Pharma Insights 🩺

Hello, everyone! And welcome to another

engaging episode of Pharma Insights,

the talk show brought to you by Platforce.

Our series as you may know

is dedicated to building a global community

of professionals eager to network, exchange ideas

and deepen their industry knowledge.

I am Juliana Kreisel

and it is my pleasure to be your host

for today's discussion in one of our exciting topics

which is emerging GTM models in Pharma

and how Omnichannel strategies

can effectively support go-to-Market initiatives

Together we will explore

the nuance of new GTM models

and discuss how Omnichannel frameworks

can be tailored to enhance these strategies.

Get ready for a session filled with

insightful discussion and experts perspectives

As you know if you are a frequent viewer

I'm not the only moderator for today

so let me introduce

my co-host Mr Stefan Repin,

Head of Marketing here at Platforce.

Hi, Stef! How are you doing today?

Hey, hello! Hello, everyone.
Beautiful guests, beautiful people.

I'm so glad to see you this summer

that you've decided to hang with us

on this Wednesday and not go and drink some mojito or sangria

or lemonade or spend time with your family

You can do both. We will not judge!

Yeah you can put us in the background,
as long as you can hear us

it's great!

But we're here not just for the two of us.

We, in fact, try to enlighten the experience that our guests have

and today we have some really like fantastic guests.

And we have two new guests which

haven't been on this show before.

These guys are influencers.
They'll knock your heads off.

I'm really excited to start the webinar today.

because it's really special for me, I want to

get better numbers for the viewership

that we had in in June so hopefully we can get that.

We actually had a little bit of a...

Well not say conflict, but a little argue with Juliana

that July is not the best month

but I want to challenge that and

You want to prove me wrong! Just say it! haha

Well let's see, you know.
I hope our viewers will like it.

and we'll have a lot of viewership

and the engagement will off the roof

So, yeah let's welcome the other speakers.

It's enough speaking ourselves.

Yeah! So, we're honored to have with us

this distinguished panel, so I will introduce

our first speaker, first-time speaker
here at Pharma Insights: Morgwn Shaw

HI, Morgwn! How are you doing today?

Hey! Great thanks, Juliana and Stefan.

Glad to be here, thanks for the opportunity.

The sun is out so I feel like maybe

it's been a few days here in Munich

Should I introduce myself?

Yeah, please. Do it, do it!

I'm gonna um...

kill the first question that I'm going to get

before they even start, that is
how my name is spelled. It's not a typo.

I've been spelling it for a long time, but it's Welsh so

I'm the associate director, Omnichannel strategy lead

for Bristol Myers Squibb in Germany.

and yeah I'm looking forward to a really engaging chat

with yourselves and my colleagues this afternoon.

this evening, this morning, depending on where you are.

Great to be here!

Thank you, and we really like to let our guest know

how the weather is in different...
like wherever we are

So in Argentina it's sunny, it's cold.

but not that cold so just

giving the Weather Channel as well

We have a very diverse information to share.

Our second guest for today is

a speaker that was with us

if you are following our Pharma Insights show

which I hope you are

So let me welcome Chris Wade.

Hi, Chris. How are you doing today?

Hey, Juliana. Hey, Stefan. Hi, Morgan.

Great to see you all.

Happy to see you! How's the weather on your side?

Where are you?

I'm in London and it's so bright I've had to close the curtains.

so otherwise I wouldn't be able to see anything!
So we're having a very very nice day at last.

Having had what felt like a month and a half of rain.

hahaha so good!

I'm happy to hear that!
I will introduce another guest.

She is new to our series

so I want you all to give her

a bright and warm welcome Chiara Bolognini.
Hi, Chiara. How are you doing today?

Hi, Juliana! I'm good thank you for your patience. Wi-fi issues!

haha don't worry, don't worry!

We always cover. If you have Wi-Fi issues, it's okay.

we are all over the world so the idea is to

just keep going.

You're international leader at Rocher, correct?

If you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself.

where are you at? how's the weather over there?

Yeah I'd love to be holidays, not yet

The weather is good.

And yes ha ha

I wish you all to be on holidays right now or very soon.

Everything is fine, working well

leading omnichannel marketing strategy across a few days

Thank you, thank you for that.

And now I will introduce our last but not the least

speaker for today, she was with us already

so welcome, Susana, another

a second time with us. Hello, how are you doing?

Hi, there! Good afternoon and good morning everyone.

My name is Susanna. I work for Grünenthal.

I'm an omnichannel operations lead globally.

I'm based in the UK, where we are having
actually a row of sunny warm days

not sunny but warm, which in the UK is always remarkable.

So after what seemed like

a lifetime of rain and cold and winter

we are actually having summer

which is fantastic and it's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. Thank you, Susana.

