Hi, everyone! I hope you're having a great day
and welcome to a new episode of Pharma Insights,
the talk show created by Platforce with the aim of connecting, networking and exchanging ideas
with professionals from the Pharma industry from all over the world.
My name is Juliana Kreisel and
I will be one of your hosts for today
This episode is dedicated to commercial excellence
in the era of AI.
We will discuss how AI-driven tools are reshaping sales and marketing strategies
in the pharma industry.
Our experts will discuss common challenges
like regulations, HCP engagement, and consent
offering insightful case studies and experiences.
As you may know,
I'm not the only moderator for today so
I will introduce my co-host and co-moderator
Mr Stefan Repin, Head of Marketing here at Platforce.
Hi, Stef!
Hello, Juliana! How are you, everyone?
I hope you're good on this Thursday. It feels like a Friday to me.
But we're gonna make the best we can
to make this show a show to remember for you.
And we have some amazing guests today.
Again, the topic is AI. You can't talk enough about AI.
So without further ado let's introduce the guests.
Right? That's why we are here.
Definitely! So I would like to introduce our first guest
Mr. Mohamed Amer. Hello, Mohamed! How are you?
Hi, Juliana. How are you doing?
I'm good. How are you?
How's everything?
All is well. Welcome to all the guests!
We're so happy to have you here!
Thank you. Thank you kindly for joining and our second guest: Muhammed Sajjad
Hi, how are you?
Hi, Juliana. Hi, Stefan. Hi, Amer. I am good. Hope you're doing good too.
Yes! Thank you all.
Thanks our panel for joining and our attendees for tuning in. Before we start, I just have a few announcements
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or questions in the comment section.
I will share them. I would love to share that.
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and I promise this is the last one,
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So without any further delay and without any announcements,
let's start this topic and this talk show. Stef?
Yeah, yeah. Awesome to see everyone
so we have a topic which is discussed all the time about, you know, commercial Excellence
Everyone wants to squeeze more money out of their territories.
You know, the territory manager are having a hard time
especially when now I'm seeing along some regions that... because of AI
certain amounts of sales reps and field reps are cut down
and it is a doubtable
is a doubtable strategy on my behalf but without further ado, I would like to ask the same
the following question: so, how do you guys define "commercial excellence"?
In the Pharma industry, Life Sciences, maybe biotech? And how is AI influencing this definition?
Yeah, please, if you want to go...
Yeah, well... In the Pharma world,
SFE is really a very sophisticated topic because in the selling word, in general,
selling a pharmaceutical or a medical device is one of the toughest job that anybody can have
and within the pharmaceutical industry the sales rep is one of the most stressed people
in the territory so if you would like to define what is SFE
so it is defined
by the metric that can measure how effective is the sales activities that are done by the medical rep
so that depends a lot on the metrics that you are using that depends a lot on the territory
the type of product that you are using and it depends as well on the strategy that
that you are implementing and the market segment that you are in.
So SFE by itself is
how do you assess the effectiveness of your sales force in all aspects
from deployment,
from territory alignment, from activity planning to activity implementation or execution
to how do you manage your incentive scheme or bonus scheme in order to motivate your medical reps
to have you train your medical reps, all these are under the umbrella of sales force excellence
Yeah, I agree on your points. Just to add to these points that
Commercial Excellence evolved by the times.
It started from sales force effectiveness, sales force automation
It's different, you can say, different terminology used in different times
because I have seen
the evolution of commercial excellence in the last 15 to 18 years
so to me in addition to all these things
you have mentioned that commercial Excellence is basically focusing
on the impact of resources that we have overall and the sales rep is our biggest resource
if I talk about the Pharma world because in pharma world we do not have mass media marketing
social media marketing at that span. Our customer is focused and we are going to
to see our customers that is the healthcare professionals, so in this scenario
the biggest resource that we have is our Sales force so Commercial Excellence revolves around...
Sorry. It's... I think echo in there. Sorry.
So Commercial Excellence basically focuses on
the impact of resources, especially the sales team, their calls, that start from the deployment,
their planning, their execution, and the impact of the resources that we have deployed
in front of HCP, not only the sales rep but it also covers the efforts
or the resource from the managers as well.
the coaching time, coaching resources that managers are giving
to that sales rep, how that work and the performance of the sales rep is going to be improved
in either qualitative way or in the quantitative way both
So basically Commercial Excellence evolves around
the productivity of the sales team or the marketing campaigns as well.
