturing intermediates, fine and specialty chemicals excipients finished dosage forms pharmaceutical machinery & technology laboratory and analytical equipment biopharmaceuticals pharmaceutical packaging natural extracts contract services health ingredients food ingredients The conference agenda included five sessions about the Korea Drug Research Association’s innovation policy, ingredients, sustainable API production, the US dietary supplement industry, and the global business expansion of biotech companies. Additionally, attendees had an opportunity to visit over 20 exhibitor seminars conducted based on unique case studies and research. Yiseo Cheon, Account Manager, and Suyoung Kim, SDR Team Lead, visited CPHI Korea to meet numerous local pharmaceutical and biotech companies that aim to expand from the local to the global market, including Europe and America. The Viseven team engaged with individuals in the medical industry from over 60 companies in Korea. The team’s main goal at the event was to meet local medical companies in advance and explore their needs. During interactions with a wide range of medical and biotech companies, we noticed that most local biotech companies require our digital marketing and design services, such as 2D and 3D videos and printed materials in English. The reason for this demand is their intention to develop and promote their biotechnology on a global scale,” Yiseo Cheon, Account Manager at Viseven. While there are a few local marketing design agencies in Korea, the expertise and specialized services offered by Viseven in the medical industry left a strong impression on local biotech companies in Korea. At the event, the Viseven team showcased its services using portfolio presentation and medical animation videos. After the event, one of the local biotech companies in Korea agreed to acquire the design service.
Viseven at PhilMedical Expo 2023: Observing the Innovation Posted on September 5, 2023November 15, 2024 by Andrii Nikulin On August 23-25, the Viseven team visited Manila, the capital of Philippines to attend PhilMedical Expo – an international exhibition on hospital, laboratory, pharmaceutical, and medical equipment and supplies. At the 6th edition of Phil Medical Expo, professionals of all sorts gathered to drive health frontiers and bridge science, fitness, and medical technology. At the panel that included almost 30 conference speakers and nearly 20 workshop and seminar speakers, attendees had an opportunity to discuss various topics, including the Philippine consumer health industry, the role of physical therapy for athletes, quality in progressive laboratory medicine, and beyond. Nathaniel Manzano, Account Executive Lead at Viseven, and Christine De Real, Account Executive at Viseven, spent two days in the atmosphere of innovation to see the latest developments in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Along with attending a few noteworthy workshops, Nataniel and Christine met dozens of professionals representing various businesses in the Philippines and Asia-Pacific. At multiple booths, companies demonstrated products and services that transform today’s medicine. “It was a great event. We walked from booth to booth to network with the exhibitors, chat with them, discover what they offer, and also exchange insights about our services,” says Christine De Real, Account Executive at Viseven. Nathaniel Manzano and Christine De Real connected with representatives of a few companies from China, Korea, Japan, and Pakistan to share insights, showcase Viseven services, and uncover avenues for potential partnership and collaboration. Potential partners were discovering how their teams can implement advanced omnichannel techniques in their marketing strategies without wasting resources. “Our primary goal now was to promote Viseven as a global MarTech agency for pharma & life sciences and strengthen its position in the APAC region. The Philippines is one of the region’s most promising and fastest-growing pharma markets. We’re glad to connect with other professionals and do business with them at PhilMedical Expo 2023,” says Nathaniel Manzano, Account Executive Lead at Viseven. The participation of the Viseven team at the 6th edition of PhilMedical Expo has opened doors to many opportunities and promising prospects. After interacting with multiple industry leaders, Viseven expanded its business network in the APAC region and successfully nurtured the connections.