I want to thank you all our panelists for being here.

We are so honored to have you on board.

And I also want to thank our attendees
for taking the time and being here.

Again if you want to have a margarita,
sangria, lemonade, whatever it is

you're more than welcome to have it.
We will not judge.

I'll be back in a minute haha

Just let us know so we can all share, I mean

I can go and find some wine over there.

As you know, we would love to hear from you

so don't hesitate to leave your comments, your questions

or anything you want to ask our panelists

My colleague, friend, and social media guru Malén D'Urso

is going to be moderating the chat section

so you know, you know how it works.

Leave your questions. We will be more than happy to answer them.

Without any further delay

I would love to start this webinar.

Welcome all! Stef, the microphone is yours I think.

I think that I've been hovering too much.

No, it's okay. So we've been discussing about

the omnichannel approach

and how it basically reflects on
the go to market strategy in different countries.

And we were talking about the effect,

about well... We were talking about

think global, act local, right?

And Chiara came with a very interesting

perspective that basically yeah

although you have, actually Chiara and Susana,

that although you have a global omnichanel initiative

the last steps of the action,

the last piece of the action has to be always local.

Right? Always local.

Oh there's Thomas. Hi, Thomas.

Susana is here, yeah!

So I was super

I was super interested in basically in the fact that how

do basically...

how do you measure the local engagement?

and how do you explain it maybe to the global

to global board, to your Global Leadership?

that this is your local strategy and how...

this is how it works locally and
this is how it should work locally

maybe how do you translate these KPIs into

maybe the global strategy, how do you

talk in between local and global?

I'd like to start with that and then
we'll see where the discussion goes.

Who wants to take this? I see Chris nodding. Chris? Chiara?

It's a topic that I faced in different ways at different companies.

In some companies there was more creativity

and freedom and others it was like the police.

ha ha ha

How are you doing what we told you to do? ha ha

ha ha If not, you get punished.

And others are really understanding absolutely that

markets locally need to of course

localize and adapt content according to their culture

and they need to do it in that way

to be able to engage with customers

in an optimal way

but that's my answer, but um...

I'd be curious to hear other experiences here from my colleagues.

So if I can build on that,

I think that's

another one of the many million dollar questions

we traditionally have

so in my experience

the best model is a model where we work

based on co-creation, meaning

the global team sits at the table

with a few of the key markets, and when I say key markets

I say big markets strategically important markets

and they actually develop

together the strategy

so that the key markets have some scheme in the game

and they are part of the creation of the strategy.

And then the roll out the implementation,

the last mile goes together

to the other markets who are not part of the co-creation

but it gets a stamp

that it doesn't come from the ivory tower

of the global police force

It goes with some validation from the markets.

So I don't have a clear answer

or a magic wand

that makes all the acceptance

but I think it's always tricky to find

the right model

so what I see working really really well is

having this co-creation

and having obviously like

everything we do having clear kpis

what does success look like?

is having all the messages adopted?

is having all the deliverables adopted?

80% adopted?

is having some snippets adopted? That depends.

But certainly

and as we discussed previously,

we need some sort of global

synergies to make sure we are also more efficient.

Yeah and I was thinking what Juliana said in he biginning

regarding the modular omnichannel, actually, the omnichannel frameworks

and then adding now modular omnichannel frameworks

we could actually consider

to create those in ways that they can

distributed to markets

right? that we have previously identified

in ways that they can work already

with that package that is right for them.

It could be a region, a cluster of markets,

or somebody sharing a culture or language.

So there are many many ways

to speed up a go to market strategy
with efficient marketing operations.

You've both piqued my interest.

there because I realised that

amongst or a little bit differently

to Chiara and Susana I'm not in a global role,

I'm in a market role.

and in fact my time with Bristol Myers Squibb has always been market focused

and I can say it's nice

the theory and the opportunity
of having a global campaign

you know as detailed as you like,
or as granular as you like

rolled out from a global perspective

and fully adopted locally

the reality is quite different.

I don't tell this story much

but and I won't name names

but I have brand teams that use global campaigns

as team building.

like a rage room so they take the global campaigns

they lock themselves in a room for two or three hours

and they literally shoot holes in it

they restorate the global campaign

and that makes them feel a lot better

and then they go off to allocate
their budgets and build everything locally.

So you know something in that local to global translation

is not working there.