So to me this is the commercial excellence and obviously by the time things are
I'm going to add to this, now we are in the era where we are engaging our HCPs digitally
from different mediums not only the face to face calls, now we have the Omni Channel approach
where we are also engaging customers by using different digital mediums as well
Yeah, I'm seeing that. I'm seeing the Omnichannel comes out more and more in the conversation
Actually, I'm seeing that omnichannel. Well doctors don't have historically
Doctors don't have a lot of time, so Omni channel is there to help the Medical Rep
unless marketing
Pharma marketing is working together with the medical reps, the Field Force
because very often I see that Global Marketing or marketing comes with a message
which the field reps do not use.
and then it becomes a mess like then omni Channel doesn't make sense
but guys, let's turn bak to the initial question.
Are you...? Have you seen any good usage of AI?
artificial intelligence embedded into
maybe your example or an example of a company that you've seen
when it comes to commercial excellence, Sales Force Excellence yeah.
Yeah...
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Yeah thank you. Thank you, Stefan for this.
I think AI is, you can say,
from commercial Excellence point of view we are starting on the AI we are...
beginners, we can't say that we are continuously using AI
but obviously it starts in the Pharma sector as well
initially I've been experiencing with my one of my previous organizations
in the last two to three years where we have started the sales budgeting through AI
because we have historical data, we have historical performances too
So while setting the sales Target for the sales team, it helps.
And at the end it ends up around 95 to 98% accuracy versus the actual sales
that came from on the respective period so that's one of the examples that I have
you can say that I experienced.
Apart from the sales Target I have also experienced
and we had practices recently, we are using AI tools like chatGPT for the knowledge part
where our reps can easily get knowledge
or get some content from the chatGPT or like other tools.
where they have to search on the Google but
ChatGPT or other tools like ChatGPT
are you can say very supportive if they want to
search an article, search a case you can say, study
regarding any product, any molecule so they can find out.
So these are the few examples
that I have witnessed
but obviously there are lots to go
in the Pharma sector, especially in pharma Commercial Excellence
because we have lot of data in commercial excellence.
We have lot of data in terms of HCP
HCP behavior by the time of the adoption ladder change
during that time, the work we have invested
on the HCP and what are their output in the adoption ladder
So we have lot of data not only in the
the customer interaction but also on the sales level we have sales,
data available, so we have lot of data but
it's time to convert that data into information
and that information should be converted into insights
because normally we are hanging around
the data and the Big Data during...
handling the big data, we are more investing our time
on the data part but we are not converting that data into information and insight
So that's the part.
Amer, please.
Yeah, I think that that's well said.
We have so many information and that has been
the case for years and years now with the IMS,
and that is now IQVIA
and having Pharmacy level or territory level data
and how to correlate that with the real performance of each medical rep
in his territory or her territory
and how to correlate that as well with the market share
that he or she are generating,
all these are aspects that AI has started to play a big role
because before that we used to have various BI tools to be able to correlate
the data that are coming from the activity or to correlate the results that are being achieved
to the activities that are reported on the CRMs.
And this is the future now the way I see it
is that when you are trying to assign certain target
to a medical representative or a territory
you have to look into a lot of factors
including the historical sales data within that territory,
the market share, which product is the market leader,
and how is it progressing,
how did it progress, historically speaking
and if you can associate that as well with a little bit of market intelligence
in the form of knowing
what is the competitor doing in that particular territory
or in the city or in the country per se,
then you have I would say a path forward into
assessing your action plans and deciding what to do with your medical representatives
and how to deploy them and in the best way to ensure their productivity
and to sure that you are getting the best possible outcome
or maybe you can also decide to
move reps between territories or move them from one city to the next based on the insight
you take out of the artificial intelligence and the business intelligence tools
that predict for you what is the real productivity for the medical representative because
like Sajjad said, it is the single biggest investment that a pharmaceutical company is doing commercially
is to have a sales force.
So the trick is how can you ensure that this investment is paying off
and that you're getting your investments work in the best possible outcome or the best possible return
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Well, since sales reps are the best,
Actually I've learned it from you Mohamed, when we had a session back in February,
you said it clearly and loud that
sales reps, Field Force is the biggest expense that a Pharma company has
you... my question would be:
Is it the research, R&D for drugs is cheaper in comparison with the Field Force expense?
or it's more or there is more expense on the field force?