Viseven at Pharma Xchange: Switching to Omnichannel in Korea Posted on August 3, 2023November 15, 2024 by Andrii Nikulin Starting this year, most pharmaceutical companies in South Korea plan to switch from multichannel to omnichannel marketing with the help of content production, cross-functional change management, and effective KPI monitoring. Viseven actively keeps an eye of the latest transformations within the South Korean pharmaceutical market, as it receives investments that amounts to trillions South Korean won. One of the tremendous opportunities we use to see the changes in pharma in South Korea is networking. On June 30, 2023, the Viseven team were pleased to attend Pharma Xchange, an event about omnichannel marketing, technology, and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. At the conference, 16 top global pharmaceutical companies and medical-related partners in South Korea had a great chance to attend a few sessions hosted by: Yuri Jung, Co-Founder and CEO at SO & Company Reina Kim, Commercial Strategy Manager at SO & Company Jina Oh, Managing Director at Medigate The Viseven team, which included Yiseo Cheon, Account Manager, and Suyoung Kim, SDR Team Lead, went to the event to engage with companies that already use eWizard, a content experience platform powered by Viseven. Yiseo and Suyoung connected with representatives of Takeda Korea, Boehringer Ingelheim Korea, Bristol Myers Squibb Korea, Viatris Korea, Bayer Korea, SO & Company, and Medigate, who got interested in Viseven products and services. “Due to the nature of Korean people who are sensitive to trends, many people at the event knew about the eWizard solution from Viseven. They showed interest in the omnichannel consulting service. We look forward to innovative changes in the digital marketing of Korean pharmaceutical companies!”,—Yiseo Cheon, Account Manager at Viseven South Korea. Along with meeting many current customers and new prospects who wanted to know how they could implement an omnichannel strategy within their organization, Yiseo and Suyoung were excited to participate in a discussion of innovation in South Korean pharma. Here’s how they compare this experience with the knowledge they had before the pandemic: “The Viseven Korean team learned about the changes in digital marketing strategies of Korean pharmaceutical companies before and after Covid-19. It was a very important experience for us because we had a session to hear opinions on the current digital marketing trends in the Korean market and the importance of using an omnichannel marketing strategy.” At the end of the event, attendees had an opportunity to take part in a panel discussion Omnichannel Strategy: Review & Outlook hosted by four speakers: Hoon Park, Sr. Customer Excellence Manager at Janssen Korea [Moderator] Euijoong Pyo, Omnichannel Customer Engagement Manager at Jannsen Korea Hajun Sung, Omnichannel Engagement Manager at BMS Media Jongil Park, Multichannel Engagement Specialist at Boehringer Ingelheim Korea During one hour of conversation, panel hosts shared experiences within their organizations and answered the audience’s questions. You are always welcome to get in touch and find out more about Viseven products and services, industry events, or special offers. Feel free to send us a request anytime.
Viseven at Collision 2023 Posted on July 26, 2023 by Andrii Nikulin Collision is one of the world’s biggest tech conferences where businesses, leaders, investors, designers, developers, marketers, media, innovation enthusiasts, and artificial intelligence (AI) evangelists engage with each other, share knowledge, and learn how technology is transforming global business. The event’s schedule was massive. Attendees met representatives of nearly 1,500 startups from Australia, Canada, Egypt, India, South Korea, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. More than 630 speakers from 27 industries moderated talks, masterclasses, and Q&A sessions about dozens of topics: advertising, AI, machine learning, back-end development, cars, mobility, climate change, content creation, crypto, data science, e-commerce, education, energy, ethics, finance, fintech, payments, front-end development, fundraising, future of work, gaming, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), hardware, robotics, health, HR, recruitment, investment, leadership, marketing, media, mobile development, politics, PR, communications, privacy, security, retail, trade, software as a service (SaaS), sales, scaling, smart cities, social media, society, and sport. Yuliya Sotska, Chief Brand & Communication Officer, Sergii Tatarchuk, Head of Digital, Michael DePalma, Head of Client Engagement, and Maksym Savenko, AD/AM Lead from the Viseven team attended Collision 2023 on June 26-29, 2023. Here’s how Sergii Tatarchuk, Head of Digital at Viseven, comments the scale of the event: “One shouldn’t try to attend all the Collision events alone because such a rich flow of information will simply overwhelm you. Projects and companies send fully-fledged teams, where everyone has their own task, and this is probably the only correct decision for such events.” At booth #B502, Viseven demonstrated eWizard, a content experience platform that helps pharma and life sciences companies create in-depth, personalized customer experiences. The Viseven team showed the attendees the platform’s functionality, answered questions about the platform’s capabilities, and provided information on the plans of Viseven to improve digital maturity in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries. “Our team spent three exciting and productive days at our booth at the conference. We’re grateful to represent Viseven, got a lot of new experience, and met many people interested in eWizard,”—Yuliya Sotska explained. Each member of the Viseven team saw many great panels of other companies, connected with many great people in pharmaceutical and other industries, and heard many great ideas about the implementation of advanced technology such as artificial intelligence and automation. On the last day of the conference, Yulia Sotska moderated two panels: Breaking Binary: The Future of LGBTQ+ Care with Liana M Douillet Guzmán, CEO at Folx Heath. Quest of Human Immortality with Joel Jackson, President & Co-Founder of Lifeforce, and Amol Sarva, Managing Partner at Life Extension Ventures. “We delved into some very important topics concerning 2SLGBTQIA+ healthcare with the amazing Liana M. Douillet Guzmán. I also had a fascinating chat on living forever and the quest for human immortality with the brilliant minds of Joel Jackson and Amol Sarva,”—says Yuliya Sotska. Do you need more details about the eWizard content experience platform, or do you want to discuss partnership opportunities with Viseven? Please contact us, and we’ll get back to you shortly.