But I want to give you a little bit of a

a little bit of a silver lining or a bright spot

because we have seen exactly with your model, Susana,

some real success

with creating a global campaign

that is adopted and is usable

outside of the mothership

and what has happened, I mean, we were speaking earlier about the US

based pharma companies, you know,

which I think BMS is one

where we you choose an early launch market

ex us

and then bring that local team and other

close to launch markets very close to the global

the global brand strategy, the global omnichannel strategy

and work hand in hand with that

and we see much more compliance because

what comes into the market has
the fingerprints of the market all over it

and there's then much greater adoption

and a clear focus on the type of customers

that we focus on x us as well.

Of course, thanks, Morgwn for the insight.

You made me think of adventure rooms.

hahaha

This was not a escape room. It was a rage room you know

where they throw plates and stuff this is
like just putting vision on the wall

and then all of them just going
"what is that? this is rubbish"

It's in escape room

but more violent.

A more violent one!

Let me find the mistake.
There needs to be something wrong here

because I'm sure I'm not going to like

I mean, to be fair, I started my pharma career

many many moons ago in a local team

so I've been there, I've done that so

It's... But... and again

I go back to my starting point

there is no model, there is no right answer

but there is a balance that can be achieved.

and ultimately that it all

comes back to the nitty gritty detail of

and it's... I hate to say this but in many cases

it comes back to

how do you have your operation assembled?

because in big companies

if you have a Content production factory

and if you have your content being centrally

produced and centrally paid for

for a lot of these works differently because the...

what you enforce into your local teams

is much more

it's much bigger than in smaller operations.

but there is no one size fits all of course

Yeah, that's true.

However, I want to share an experience
of building international value work

there are ways, right?

It's not going to be perfect as Susana said

we need to find a balance, right?

there is always going to be a little bit of adaptation.

But if you build

things of affiliates markets, right?

markets representatives already to build that work and co-create

you involve them deeply

in the creation or you capture the insights from the markets

the needs again

then basically bringing back

that international value work is really possible

I'm not striving for perfection, striving for learnings, right?

continuous learnings and refining

until we find the perfect formula

however, for sure relying on the people locally is key

to build international value work and omnichannel frameworks

as we want to say strategies

that can feed to the local customer and patient landscapes.

but do you think that if we kind of look at the topic
and sort of spin the topic on its head

if we know that

that omnichannel

approaches work best

when they're locally conceived

when they reflect the nature of customer

in that market some of the...

you know the nuances, the dynamics of that market

which the local team will understand

then sort of working backwards

if you know we are ultimately a go to market model is

supposed to be there to deliver commercial success.

It's not an instruction book

and equally it shouldn't be a set of dictates

"you have to work like this because we say so"

because we're global

The idea of a framework appeals to me because

I think it marries to, I guess, the journey that I've seen companies take

from a technology standpoint

when I first started working this space

every single country had its own CRM system

every brand team had their own content players

It was just chaos

so there was no consistency

anywhere on the organization even though they probably

still had a global system in play

but when you actually spoke to the people in country

they had any variety of different sort of local tools

being used in practice

because they couldn't get the global one to work

and these are big organizations

which had huge variation across their business

what content

essentially every agency delivered their own content player

so think about it, that level of messiness

where we've got to now is

clearly we have lots of globalized

capabilities but if I look at companies which I sort of

put on the pedestal of

great performing companies when it comes to omnichannel

one of them very close to Susana

is part of that is they have

identified the need to centralize

the infrastructure

so there is sort of... who writes the checks

you know, this is what we're going to deploy

but we're not going to centralize the creation.

We leave the creation

of the plan, the formulation of what is

our go to customer approach

in the hands of a local teams

and of course when we talk about things
like generative AI and stuff like that

this becomes much more easy

to sort of equip a local brand team

or a local, you know, customer operations team

who don't have huge amount of

endless list of resources to work with

These are the guys who say

"I know what the problem is. I know what I'm trying to do.
I just don't know how to do it."

Generative AI can clearly can help them formulate

an approach that sort of works backwards

here's my market, what's my challenge?

how can I make this work in a way that actually I can then report

you know back up in the organization to say

"We're doing this. This is how it's going"

Rather than just that top down, you know,

Global decides this is the full brand, the full playbook.

and there's no

ending up in Morgwn situation where

the best they can do it is throw axes at it

as sort of a team building exercise.

It's a very interesting point, Chris.

and I was also thinking in this scenario

you are depicting which will be perfect at the same time

how do we ensure

these messages you know

that brand presence is consistent across

the markets

if creativity is left

to the market, so I'm making assumptions that

in any case there are guidelines, there are inspections

let's say a direction that ensure that.

Is that correct?

I have to imagine that yeah. You've got a
global brand team that are defining

the brand, the medicine is the medicine

here's your evidence and here's the messaging that we

that any... that that company

believes it can safely use to support

the prescribing of that medicine

and all of the imagery and standards around the brand

That's, you know,

the bread and butter of the branding.