No, of course.
Globally speaking,
if you talk about the R&D, R&D is more expensive of course because you spend billions
in order to arrive at the stage of commercialization.
All the R&D phases.
I'm talking from the commercial aspect.
When you are trying to invest post-launch, then the Salesforce will cost you the most.
Yeah we're talking about once we have the product.
Once we have product ready for the marketing.
So we are talking about that post part,
not from the, you can say, the pre-part of the drug manufacturing
we are talking about the commercialization because
like FMCGs, we don't invest on the mass media marketing
and social media marketing, because there are legal limitations
not only legal but also the ethical limitations because
our customer is HCP.
the HCP is the person who is prescribing the products because patient cannot take drugs directly
so ethically we are not allowed to do the mass media marketing and we are not doing that.
So it's our sales rep who is going to the doctor or to the HCP
to promote their products and share their messages as per their marketing plans
and countries like Pakistan where we have high share of voice market
because we have a lot of doctors available
in Pakistan and geographically the spread is very high
so it's very important that we deploy
as Amer already said that we deploy our reps in the high potential territories
obviously we have a lot of BI tools, IQVIA data available where we can identify the top potential areas where we have
to invest because we have limited resource in any way as far as the human resources are concerned
we are deploying in those areas and we are getting the best from those areas
and not only at the time of deployment
but after execution we are continuously monitoring that deployment
that either it works because if we plan
50 territories it's not that all 50 territories are progressing well
so we have to do some corrective actions during the period as well.
If two or four three territories are not performing,
then we have to go with the plan B or to the other parts as well
so it's very important to continuously monitor your resource, monitor your people,
either they are productive like I have already said
their calls are productive because they are doing in countries like Pakistan
especially where anti-infectives are dominating as far as the therapeutic class is concerned
the rep is normally doing 13 to 14 calls per day so
at the end of the month it ends up around
300, 350 calls for a single rep so
and in every call they are promoting two to three products
so if you count on the details it's end up around thousand details from one Medical Rep in a month
so normally we have field size from 50 to 150, so you can count how many details
or how many messages that we are giving of particular recipes in a month
so it's very important to get
the benefit from those we are.... from commercial Excellence perspective we are not
not only focusing on the capacity part, that deployment, and the call rate
and you can say the frequency of the Medical Rep, but it's also part of commercial excellence
we are working on their qualitative part, we are working for their training and development
either the rep is enough capable to
deliver the right message in the HCP chamber
to convert those messages into the productivity area.
so it's Commercial Excellence who is doing end to end
from the capacity and the capability building point of view both
from both perspectives and
not only the Reps as I already mentioned, the manager role is very important
who is coaching four or five or five or six reps in their area
So Commercial Excellence plays a very important role
that how manager is spending time with their reps and where he is spending his time
so this is the area where we have to focus
and apart from sales, Sales Force Effectiveness, because I told you
that SFE has evolved from last 15 years from you can say the basic
customer relationship management to \that the commercial Excellence level
now we are also focusing on the marketing part
how we are building our marketing plans, how we are creating content to make it more interactive
with the HCP and how we can get rather than having the same slides from time to time
where the HCP cannot find anything, any value addition for them
so they are not giving the attention to the sales rep
so it's very important to keep all the areas from marketing and sales perspective
under the umbrella of commercial excellence and make all efforts in the productive outcomes
so this is what's important and, like you said, yeah
AI will very, you can say, will be very helpful for us
it's important to initiate AI initiatives in the Commercial Excellence perspective
because previously it's the role of analyst, either is a BI analyst, SFE analyst
who are supporting business to giving them insights
but with AI now we have machine and addition to
a person who can also support business to have ,you can say, the insights and information about
the business, where they can make known decisions rather than having decision on the gut feeling
and their previous experience that now team can do a data driven decision
easily with these tools and AI can also support us to expand our horizon from one year
to 5, to 10 years based on the previous data, based on the IQVIA or Market Insight
how that particular molecule is behaving, how the disease in the respective country is prevailing,
progressing so AI can also help us to define our strategic plans for next 5 to 10 years of a company.