Viseven at Dublin Tech Summit 2023: Driving IT in Tense Environment Posted on June 23, 2023November 15, 2024 by Andrii Nikulin Summer is here. Viseven embraced its beginning by attending Dublin Tech Summit in Ireland—one of Europe’s hottest B2B events for IT companies—on May 31-June 2, 2023. Dublin Tech Summit 2023 is a massive technology hub that hosted over 200 international speakers, over 150 startups, 80 corporate partners, and more than 200 media from 60 countries worldwide. Industry leaders, innovation pioneers, and technology enthusiasts had a great chance to exchange knowledge, insights, and expertise with each other and get an immense charge of inspiration for the future of IT that will bring many positive changes. The summit covered the latest trends in digital and business transformation, enterprise software solutions, big data and analytics, diversity and equality, sustainability, tech for good, future workforce, artificial intelligence and machine learning, security and privacy, the Internet of Things, 5G, extended reality, metaverse, blockchain, deep tech, investment, and international trade. This year, Dublin Tech Summit was exceptional for Viseven as a Ukraine-based company. It was a big honor for the Viseven team to represent Ukraine as part of the IT Ukraine Association delegation comprised of such companies as Digicode, Jevera, Intetics, Lampa Software, Devlight, Sigma Software, and Itera. For the first time in DTS history, Ukraine had its national booth under the patronage of Larysa Gerasko, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to Ireland. At the Viseven section of the Ukrainian booth, the event attendees had an opportunity to meet: Yuliya Sotska, Chief Brand & Communications Officer at Viseven Alina Kononchuk, Events Planning Coordinator at Viseven Oksana Pashchenko, Head of Commercial Operations & Strategy at eWizard Yevheniia Buhaienko, Product Marketing Manager at Viseven The Viseven team had a very saturated agenda throughout all three days of the conference. Along with demonstrating MarTech services for pharmaceutical and life sciences companies at their booth, the team members got to know many different professionals from multiple segments of the IT market and attended several panel discussions. On the second day of the event, Yuliya Sotska, Chief Brand & Communications Officer at Viseven, took part in a panel discussion Ukraine IT Panel: Digitalization of business in times of uncertainty accompanied by: Ihor Polych, CEO at Devlight Vlad Khodzinskiy, Vise President at Sigma Software Group Oleksandr Storokha, Country Head at Itera Ukraine & Itera Poland Mary-Ann Russon, Freelance/Ex BBC (moderator) The panel participants discussed the challenges the IT business in Ukraine faced after the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. Yuliya talked about the experience of Viseven and shared with the audience the solutions that can help a business to adapt to dire circumstances – if such occur. “In a very stressful environment, you as a company must showcase to your clients your strength, the ability to have a plan, and be flexible about it,” Yuliya says. Despite the dangers and threats caused by the war, the Ukrainian segment of the Viseven team continues to grow and show incredible results by successfully assisting pharma and life sciences companies of different sizes in building their marketing strategies. Need a detailed consultation on Viseven solutions and services? Get in touch with us, and our specialist will write back to you shortly.