But how that relates to local customers

is a whole different thing

and I guess that's one of those disconnects

where the difference between a brand approach

and a go to Market approach in my mind

is that the go to Market approach

should start with who is the customer.

What is the market?

What is the nature of the market for this medicine in this country?

It's not going to be the same in every country

because you have different healthcare systems,

different reimbursement models and so forth,

different levels of just

deliberate Health system maturity

in terms of can they actually handle

a more advanced treatment?

if they don't have... outside of a handful of

highend treatment or private centers

if the general healthcare system isn't equipped

to handle it, it's probably not going to work.

but, you know, enough for me

That's very right

but we shouldn't also... we shouldn't...

We need to keep in mind that especially Global Brands

the global brands have their core,

their core message, their core values, their core

principles and when those are established

there needs to be some sort guidance,

there needs to be a framework

which guides what can and cannot be localized

Otherwise, the brand stops being local,

sorry stops being a global brand

and I personally as a

as a marketeer

and I completely believe that we need to be customer-centric

however, as we build our strategies

from global to local our go to Market models

as much as we are customer-centric

we shouldn't lose sight

of what are the core values of our brands

otherwise we lose the value of

having global brands

And those are essential, those are bread and butter

in our company's strategies

if you work for global companies.

But the point that Pauline makes

I guess this keeps circling around the

the conversations on LinkedIn and stiff like that

is we are incredibly wasteful

as an industry

most of what we produce never sees a customer

so is that okay?

is that level of waste something...?
It's like saying actually you know what

the bit we do use is used really well

so maybe it's you know there is
always going to be a level of waste

and friction in any process

it's just for us it's higher but relative to

the cost of content relative to the revenue from treatment

it's probably not a very big percentage when it comes to it.

We haven't touched on operations

how do we actually deliver, right?

the global strategy

which is a very important element of

as well achieving that customer centricity, Chris,

you are talking about

if a global strategy it's delivered properly

and not overwhelming haha

deliver it to our markets

then they are able to pick and choose, right?

and are able to actually then build their own local strategy

in the customer-centric way you just depicted so

it's always convenient to have

material that is already ready

to go right with some changes and adaptation

let's talk about the value of reviews

and I understand Chris that

if Japan is creating a campaign

another country in LATAM can reuse it

for sure but I've seen blockages coming from

"oh this is in Japanese I leave it"

why? wait a moment I mean

I'm sure also that with AI

with new tools we will be able to

translate a content, localized much more easily

that it was before

and so also mentioned before

we have of course

the opportunity with language model also to localize images

with localized texts

according to culture so

what we're talking today about will change and become faster

in terms of go to market so

I will still consider the work done at global very important and also

there are digital Asset Management systems

that can be shaped in various ways

horribly or perfectly

I've seen companies not having those at all

and relying on other types of

distribution of assets like G sites

or any type of community

it's important that we make extra communication, right?

we reach out to smaller communities

somewhere people that don't have time

even to join the global call

and we are able to actually test the water

understand where they are, what they need

etc, so probably we need more

International roles

the people who are able to reach out to

the fates and help them

achieve what you are not seeing them achieve increase

and I understand that there is a challenge

and you are totally right

Another way could, but surely, another way could also be

to strengthen capabilities in market

because I guess we have seen a lot of movement

of resource, people, teams

out of country first into regional

we've left with a lot of affiliates

the customer,

local customer and brand teams

are very small

and they probably struggle to keep pace with

all the help that they're receiving from global.