That's a good insight about the forecasting.
Mr. Amer, would you like to add anything about forecasting?
I think AI is a very strong tool, very strong.
It is indeed. It is.
It is not going to be only in forecasting, I mean the SFE Journey starts from the marketing team
actually not from the sales team, it starts from the marketing team,
understanding the product very well
and segmenting their market correctly, and defining the criteria for the customers or the HCPs in that case.
When the marketing defines what criteria should be used in order to segment
the HCPs and decide who is going to prescribe and who is a late adopter
or who's not going to be prescribing right now.
These things and the abundance of data by time
is going to be done using AI algorithms
so it will select for the Medical Rep who are the doctors
to be targeted in the beginning, and who are the doctors to follow after while you are launching the product
More than that, and within the scope of SFE as well
and within the scope of forecasting,
analysis like what Sajjad exactly said, instead of being done by a person it's going to be done
already using BI algorithms that are capable of changing the Medical Rep and the territories forecast
based on the investment that the company wants to put in
because at the end of the day
of the products for example, take as an example the chronic diseases products,
producst that are treating hypertension or diabetes,
these are products that require less promotional effort
than products that are treating acute medications.
And why is that? Because there is a lot of repeat prescriptions going on.
Once you put an HCP, and he gets to know that one medication
is effective for hypertension, he starts to give it to more patients
and these patients start to repeat their prescriptions across the year.
So it's one prescription will result in much more sales
than when you are prescribing a pain medication for example
or an anti-infective
In that case, one prescription equals one patient or one box.
While you are talking about chronic medications, you are talking about one prescription equal multiple boxes.
What was that? haha
Good to hear different music yeah ha ha
Yeah yeah!
In that respect you will see that the deployment of medical reps
will be a lot dependent on the type of product
and the segment as well if you are talking about
the private market where a hospital is purchasing and dispensing the remedication
based on prescription only so they're making small purchases every month
that's different from having to go into a tender in order to
sell your product or your medication into a tender setting
you have to work on the deal for too long but you get uh sizable sales out of your work.
So again, how many medical reps should we put in the account?
Is it the same like the private market? or not?
All these will be very easy to analyze using AI algorithms later on
to decide the deployment of the Medical Rep, the correct frequency of visits per Medical Rep
because, like what I've just said, every single call has a cost
so shifting the calls from one doctor to the other
might be a correct strategy to increase your productivity in that particular territory.
Guys, we have a question from the audience so I'm going to post it here.
It says: can you explain what are you including in hyperpersonalization?
What are the critical elements of it?
because we have a comment, there's an answer in a comment but we can bring it up
It says hyper personalization is the key
end psychographic approach is the game changer
Do you have any inputs to share or to answer the question that was asked?
Yeah, I appreciate if he can further explain on this what he wants to say.
Amer, if you have anything to respond.
Well, what I can say is that hyper personalization
is not yet in the healthcare industry sales,
I think what he is talking about has been implemented already in other industries.
especially the retail Industries that gather a lot of insights about the customer.
who is or in the FMCG are trying to talk to patients
through hyper segmentation and you can see
that many products who are in the FMCG real
are having the same product in 12 different packs to cater to 12 different segments of customers
because they understand through the amount of data available to them
what each of these microsegments wants and needs
if that's what he's talking about, then I think it's not yet
in the healthcare industry yet, at least not in the prescription medicines
to a smaller extent, yeah
Yeah, just to add on that, in Pharma obviously we don't have that hyper-personalization
We have only insights about the HCP, their preferences, their prescription preferences
you can say, his buying motive, about his buying motives
we are gathering some information in terms of
you can say the profiling and prospecting perspective
but obviously we cannot, we don't have such data that Amer has already told.
One thing that I want to mention here
apart from the profiling and the prospecting part, especially in the digital era
where we have witnessed a lot of digitalization during the covid time
because covid, what I think that covid moved,
or shrink the time of the digitalization, what the Pharma is moving in a slower pace but
during the covid, they have sped up the digital things very well and very fast
but during that time what I have witnessed that a lot of a bombardment, you can say the digital bombardment
from Pharma companies for the HCPs, where everybody is going with webinars
WhatsApp messages, emails...
There's a lot of bombardment to the HCP.