The NEXT Pharma Summit 2023: Refining Customer Engagement Posted on June 21, 2023November 15, 2024 by Andrii Nikulin As one of the prominent providers of martech services in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries, Viseven always tends to know what’s next for content development, omnichannel engagement, and customer experience. As one of the most popular multistage conferences for pharmaceutical and healthcare professionals, the NEXT Pharma Summit is a perfect industry event to do that. The conference connects hundreds of digital marketing and healthcare experts who share their unique knowledge and expertise to accelerate global digital transformation in pharma, improve engagement outcomes with HCPs and other stakeholders, and inspire each other. The Viseven team, comprising Nataliya Andreychuk, Viseven CEO, Anna Malivska, delivery manager, and Olena Volkova, regional director, attended the NEXT Pharma Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on May 16 and 17, 2023. It was two exciting and constructive days full of motivation, acquaintances, and insights, accompanied by morning yoga, sunsets, and the after-party in a magnificent location. The NEXT Pharma Summit had a very saturated agenda that included over 40 panels and more than 60 speakers who touched on diverse topics such as the usage of AI and ChatGPT, women’s health, go-to-market strategies, health innovations, gaining HCPs’ trust, the microenterprise model, and beyond. At their booth, Viseven presented their products and solutions firsthand to the pharma leaders looking for advanced ways of switching from multichannel communication to an omnichannel environment and creating high-quality content for customer engagement. ‘We met a lot of amazing people and professionals from different areas, with totally different needs and perspectives. Our team was very delighted to demonstrate the possibilities eWizard could provide to a pharma company as an advanced content experience platform. And this conference provided us with some great opportunities for the growth of Viseven too’, Anna Malivska, eWizard delivery manager, says. NEXT broadens communication boundaries by linking the entire ecosystem together. In the NEXT Pharma Summit 2023, the representatives of well-known companies, startups, and patient associations had an opportunity to see each other live and talk one-on-one in a highly professional setup. Olena Volkova, regional director in the Estonian office of Viseven, says: ‘I’m excited about how conferences and networking can tremendously stimulate the growth of the industry. That’s the main reason why I love my job. I like the process of sharing ideas. It really inspires us as a team. After visiting the NEXT Pharma Summit, we know better how we can uplift the level of customer engagement at Viseven.’ On the second day of the conference, Natalia Andreychuk, Viseven CEO, participated in a panel discussion called Cut Through the Noise: Engaging & Meaningful Content for Proper Stakeholder Engagements. Along with Almudena Fraga Gonzalez, director of global customer engagement and head of omnichannel strategic planning & implementation at Lundbeck, Adela Schulz, EU rheumatology strategy and operations omnichannel lead at UCB, and Nicole van Zanten, co-president and chief growth officer at ICUC, Natalia discussed many topics that are crucial for today’s marketing pharma and life sciences. The panel hosts talked about the current role of content in pharma, named the reasons for increasing digital maturity, emphasized the importance of personalizing content in the process of stakeholder engagement across multiple channels, and endorsed their views on the future of pharma marketing and customer experience. From her side, Natalia shared with the audience the benefits of using the modular content technique to achieve better engagements with different types of stakeholders in the market and optimize content production. Interestingly, that’s not the first time the Viseven team has visited Dubrovnik to attend the conference as a silver sponsor. The attendees might have seen Viseven’s booth during the NEXT Pharma Summit 2022. Natalia Andreychuk remembers: Our team was at the NEXT Pharma Summit the previous year. It was a very productive time. And it’s even more productive for us this year. I’d like to thank my panel associates and the participants of other panels for making their enormous contributions to digital evolution in pharma marketing. It’s great to be back and feel the atmosphere of this wonderful event. We had a lot of meetings which resulted in several potential partnerships. Want to become a Viseven partner too? Need more details on Viseven products and solutions? Please complete the form below, and we’ll contact you shortly!
Viseven at 2023 Veeva Commercial Summit: Advancing Transformation with Modular Content Posted on June 15, 2023November 15, 2024 by Andrii Nikulin On May 2-3, the Viseven team, including Nataliya Andreychuk, Viseven CEO, Leonardo Sanchez, Account Manager at Viseven US, and Maryna Alekseichuk, Global Head of Strategic Accounts, went to Boston, MA, USA, to attend the 2023 Veeva Commercial Summit. As one of North America’s most prominent conferences for sales and marketing experts in the pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and healthcare industries, the 2023 Veeva Commercial Summit gathered dozens of businesses to accelerate growth and advance transformation. “The scale of the event is astonishing. Veeva united a vast number of top players in the market, innovative startups, and experienced companies into a community that is transforming the experiences of pharma customers. It’s fascinating to see all the changes and be a part of them. We’re excited to represent Viseven as a silver sponsor at the event, and we’re proud to be Veeva’s technology partner,” says Natalia Andreychuk, CEO at Viseven. The 2023 Veeva Commercial Summit comprised nearly 100 keynotes and sessions held across five zones by the representatives of the world’s top enterprises, such as Takeda, Janssen, Novo Nordisk, Bayer, GSK, Moderna, Merck, Astellas, Horizon, Pfizer, Roche, and others. During two days of the conference, field experts shared their knowledge and discussed how to: Build the next-generation medical infrastructure. Create a single source of truth across multiple brands, therapeutic areas, functions, and geographies. Improve coordination and effectiveness between clinical and field teams with a shared view of customer interaction. Leverage capturing, reporting, and actioning medical insights. Set up a marketing analytics framework to maximize impact on rare disease patients and prescribers. Improve a brand’s communication strategies and boost awareness. Boost productivity and streamline field planning. Achieve excellent data quality and streamlined data management. Implement a strong content marketing strategy built on quality, speed, and effectiveness. Over 1,400 attendees got an opportunity to learn the hottest trends in omnichannel engagement, global-to-local marketing, automation, data analytics, medical legal regulatory (MLR) review, and many other topics. “This year’s Veeva Commercial Summit exceeded our expectations. Lots of different companies, lots of great faces, and lots of interesting events to discover,” says Maryna Alekseichuk, Global Head of Strategic Accounts at Viseven. At their booth, the Viseven team personally engaged with the summit attendees and demonstrated the possibilities of the modular content approach based on the integration of eWizard and Veeva platforms. Nataliya Andreychuk, Maryna Alekseichuk, and Leonardo Sanchez connected with current clients to discuss business goals and deepen cooperation opportunities. Also, the Viseven team got acquainted with the employees of companies, exploring the benefits of using the modular approach and looking for the best solutions. “Our goal was to show potential and existing clients how much we can offer in terms of reaching the modular state. We were able to connect with a lot of new people who were already thinking about eWizard as their content authoring tool,” says Leonardo Sanchez, Account Manager at Viseven US. Some of the attendees successfully tested eWizard on-site and agreed to consider the option of partnership with Viseven.