Morgwn, you're on that end of the pipe

Yeah, and I mean I think

Chris, Chiara, Pauline to your points and questions

I think a global implementation

of a local strategy can go

too far and I wouldn't want to be in a situation

representing Global or a global brand

sitting with a brand team giving them
a list of tactics to choose from

like that's where the waste is

because if global are designing a strategy and

executing all the way to here's the email templates

you can use and here's all the different content bits

pieces that you can translate

and put in a picture of

colleges wearing little horse

and if that's culturally relevant for your market

you don't want to take it that far

to Pauline's point and to address some of the waste

I think you know the brand is the brand

and the data is the data

one of the things I like about pharma is you're limited in

in the amount that you can say, and what you can say

because it has to be backed up by data

and so your core claims the messaging

that you can deliver I think

this is something that can be developed

collaboratively at a global level

but what I do see is when it hits the market

the prioritization of those

messages in particular varies between

customer segments and so there's obvious

variation between markets so you can't

say that something in the UK that is a

top priority objective is a key

objective once you get to Germany or

Spain or Italy

so as long as there flexibility and engagement

with the local market that they can prioritize

the key messaging in segments

for their segments and stay true to the global

brand strategy in terms of positioning

and the high level objectives

then it's at that point that local

can engage with global and say well actually

we don't care about these two or three

messages they're not relevant they don't

resonate with us but based on our research

and our segmentation these are our priority messages

and these are the objectives we want to achieve

and that can then derive what the messaging is

and again this is where, you know, I could

I could go either way in terms of having

that operational capability in Market or

offshore I think as long as you're aligned

and you've got the resources for it

and the capability we can build and

execute in market, I mean, half of my team

are dedicated to actually project

managing and in most cases delivering

the actual tactics but equally that

could be offshore that could be

delivered by global but I think

the key thing is it needs to be efficient

and it needs to be relevant for the market

it needs to be something they'll actually use

the waste comes from Global or

making assumptions, making tactics for

channels, making strategies for

platforms and messaging that don't resonate

and aren't prioritized for the market

so bringing local into that conversation

considering their prioritization

and their unique

placement or the unique position

in terms of what the objectives and what the channels

what the channel priorities are

that's where you can reduce waste

and closen the relationship between Global and local

Or maybe what Global needs to consider

besides all the strategic

thinking about the brand values

and the brand elements when it comes to

execution the closer the brand should go

is thinking about the Omnichannel framework

the Omnichannel personas

journeys,

experiences, leaving them as the framing

for the execution The Last Mile to then

be executed by the local teams, therefore

the global team still looks at what

serves the brand in terms of content and

in terms of if eventual customer experiences

and customer Journeys

and then based on the local insights

the markets will execute

that might be

omnichannel world approach to what used to be the

Strategic versus tactical plan of 15 years ago

who knows?

yeah I'm sure if you look at other industries

for sort of as a

direct setting that you know most brand

teams at a local level

they will have data skills in that team

so they are doing things of data around

their brand, in their Market, which

traditionally were done centrally so

the tools to handle

diverse sets of data to draw

meaning from it, to drive insight

from structured,

nonstructured

information that is helped by

that local understanding but you've

got people in that team who know what they are looking at

and are asking questions

which, you know, the question

I'm going to ask in France is going to be

very different to the question I ask in Estonia

so why would I expect

somebody at a regional or even Global level

to be able to anticipate all those

questions what I want to do is say

we've doing our homework, we've

we've developed a great brand

we've got great messaging around

here's evidence, all of this stuff

we've touched on but when we come to

execution, that's local

and that's Omnichannel capability

Omnichannel or whatever the terminology you want to use for it

it it starts with

what is the data that helps us

to understand how the market and customers

interact with each other here

what is going to work?

is it pricing? is it safety?

what other factors are going on?

which are going to help to be ultimately be more persuasive

and a lot of that starts

with having a lot of

the teams I talked to these days you know

they put a real focus on either upskilling

the team internally or of

making their existing marketing teams

more data Savvy, you know, more

happy to you know explore and

and uncover their understanding

as well as bringing

expertise into those local teams

rather than just having a

a centralized bi team either in country

or above country who are kind of

mostly focused on creating reports

you know rather than actually

exploring data for a much more

tactical advantage

Yeah and you Chris made me think of

diverse competitive Landscapes

as well so that is critical also

to consider because some products are

approved in some countries first

some others later, we have different

pipelines and we have totally different

stages in the various markets

also in terms of launches, as some markets

have pre-launch phase SE also two years

or negotiations that never never end

while the others are

running very very fast so timing is also

a thing in my opinion because a campaign

that was launched two years before

can also be obsolete two years later so

haha there are a number of elements to

consider as well digging deeper into

the localization

I think Benjamin's just made a really interesting point in the chat.

that it's very

difficult to change local Market

operating models particularly when

they've had a status quo

they've had a way of always doing things

and the implementation of a global strategy

around Omnichannel and tactical execution

does to a large extent turn

the local teams into a filter

they're just a filter for Global stuff

and nobody wants that in their job

that's not a... that's not a...

future proof job that you kind of just

take what Global gives you finesse it

around the edges a bit and then export it

and deliver it and hope that it

matches your globally mandated kpis

but perhaps to put a different few

words around that something we're seeing

and I don't think I'm alone in the pharma industry

representatives

here is that the budgets from markets

are shrinking particularly large markets

and so what we're seeing is a bit more

pull from local brand teams in

that they don't have the same pots of

money to play with that they used to

and that is forcing them albeit positively

to engage with what's already there,

what's coming down from Global because

why, you know, as much as you want to

engage a local agency and get creative

and get your hands dirty and own the process

and the creative from end to end

when you don't have

infinite budget or near infinite

sometimes it seems quite infinite

like when you don't have all the money

in the world to execute then maybe you should

use a bit more of what you're

being kind of served from Global

I think to reference the

conversation we've had so far it's on

global to then engage with the markets

throughout the process to make sure that

what comes from Global is actually

valuable and impactful in market

but changing the mindset

and the operating models locally is

is a huge challenge, absolutely huge

challenge because a lot of this conversation

has been theoretical and I love

theoretical and how things should be

but I don't know about you guys

but I'm going to go back to my desk

and execute a global customer

Centric datadriven Omnichannel campaign

is a million miles from what I'm

actually dealing with in my inbox, you know?