I think for that part like we are doing, you can say,
the profiling and the prospecting part from the HCP.
I think for the digitalization and the Omni Channel, especially in the Omni Channel era or engagement
we also do the digital segmentation of the HCP as well
what is the preference or the preferred channel for the HCP
that he or she want to interact with the Pharma companies
either they want to have emails, promotion, product emails from the company
or he or she want to attend the webinars, or they prefer the WhatsApp channel
like this or there are some HCP specific web portals where they can find the medical information as well
because we cannot go with every channel, every medium to every HCP
So I think that can be also helpful.
Thank you for that. We have another question.
Come on, the guys are waking up, I say the attendees.
The question is: Nowadays pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan
is usually the link... It's usually linked KPIs with incentives calculation.
Do you think is a demotivating factor among the fieldforce
and is it create a bad impact in the sales target achievement?
Yeah I want to, I want to answer on this.
I think it's a blessing for the sales team, not demotivating factor
as far as I'm concerned because company is incentivizing on your efforts as well
rather than on the on the results that is the sales because
if you are in a growing territory, companies incentivizing your efforts that you are doing
such number of calls, you are doing number of details in their territory
rather than waiting for your sales achievement,
they are supporting you in by incentivizing you KPIs
Yes, it's very important what are the KPIs, to whom they are focusing on
and how they are linking with the incentive part
but I think the qualitative part always support sales rep
to focus on their qualitative area, their effort area rather than having only the sales number
So it will be a you can say demotivating factor, but as I have already said that
it's basically the job of Commercial Excellence team how we are incentivizing our team, what are the KPIs,
what are the key features of the incentive policy
so it's the job of the Commercial Excellence,
with the coordination of the commercial leads or the commercial team
Great. I think we had discussed that, prior or on some other call or another event
that the importance of the KPIs because
some people thought that they were very restrictive or they were like controlling
I think the word "control" was used, but as you said before it's an incentive.
It's important in order to help you get you to the results correct.
or then you're not getting it as it should.
Yeah.
I think you as you, it's same like that.
It's paying for your efforts, yeah.
because it's not that simple if you go in a territory where we have the X amount of number
it's currently producing and you want to go on the why
and for example if you want to achieve a target of $10,000 from a territory
or $5,000 from a territory and currently territory is on the $1,000
so it's not an easy that you can turn around the sales from $1,000 to $5,000 in a month or in a quarter
It will take time but during that time, company is taking care of yourself and supporting you
through incentive, because in countries like Pakistan the major part of the
the compensation of the sales rep is driven from the incentive, in most organizations
Ok. Yeah, yeah. Amer, do you have anything to add?
Yeah, my question would be about you know
we had a question about hyper personalization and thank you for explaining it
I have an interesting topic here though, so we are talking about, you were saying about
that with a certain medicine you want to approach certain KOLs
and then after you start engaging with the KOLs and
getting market access for the..., well after you get the market access for the drug,
you have some sort of hyper personalization right? which you well develop with omnichannel
Now, like for that particular doctor you know like he or she gets that particular sequence
and then of course you have certain branded messages, you have the next best action
which tells you what to do next with that particular KOL
My question would be this:
How do you see the work of field sales reps in the future,
where, maybe you've heard maybe not, there are certain researches where they say that
there's going to be hyper personalized medicine in the future
where basically patients will get a hyper personalized medicine
where no medicine will be alike and there's going to be like very small forms of medicine
which goes to just a very small amount of the population.
How would you approach? Well like just let's brainstorm here.
How do you see the future of the field rep in this situation?
Well, with the evolution of the precision medicine
you will see that the job of the Medical Rep will radically change.
Let me try to explain.
Historically speaking the HCPs had very little resources
to get information and they were relying a lot on pharmaceutical companies and Healthcare companies
to provide them with the updated medical information through the medical reps
and the number of medical reps were very few at that time, ok?
By time, the marketing, the medications became
the biggest activities being done by the pharmaceutical companies
and the number of reps have increased dramatically and their competition for the timing,
for the time of the doctor has increased dramatically as well
and with that evolution came the evolution of information as well
so the doctors started to get a bombardment of information
as Sajjad said, through... Instead of relying on a medical journal that they used to receive in mail once a month,
they are seeing that instantly via the Internet and they can look for any information they want
and get the updates the time that they are happening everywhere around the world.