Viseven at Reuters Pharma EU Posted on May 24, 2023February 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin This April was truly intense for Viseven in terms of events: weeks after visiting New York, our team went on to Reuters Pharma 2023 in Barcelona, while Korea Bio & Pharma meeting took place in Seoul the same weekend. Reuters Pharma united the top pharma company representatives, providing them cozy and compact space to share the vision of the foreseeable future, exchange insights and experience, and possibly agree upon uniting their effort in customer service. For that matter, the attendees could choose between three stages and a more quiet lunch zone for personal communication. Notably, the focus of pharma companies never shifted from customer-centric approach, although the rise of AI technologies was probably the hottest issue of the event. Individual value is what drives commercial models of these companies and ensures their long-term success. As for artificial intelligence itself, of course, Reuters Pharma could not go without lively discussion of chatGPT and the possibility of its integration in healthcare applications. The bottom line: chatGPT is not going to replace HCPs for the time being but its integration is definitely a promising direction of development, for the sake of higher professional efficiency and patient safety. There are countless possible applications of AI, including symptom tracking with respective warnings and education – these use cases were also covered by Reuters Pharma speakers. During her speech, Viseven CEO Nataliya Andreychuk, emphasized the importance of content marketing in pharma and the related software tools and techniques, such as tagging for better navigation, content reuse with modules, and overall production optimization. Innovation never stops, so upon returning from Barcelona we moved on to prepare to the China Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit and MarTech Summit in Singapore!
Key Takeaways From the Digital Pharma East 2022 Conference Posted on November 3, 2022February 4, 2025 by Andrii Nikulin For many years now, the Digital Pharma East conference has been one of the most innovative digital marketing events for the life sciences community, and this year’s conference was no exception. Everybody who attended the event was inspired, engaged, and educated through a series of lectures, case studies, panel discussions, and much more. Our very own Oksana Matviienko, Regional Director, and Maryna Alekseychuk, Head of Strategic Accounts, attended the conference and summarized some of the key takeaways we would like to share with you today. Feed the Omnichannel Marketing Machine With Modular Content For healthcare marketers to have an omnichannel approach, they must first understand what that entails — and what it means for their brand. Within the pharma landscape, omnichannel marketing is the integration and cooperation of the various channels organizations use to interact with the customer to create a consistent brand experience. To create an effective omnichannel marketing machine, you, first and foremost, need to have the content to make it happen. Companies need to adjust how their content is created to have a continuous supply of content to feed into the system. This is where modular content comes in. To give you the Reader’s Digest version, modular content means pre-approved blocks of content or modules used to create marketing assets. These modules can be reused and automatically updated across channels and aligned with channel-specific attributes and structure with no changes for MLR approvals. There are many benefits to such an approach. You can reduce time-to-market, achieve higher levels of personalization, and lower your costs, all while increasing efficiency. If this is something you want to implement in your business, be sure to reach out to us so we can provide you with a consultation on the best ways to get started and create modular content geared toward your specific needs. Monitoring the Performance of the Assets You Create In the previous section, we talked about creating content, but you also need to constantly monitor key metrics to understand how well you are doing and what impact your content is having. For example, you need to know how much content you are creating, how long it takes you to create each asset, the engagement level, and many other things. At the conference, we learned that 59% of HCPs receive only one asset, or tactic, within a quarter. If you can send out at least three tactics, you can increase your value 5X. If you want to optimize your assets’ performance, you need to assess their historical performance. This can be done by: Monitoring the entire ecosystem of HCP addressable marketing Looking at the performance of each asset and how they work together Analyze the incremental impact at the content level Assessing the results by various HCP audience segments Viseven is Ready to Help You Create a Robust Omnichannel Marketing System We were thrilled to meet everybody at this year’s conference, and we hope you enjoyed the goody bags we handed out, especially Picasso, the wooden interlocking puzzle. If you have not already done so, be sure to share how well you completed the puzzle on social media with the hashtag #modularcontent. If you are looking to implement modular content and would like to know about our capabilities in this space, please fill out the form below — our experts will reach you out shortly.