I've got I've got field forces that

don't know how to use Veeva approved email

despite the fact it's been active

here for seven years and is a core channel

like there's really practical

considerations that are getting in the way of

executing omnichannel

Let's be more hands on.

Sorry to interrupt. Let's be more hands on.

Let's talk about like day to day problems

I really like this conversation, let's...

Like therapy haha

We offer therapy as well, so we will not charge you at all but haha

here is your sofa please

tell us your problems ha ha

I think... I think it's a very legitimate point because

it has happened to all of us and on the

speaking about therapy who never? it has

happened to all of us and I think my

biggest learning is it's whenever you

want to drive a change and this is a

huge change especially when you are

impacting on the ways of working we need

to dedicate time, resources, and thinking

to do proper change management

I've learned recently and I've made this

conclusion and it's now a driver of

everything I do that change management

has been underrated and

underestimated for a long time in many projects

and if you don't put time and

structure behind how you drive the change

you will certainly put yourself

in a situation in which you end up

needing therapy because you need to

communicate the change, you need to train people

you need to address the questions

you need to bring the people with you

otherwise you do a huge effort

you invest time, money, resources

and six years from there you look back and

nothing change because the people will

still go to their comfort zone because

it's comfortable and sometimes

and in my experience we tend to be very very

careful managing the change when it

impacts the field force

and we are not as careful when the

change impacts the marketing teams or

the Medical Teams or the market access

because we assume they will organically

change just because we told them to change

And Susana you made me think of

and also going to increase of Knowledge

Management challenges, this is what

I was refering to as well when I was

talking about International roles so

people checking with their

Affiliates understanding, taking

the pause, understanding what has come

through all those calls and deliverables

from Global has been overwhelming or

understood, what has passed through

that communication, that done in many many ways

and if it does not work yet

what can be done to transfer that knowledge

so that's also very relevant

because then Morgwn will not have to

succumb to...

email inbox anymore, he can focus on what is needed to be done

for his own Market

because somebody's also helping with the

knowledge transfer so that's also was my point.

Checking with affiliates.

Yeah I mean I think Susanna makes an amazing

point there and I'm glad it's not

something that is

is emerging from my own therapist's

couch about the change management

piece and how the industry has a huge

focus on the field force

and is incredibly sensitive to managing

the workloads and administrative burden

and tasks on the field force and rightly

so it's an incredibly

powerful and impactful channel

but it's becoming less

no, I'm saying our focus on other channels needs

to broaden and our breadth and depth of

attention and resources dedicated to

channels other than the field really

needs to evolve and that's an

incredibly difficult conversation to have

and change management

is absolutely part of it

I feel like the Field Force are almost

protected and anything that's not

customer facing, a human customer facing

a human representative be it an MSL or a rep

is seen as a threat to that

relationship I hope there not too many

like you know I have to struggle some

weeks and months to send an email via

marketing Cloud right because there's so

much resistance from the Field Force

to having anybody other than themselves

contact their customer and you've got a question

you've got a question

when a rep and I'm going to make up some

numbers here these aren't related to my company

but putting a human in front

of a human costs hundreds of dollars

when it boils down it costs hundreds of dollars

why are we dedicating that

resource? most of them are doctors

and phds, and pharmacists highly paid

highly trained professionals

why do they have to sit in front of their customer

to invite them to a webinar or to capture

their consent to send them an email or

to give them you know depending on the

the profile and hearing of that customer

why does a rep have to sit in front of them

them to tell them about a new product launch

when an email could tell it to them

15 seconds after it happens

for zero cost to the brand

was that message being delivered by rep, it is hundreds of dollars

See of cost, yeah

We've been...