So instead of traveling from Argentina to Europe to attend the European Society of Cardiology meeting for example,
they can attend a virtual session while they are in their offices, okay?
So the next Evolution that is going to come will see the medical reps less and less needed
to give information to the doctors, okay?
However with personalized medicine
the proper guidance for the doctors
from the pharmaceutical companies will evolve again
but not in the form of what we call now the medical representative
but they are going to be members of the medical team
that we now call the Medical Science Liaisons, MSLs
and the MSLs are going to increase in number
at the expense of the traditional Medical Rep
because the MSL by definition
is not a job that is bound to a sales target.
It's a job which has the objective of explaining the science behind the medicines
and explaining the science behind a certain medical category, okay?
And we have seen that evolve in some companies already.
Starting to rely more on medical science liaisons
than on traditional medical representatives, okay?
So I think that is going to be the future
when more and more precision medicines are there and it is going to...
be a very high productivity function or a high productivity rep
the value generated by one MSL is going to be enormous
because of course the prices of precision medicine is going to be much higher than traditional medicines.
W have a comment regarding this. I'm sorry to interrupt.
He's saying: Thank you, Stefan, for bringing this up.
As per my opinion due to precision medicine in the future, MSL will be on the top of the chain
and as Mr Amer is saying, evolution in Pharma industry will reduce the role of Medical Rep
but MSL will be more in action and he is really enjoying this talk show.
So we're here to please. We love to hear that you're liking this talk show!
We don't have Muhammad Sajjad's answer on this.
I'm really curious about Mr Sajjad's comment.
Yeah I think Amer covered the thing
Then Kashif already commented on that
because Pharma company has started working on the medical part
and they have now big Medical Teams with the support of MSLs.
Previously we had only one or two resources in the head office
who is you can say the working on the content part of the product in the medical department
but with the time, you can get functionality or
the impact of medical is going to increase in these days
because doctors see lot of value addition if a MSL is coming in their chamber
because pharma reps are more focused on the product part
but whenever the MSL goes in the chamber, basically he's always there to give him some new information
about the disease, the coming technologies or the coming R&Ds,
so doctors are enjoying to interact with the MSL
And as Amer said that a lot of companies have started
especially companies who are in the chronic segment, who are already doing this
because there are lots of scientific discussions, doing lot of scientific discussion with those companies reps
yeah in acute right now you can see the MSLs are not that much active
but by the time now MSLs are you can say, increasing in these areas
so sooner it will, you can say, that it will be
the equal impact or maybe the bigger impact from rather than sales team so things will move in that way.
For this I think, just to add on that, the training part and the capability part
is also very import from rep perspective as well
because normally we are focusing on the commercial part of the product,
reps are focusing more on the you can say the feature and parts of
or features of the product, but they also should be equipped with the medical information as well
So here the capability building part comes to play an important role.
I'll comment here... Oh okay, we have a question.
So I'll just comment really briefly
My comment is this: So I have a friend who works as an MSL in the United States
and well basically how he meets doctors is like he tries to influence them you know
give them information, studies, researches, so you know they are most informed
and very often this information, you know
doctors don't have time to interact with you.
And he had the problem that he gives this information
and he doesn't know whether the doctor has interacted or not with the information
Now, you know because we are talking about AI here
there is a tool that he's been testing and has been quite successful.
It's called Humata,
where you can basically upload, it can be saved locally on your server or on your computer
so no data goes outside.
I know that Pharma is really crazy about AI
that information can be leaked outside and so on, so this tool is very safe
So you upload your information, your PDFs, specifically PDFs and documents into Humata
and you have can have a conversation with the data.
You can ask certain questions that you have so you don't need to scheme over hundreds
and thousands of pages of research for a particular drug or or medicine.
I'm going to post the tool in the comments.
This is one way how everyone including the audience can use AI
to improve their Commercial Excellence, their productivity.
Now let's hear the next question, Juliana.
Yes, definitely. The next question says
what would you say are the key factors for
successful AI adoption within pharma commercial operation? Who wants to tackle that?