7 hot topics and takeaways from Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit Online, Europe Posted on December 8, 2020November 20, 2024 by Andrii Nikulin What’s the perfect meeting place for pharma marketing, communications and IT professionals to exchange their practical insights and experiences over the past several months? Numerous excellent events exist to express tendencies and ideas, but when it comes to real-world, tangible cases, the first thing that comes to mind is the platform provided by a giant innovation enabler that is Veeva. Year by year, Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit has been justifying its reputation as that single powerful community builder one conference after another – and 2020 is not an exception. Fresh intriguing findings from the world of medical reps, HCPs in the time of crisis, sophisticated, COVID-proof marketing strategies and sudden answers to questions with a long history, such as customer experience in pharma – all of this was wrapped in the format of a virtual event. No single blog post would suffice to describe everything, so let us just look at the seven most intriguing ideas – and suggest viewing the sessions themselves on demand for the ultimate immersive experience. It is definitely worth the time. We at Viseven Group, being certified Veeva Technology Partner, Multichannel Partner and a provider of solutions and services for Veeva users for years, can confirm this from an insider point of view. Setting the scene In the opening keynote to the event on November 17, Chris Moore, President at Veeva Europe, noted one thing that most of us working in and for pharma communications can relate to the year 2020 has been truly special in terms of innovation and creativity. Looking back on these days, we are likely to see them as a turning point that made hundreds of professionals rethink almost everything, from digital tech to value propositions. The changes urged by the world situation will stick around and affect both the “digital haves” and the “digital have nots” – but what are these changes in practice? Two interesting sessions seem to define quite many of the hot topics and ideas that resonated through later panel talks and Q/A’s. One of these was a session with a medical representative and the other an inspired talk between marketing specialists. Together, these two organizationally unrelated episodes make for a perfect exposition of the event. The “fireside chat” with Romain Piccolo, Sales Representative (Respiratory) at Boehringer Ingelheim, was dedicated to the experiences and insights from the fields that only actual reps can provide. No need to say, this year especially such insights are valuable, considering how the tables have turned with digital and remote engagement. Beside the observations on how to engage HCPs in the new remote format in a country like Spain, where the traditions of in-person visits are strong, there are surprising and quite encouraging findings. For example, it turns out the “traditional”, go-to demographics like age have little to nothing to do with the actual digital affinity score for an HCP, with various groups completely ready for the format itself. It looks like in the future, the golden number of, say, 15 visits a day will give place to a golden ratio between different channels in the HCP engagement structure. While trying to diversify that channel mix, however, pharma unlocks yet another challenge, and that is content. While the “how” of HCP engagement is now being secured by nifty solutions – e.g. the HCP being able to request what they want to see, and health centers organizing calls – there is a mismatch between the available and the perfect when it comes to content. Particularly physicians tend to value content that is created by peers (such as key opinion leaders) more than the more commercially wired variety, and of course, more scientific topics is a common wish, not to mention the need to personalize the information that comes to the doctor. The second session that defined the hot topics for the summit featured Melissa Fellner, Global Marketing Director at AstraZeneca, and Veeva’s Business Consulting specialist Leonie Goddard, discussing the journey to digital excellence that AstraZeneca is undergoing. Apart from the vital role that Veeva’s assistance played in adapting to the new digital norm, several other things are noteworthy here. First and foremost, it’s the customer experience. Looking at what other industries now have to offer to the consumer, one cannot but wonder how to emulate that in pharma. Essentially, good omnichannel means integrating the brand offering in the customer’s own lifestyle, and it turns out life sciences are capable of that even regardless of the regulatory environment and other well-known “impediments”. The future of pharmaceutical communications, according to that view, is determined by factors such as deep customer insights, integrated campaigns and dynamic segmentation. These, in turn, equate to supplying personalized content (content again!) across an extended, modifiable channel mix that includes digital services from pharma. With handy tools that provide the next best actions and prompts (for example, to the medical representative as the engagement orchestrator), brands can arrive at the stage where they deliver carefully tailored experiences that can be measured and perfected along the way. Below are seven ideas that were partially outlined here, as expounded in other sessions in more interesting