I think quite successful in that

transformation and since Quarter Two

this year we've got to a point in which

we have actually more digital

interactions, more digital touch

points then face to face touch points

especially on our mature Brands which is

amazing we still have Field Force across

Europe and Latam

however, the number of touch points

in our digital ecosystem is higher than

the number of

human touch points and that's not

without a huge change management and a huge

tension management with the field force

and it's not all rainbows and

flowers but the truth is we have a very

good level of Engagement by

creating the ground to have this sort

of Engagement with our customers

but a a lot of change

management and transformation has

happened since

2021 roughly

that was the rep acceleration, excuse me

that was obviously taking

the covid opportunity

and never looking back

Yeah yeah but we were... look at it

We hit the high water mark of

rep numbers, what? early 2000s

it's been down, it's been heading

it's not a Covid thing, Covid just

accelerated it so, you know, the global

number of reps in you look across Europe,

look across developing

markets at the US and Europe it's been heading

downwards and that's not to say

that the Reps individually don't do

a really tough job and do it very well

but clearly people at the sea level

are looking at the numbers and saying

it doesn't make sense, if it made sense

the numbers would have stayed

where they were, I think the nature

of what the rep's role is, that has

changed too, they're seeing a much

broader range of customer than they used to do

and they're doing probably a more

complex job because the nature of the

the medicines has in many cases

become more complex as well

detailing an Ace inhibitor

is very different to detailing

a oncology treat

and we... yeah yet but

that's what they have to do

but I think you've seen a lot of

organizations this my hobby horse

is on the account side of the operation

I think we've seen that's moved slower

in a lot of organizations that they haven't

really

embraced the business

to business, part of the market model

at the same Speeders to embrace

the business to hcp side

we're still very hcp Centric at the same time as we

keep, if we go to conferences

and everyone's talking about diminishing access

diminishing autonomy and

decision-making power yet the answer is

never well maybe we should doing more on

the account side because that's actually

where the buying is done and that

does seem to be one of those I guess

when you sort of look at

the challenge of having and

obviously we're talk about Omni channel here

but you have is sort of you know

two-speed organization

you've got a a legacy organization which is physical

you know they're out there focusing on

Target customers very tightly defined

and the number of people doing that is

relatively low that compared to what it

used to be and then you've got a

then you've got a digital

organization which is focusing on

non-target audiences focusing on mature

products increasingly overlapping the

two to sort of pick up to your point

Morgwn, that when I when a rep does

something why should it be on the rep

to send 15 emails when that could be just

done automatically it makes no sense to

just load you know orchestration

sort of overhead on the rep

when that orchestration can be done entirely

automatically and probably done a lot better

it's this sort of bit which to me

goes comes back to we're

talking about go to market

it's like there's more to the

market than an hcp

and we sort of often in a lot of

settings we see a struggle to kind of

break out of that you know rep hcp

that's the kind of

beginning in the end when clearly

it's a more complex Market that we operate

Chris, I might... we might be

looking at two sides of the same coin

so one of my you know bug

bears and therapy topics that we've been

sort of touching on is our over reliance

over

prioritization of sales

traditional sales Channel being the rep

and I think one one thing that you're

noticing is the same thing but from a

flip side, from the flip side in that

it's sales, human in front of human,

not taking a broader view of the account and

I think there's been conversation earlier about

you know marketing and

commercials involvement in the entire

product life cycle and even shaping

the features and benefits messaging

earlier on the fact that we don't

we have a relationship with hcps

well prior to approval a lot of them are

investigators and principal

investigators and they're touching

different silos within the business and

I think for me I see a skills or

capability or experience Gap in anything

outside of sales, you know there's

there's marketing departments that well

they're called marketing departments

my experience prior to pharma

which I've been in for the last six years

prior to that I worked across very

high Performance Marketing Industries

Financial Services, Automotive, health

insurance, fmcg, luxury goods, and they

would not call what we do in Pharma

marketing and I think maybe it comes

from our insula nature and our over

Reliance on the sales channel so the

actual people that work their way into

different positions within the business

are coming from sales broadly and

there's people working their way into

marketing and marketing director

positions to b u d positions to GM

positions that came up through the sales channel

and there's no criticism here

but they know what they know

or they only know

and so whole industry is overly sales

focused and they can't help but hang on to

the power of this one to one relationship

all the way, all the way

they go back to head office up the chain into

Global positions quite often but we're

missing that true marketing digital

actual Omni Channel mindset and a lot of

leadership are coming up through the sales channel

as well so they don't

understand it and they can't prioritize it

and it's hard to make change when

senior leadership within a local market

aren't advocating for something that

they don't necessarily understand the

the power, impact of and I guess that's

our job locally and globally is

to communicate that message

and may I divert also

attention a little bit to the chat

as we are heading towards the end of our discussion

we have seen Stefan Turnwald

talking about the rep as it's not a

communication Channel

it is a relationship and trust your engagement

platform if not used as such

it's just for the message delivered as it is

...resources with critical questions

whether digital channel content is supporting

or hindering their web in fully leaving

up to the potential personal engagement

I think our conversation has been a lot

also about that we were talking only about

the sales rep but of course when it

goes down to the sales rep which is

our face to the customer, right?

if this person is overwhelmed

It is really a problem and

I usually create omnichanel ecosystems

where the sales rep is in the center

and is empowered by who we are

delivering to this person but it's also

empowered to choose so that should be

the approach in my opinion

not to overwhelm but again

managing, making him a leader of the omnichannel

strategy and so this way also we solve

the fear of the Technologies

the lack of understandings of leadership

of everything else because we empower

the right person, so thank you, Stefan

for the insight

Is there anybody else here in our group

who wants to comment to the chat

messages?