Yeah, I can start. I think the quality of data quality, of input data is very important
is very important if you want to predict something in the future
because normally we don't... in the most of the organization
we are not focusing on the quality of the data it's very important because AI will ultimately
populate, you can say, the run on the logarithm on the available data because
it's very important to enter the right data, right trends
and you can say the one of... there are a lot of factors
for example, during covid, we see a raise in the acute medicine which are
which were used on the treatment of the corona or covid
So it's one off. You cannot predict, you cannot forecast future sales on the basis of...
on the sales that we have driven during the covid period
so it's very important that quality of data and
and one of the trends that we have witnessed previously
so it may impact that area. Apart from that,
the biggest you can say what I saw a lot of there I saw a lot of change in that as well
but mindset is very important because first you have to believe on those tools
then you will go on that part because if you want to drive data
as per your own feelings on experience
or how you want to see data that how you want results like that
if you are forecasting or you are, what I can say, that you are focusing on your previous experiences
So I think first you have to change your mindset as well, you have to challenge yourself as well
it's not that every time experience went wrong but every person should challenge their feelings
their good feelings with the data as well
Ok.
So these two things. Amer?
Well, yes. That's very well said. Definitely the first thing to think about when you're deploying an AI solution
is the data set that you have, what kind of data are you going to use
in order to utilize this AI algorithm
and second, or the second most important part is
which function or which area of business are you going to deploy this
and to me one of the most important areas that you can deploy
is the CLM, the Close Loop Marketing
because close loop marketing as a concept
came into the health care industry I think more than 15 years ago and still to date
I think it's underutilized.
but using the AI in order to analyze all the data that are coming
from the CRM and are coming from the marketing tools that the sales team is using
can greatly enhance how CLM is being adopted and utilized and can drive a change in the recommendations
or in the action plans of the Medical Rep created by the CLM based on their behavior
in the usage of the CLM tools as well as the results that are being generated
so if you are using the AI correctly in that area and correlating the usage of the CLM
with the activity that is being done
with the Target Customer because all this data is already internal data that's available
with the pharma company once it deploys the correct CRM tool
such as Platforce by the way and...
in that respect if you can correlate that as well with IQvia data
or any data that's available from the market, individualizing the sales results and the market share results
then definitely you can come up with an actionable, action plan or an actionable items
that you deploy within your CLM tools and your CRM to create a proper action
to change the deployment of the sales force as Sajjad earlier suggested
or to change even the promotional line
because if you're in somewhere where you have to promote two or three different products
maybe one of them is not compatible with the other two
or the target customers are dramatically different so you will find out what is being done
by the Medical Rep and how the customer is responding to the medical rep's actions.
Great, Stef. Do you have...?
Sure, in fact we have a...
We have a colleague who wants to ask a question. He just posted it to me in a personal chat.
Okay, so Andrej wants to ask a question so
How can small organizations compete with larger players who have more resources to invest in AI driven Commercial Excellence initiatives?
How can smaller organizations compete with larger players
who have more resources to invest into AI driven Commercial Excellence initiatives?
I think that's an excellent question.
I think so too!
One thing is prioritization, okay?
When you are looking for a tool, an AI tool to deploy in your company
you have to be, I would say, I don't want to say "careful" but you have to do your due diligence
in order to find out which area of business are you are going to deploy the AI into
that it's going to be the most productive for you
because you'll not be able to deploy it in everything, like what major companies are doing
I'll just give you an example.
I was talking to a friend and I found out that
his company has added co-pilot, Microsoft co-pilot
to all the employees, okay?
and thinking that they are employing over 12,000 people
this is a huge budget to have in their contract co-pilot for all
and are they going to use it? how many?
Or what's the percentage of people who are going to use co-pilot in their day-to-day job?
So if you are a smaller company
then you will use the AI tool in the areas that are going to benefit from it most.
For example I would go directly to the sales and marketing teams
and the Medical Teams, the customer facing teams, who are writing emails every day
trying to personalize these emails and trying to come up with a better language
to write in their emails, so in that respect yes I can utilize AI as a regenerative tool
I would deploy it as well, like I said in the beginning, in CRM and CLM
in order to make sure that I am trying to optimize my sales calls
to the ultimate way possible or to optimize it
in a way to make sure that I am getting the maximum productivity from each call that is being made.
So the prioritization here is key.
The second thing is the selection of the right AI tool that you want.
Maybe you don't need co-pilot, maybe you just need something else
that is more suitable to what you want to do, so you have to think of your objective
Why are you looking for an AI tool?