detail – ideas likely to influence 2021 and the years to come. 1 Let the HCP decide! In the eventual turn of events (even if we don’t think of the pandemic for a moment), letting the HCPs themselves decide to a bigger extent what they want to hear from pharma proved inevitable. This attention to what the HCPs themselves experience and feel is noticeable even as one looks at the summit agenda. On Day 2 of the event, several sessions were specifically dedicated to listening to practicing healthcare providers, one in English, one in Spanish, yet another one in Italian. Companies have been relaxing the messaging intended for those medical professionals most under pressure from the coronavirus, and adapting the tactics for the rest, which is just an extension of a trend that emerged earlier on: recognizing the importance of the audience’s choice. As a climax of this development, Veeva introduced a solution called MyVeeva for Doctors in a session led by Paul Shawah, Senior Vice President for Commercial Strategy, and Chris van Löben Sels, General Manager, MyVeeva for Doctors & Veeva Labs. The idea behind MyVeeva is simple and powerful – a single app intended to make it easy for the HCP to connect with pharma and search for reps or MSLs. Once invited by their representative to use the app and successfully registered, the HCP can not just communicate with that particular rep in an in-app chat, exchanging files and messages, but also find other representatives, as well as schedule meetings and enjoy a number of other services, including digital leave-behinds, patient resources, samples and more. 2 Meet the hybrid engagement model While in March it may have seemed that remote engagement is the eventual horizon for everything and everyone until COVID-19 is a chapter in history books, the actual practice proved otherwise. Human interaction in F2F mode is extremely difficult to eliminate from the equation, and frankly speaking, it is not to be eliminated entirely. On the other hand, the restrictions and safety considerations have opened the potential of other channels, leading to the emergence of a “hybrid” model – with some touchpoints occurring at rep calls as before, and others either orchestrated by the rep or done via non-personal promotion and led by the marketing teams themselves. In his presentation, Giovanni Luca Merlotti, Head of Global Multichannel Execution, Sanofi Pasteur, explored the intricacies of balance between the rep-driven channels versus the HQ-driven ones in the mix. Eventually, such a mix is intended not just to expand the reach and increase the frequency of interactions, but also strengthen customer engagement as such. Remote detailing, as empowered by Veeva solutions, plays a crucial role here, and so does content. A similar sentiment can be observed in the strategy discussed at another session featuring, among others, Adela Schulz, Multi-Channel Customer Engagement and Digital Transformation Lead at MSD: decisions now have to be made what topics should be discussed F2F, and which ones online. This measure was the result of the crisis, but its consequences will naturally extend into the future. Another participant of that same session, Anna Casanovas, IMCM Business Integration, Bayer, supplemented the topic of agility in life sciences’ communication strategy by emphasizing the need for personalization and modular content. 3 Customer experience, 4 Value proposition, and 5 Push and pull At the current stage of omnichannel development, pharma is in the position where other industries can provide an insight into how customer experience can be furnished in better ways. However, there is obviously no single set of pre-packed ideas and solutions, since industry specifics plays a major role. There is much room for creativity, and a lot of questions to be answered, especially when it comes to the regulatory nuances and sensitive topics. However, is this the real blocker along the road to great CX? An attempt to split the problem into manageable chunks was made by Victoria Serra Gittermann, Principal Consultant, Business Consulting, Veeva, in her presentation titled The Six Imperatives of Great HCP Experiences. The analysis started with identifying the six common blocks that impede building a successful CX for the physician audience. The first of these is the desire to exert too much control over the dialogue and formalize the customer journey, essentially robbing the HCP of the opportunity to make choices. A frequent mistake at the initial steps of omnichannel implementation, this is typically solved once the engagement model moves to the next step of maturity, not least due to better data work (see below). Another problematic point is a value proposition that is inherently narrow because it focuses heavily on the product itself, instead of offering something broader and “growing” from the actual working practice. At the same time, this leads to lack of transparency about the objectives of communication – a known detriment to building trust that the reps’ personal qualities only partially bridge. One more blocker that stems from here is the “mass content coverage” practice from yesterday’s playbooks, with insufficient personalization and targeting. In practice, this entails the focus on “push” tactics rather than creating enough “pull”. Finally, if you add the limited coordination and governance around customer engagement, siloed workflows and lack of agility in the processes, the picture becomes complete enough for the problems to be solved. To