Are you going to use it for example most of the territories that you're having?
Are you promoting a niche product? So you need to really optimize the way
that the medical representative is moving from one consultant to the other
so your Medical Rep because in each location there is one or two consultants maximum
so if he has to do 10 visits a day, then he will need to visit five different hospitals so
the geographical planning of his action plan becomes really really important
You see? So...
The prioritization still is key, Try to match the tools with the resources that you have
to your objectives and your strategy to get to the best possible outcome.
Ok, let's ask Mr Sajjad. Muhammad?
Yeah, I agree with that. Prioritization is very important.
The selection of the tool is very also very important, considering first you have to evaluate your situation
of that company area where we they are working, the segment they are working, like Amer said,
we have in the speciality company or the company with limited resources have
their customers in multiple geographical locations
so they have to plan their working very efficiently
in order to maximize their productivity and
you can say in those companies, the role of commercial excellence
and the role of AI is far important than the other bigger companies
it's not that bigger company don't want Commercial Excellence
but with the limited resources you cannot afford to waste a single resource
because you are very limited resources and if you start, you can say, fail to get the right response
or right results from that resources, so it will be difficult by the time.
So prioritization and the selection of the tool is very important.
And the area where you want to deploy that tool
and what you want to get from that tool is also very important.
So it's more important to utilize your resources very efficiently.
deploy your resources or your efforts to the high potential areas
where you can get maximum productivity.
It's not that high potential areas are based on revenue
but it's also the customer behaviors of that area or that speciality
because if a certain HCPs don't want to change their prescription behaviors
so it's not the high potential for you
because they will not change their prescription behavior even if you are visiting them twice a week
So you have to focus on those areas where you can get the early birds
so to maximize your resources, your sales which also give you more resources for the future as well.
Because you can earn or you can generate your future resources
from your current sales.
Great, thank you. We have three minutes away.
So to end up I want to bring a comment
that I think fits to the future inputs
It says: Can you discuss any innovative AI-driven commercial strategies
that are on the horizon for the pharmaceutical industry?
As a closeup haha
Yeah I think everybody is working on that because most of the companies
are now focusing on the long long term strategies rather than the short-term strategy
because for the sustainable performance you need such AI tools
who can predict your future, you can say the future not only the forecast
which are the segments, where you have to go,
considering the market dynamics, how market is changing
what are the segments that are growing,
what are the segments where we have room to enter
and that segment should be some correlation with your existing
you can say the expertise or you can also decide to go in the new segments
but obviously that requires additional resources and some working from zero
so it depends on your strategy or your future aspiration as well
because sometime your existing segment or existing therapeutic area
is more saturated where you cannot get the growth for the future
so it's very important where companies should focus for the long-term planning
not only the for sales is also the segment, their future launches, because market data
will give you ample information and you can say the insights about the your future focus
so you can use that area, and one very important area where sometimes we are getting challenges
is the supply chain area, that also pharma companies streamline their supply chain process
concerning the past behavior because sometimes some product is you can say performing
radically better than the previous one, and sometimes with the addition of new molecules
your Star product can get drastically down
because a new molecule can change the prescription behavior of the HCP
So using AI in your supply chain, the whole supply chain process,
from raw material to finish product can also support you to plan efficiently
in your supply chain not to maintain inventory but also have the cost-effective solutions
or cost-effective things which can also help you to improve your bottom line as well
your productive, profitability as well. So that can be used.
Thank you. Mohamed, do you have something to add?
Well, I cannot think of much to say after what Sajjad has said, but maybe
maybe an area like market access can utilize a lot of AI algorithms there
to define the segments, how to deal with insurance, what is the correct level of discounting
or other market access strategies that are going to be utilized
relying on analysis of historical data as well as
the market trends and, what is known already, of the new medications
that are going to come in the market and the generics that exist in the market
so when these are analyzed correctly, then it can drive a successful market access decision
regarding dealing with insurance reimbursement or even bidding in certain tenders and winning them.
Great, thank you.
You can call it "smart tendering" or "smart market access"
I call it "smart tendering". It's very important.
You need to copyright that name before someone else steals it haha
Ok, thank you so much for being part of this incredible panel and this talk show.
I cannot appreciate enough that you took the time from your agendas.
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Thank you! Thank you, everybody!