untie this knot, the presenter suggests six imperatives: Move from static to dynamic insights (behavioral/attitudinal segmentation, dynamic customer journey mapping, etc., content tagging) Align value proposition to customer needs (targeted key messages, focus on health outcomes) Build trust (transparency, consistency, doing the right thing over time, shared purpose, ecosystem, evidence) Making it easy to engage, on the customer’s terms (channel integration, predictive analytics & next best actions, automation) Make it personal (Modular content, metrics and tagging, content automation) Build a customer-centric operational model The need to work on a broader definition of value proposition was also emphasized in the session led by Suzy Jackson, Executive, Life Sciences, Accenture, dedicated to the impact of COVID-19 on the digital field model. One of the key findings cited was that in the light of current changes, pharmas are starting to “…redefine their relevance… and healthcare providers are seeing the value.” However, this particular session also contributed interesting insights to illustrate the next point. 6 What’s there in-house? Take stock of your processes, capabilities, and skills The need to build in-house digital capacities is a recognized one by now. After all, convoluted processes, reliance on too many external agencies and subcontractors, together with silos, have long stood in the way of even the most ambitious projects. Of course, no one talks seriously about transferring all the digital activity inside the organization – rather, it is now the matter of flexibility, ownership and agility. Notably, much has been spoken about pharmas’ in-house talent in terms of data management. This is an extended topic that would require an entire blog post all to itself even if only to scratch the surface. Here, we can mention such sessions as Bayer: Advancing Digital Transformation with Data & Technology with Elie Dubrulle, CRM Project Manager at Bayer Healthcare, and Angela Genco, Head of Integrated Multichannel Marketing & Sales, Bayer Italy. However, it is not just with data strategy that a revisioning of in-house capacities can lead to good results. Turning back to the Accenture session mentioned earlier, an interesting insight was revealed: when a medical representative has the autonomy to send an Approved Email with a link to pre-selected content, impactable sales rise by 7%. Is this about content? Yes. Is this also about letting more flexibility into the working model and allowing decisions to be taken in a multi-level pyramid? Definitely. Does this presuppose educating the workforce? Of course, it does. New governance and process models are also beneficial in the realm of content, to be sure. This is, however, just a small part of how content work has changed. 7 What does the perfect content look like? Any equation for communication excellence will necessarily involve the content variable. What’s the catch? The very fact that content is, in fact, a variable – because each HCP’s needs are that, too. But then, how do you ensure the content you deliver is flexible enough to function as such? A presentation by Puneet Srivastava, Content Strategy Leader at Bayer, explores the ins and outs of content excellence as it is available to Veeva users. In an intriguing classification, the different types of content are placed along two axes: “Long” content – “short” content and “Active” content – “passive” content In this way, one may characterize, for example, remote and face detailing and webinars as “long-form” and “active” (with real-time HCP involvement and interaction), websites, ebooks and videos as “long” and “passive”, and email/SMM as “short” and “passive”. However, there is one missed spot, and that is the one offering short and active engagement. This, in practice, corresponds to the new content consumption patterns and requires even more interactive materials to be designed and deployed. How to enable content production and circulation at such rates? The answer lies with processes, governance and tracking. Plugging together strategic content creation, on the one hand, and content publishing, on the other, presupposes rethinking the way content itself is handled. Much has been spoken about, and already implemented, in the realm of modular content for life sciences. In essence, the materials circulate as flexible topical units that can be assembled into channel-specific templates, which allows for better, more meaningful tracking – and easier governance and MLR procedures (you can read more on this in our previous publications, since Viseven has been among the pioneers of the approach and covered this topic extensively in first-hand accounts). Back to the presentation, with the modular strategy in hand, Bayer is able to ensure not only the right structure, but also a well-defined content taxonomy and tagging, pinpointing performance indicators and tracking, and a standardized content supply center. All of this allows the company to maintain a high level of informational value offered to its vast HCP audience across channels and along the axes of the content-based touchpoint spectrum. This overview is just scratching the surface of what was discussed at the event. You can request video recordings of the sessions that interested you on-demand at the official event page. For all purposes linked with Veeva expertise, related services and collaboration around Veeva ecosystems, feel free to address Viseven team as a certified Veeva partner.