I can't remember the last time a car salesman came to my door trying to

sell me a new BMW

hahaha

so... the analogy is we put

and you know I respect, I recognize that

what the field sales team does is a very

difficult job and it plays a critical

role in the mix but we do put them on a pedestal

there are many situations where

it's not appropriate and it's not feasible

to take a rep led approach in

how we're engaging our markets

yet that seems to often be kind of like

"oh you can't say that, you can't criticize

the role of the field in the Go to market model"

when actually the market model itself

has shifted

you know, where is the autonomy at the prescriber level?

who is making the drug decision?

but again it goes back to the Strategic decision

of go to Market model, where do

I position the rep? and that depends on

the market, that depends on the brand

that depends on the therapy area and

those are decisions that

shouldn't be taken by global, global can

offer a framework, a thinking framework

however, in my opinion the decision needs

to be taken locally because the rep can

be of high value in some situations or

the rep can be an orchestrator of the

other channels or the rep can be simply

a representative of the company for

specific targets, so again the go to market

the go to Market strategy

needs to be a local reflection based on

insights, based on data, based on this

deep knowledge of that market but

probably needs to be articulated from a

global framework and no one likes

framework, I don't like them at at all

but they are useful for Christ's sake

and to Benjamin's point I totally get and

respect the importance of the

rep's relationship for trust building

and the resonance and

relevance of getting the message to our

customers and I think that actually

needs to be the focus is that in the

right circumstances the rep is the right way,

or the best way to ensure that our

customer gets the message correctly but

it can't be the only way because I know

you know I've got hcps and

specialists in my friendship and family group

and our overreliance on

that one channel means the customers,

the hcps don't have that many options and

the last thing I want as a potential

patient is to be prescribed the wrong

medication or a sub optimal medication

because my hcp doesn't like their rep

from the right company or vice versa

and there's simply no other options out there

and I actually have a thought like

I do know explicitly about an hcp

that I know that has no information or

data on a particular product because

they don't like their rep and that's not

an omni Channel environment we want to

operate in, we need to build the muscle of

our non-rep channels not to threaten the rep

but to augment the relationship

and enable us to deliver the content

that we need to via the channels that

the customer does trust and does engage with

I really like that perspective.

Morgwn, thank you for sharing

of course potentially the rep is

augmenting another approach altogether

they're part of the pull through

mechanism of what those

those engagements that you're having at

at the system level,

at an institutional level

Guys, before we continue

I just want to let you know that we are

one minute away so I don't want to take

more of your precious time

I know you're super busy so if you want to

give some closing remarks and our

attendees, we promise that we are going to

to take a look to your comments and

your questions and direct them to the

the speakers as well, Stef, I don't know if

you have something to add

uh I like the comment, it came from Stefan

both Stefan haha

Not me! Stefan Turnwald!

He says: and do not project your negative sales experiences on the field force

better think of how whatever

you're putting together in marketing and

digital to allow reps to deliver better experiences

It's striking the differentiation

of field and omni is

nowhere more disruptive as in Pharma

maybe due to the complexity of the

pharma Market space with multiple

stakeholders haha

or maybe due to the entrenched Empire of sales you know

take your pick haha

However I would like to close with a remark

to answer the question how can

omnichannel support different GTM strategies

going down locally, right?

into personalization, markets know their

customers and the patients so let's not forget that

and if anybody else

wants to add some please be free

I can add a closing remark which

is when considering Omni Channel as part

of your go to Market strategy

please please please do not

jump into the next Shiny Toy to the next

new platform to the next more advanced

without considering the basics

the good oldfashioned way of considering your

strategic thinking know your Market,

know your customers, get your insights right

and then consider the execution please

don't think platform is everything

with all respect haha

don't go and look for Susana, platforms,

she is very respectful of you haha

I am, I am, we need the platform. It is only

the tool if you don't have your ducks in a row

there is no platform that can say

I agree with. Morgwn?

I'd wrap up by stealing a quote I saw

probably on LinkedIn um

I know I've talked a little bit about

and I think we've all been a little

bit kind of critical of the rep and the role

of sales and they overly large

influence on the organization the

idea is that these two things Omnichannel

and the rep or digital versus the rep

it's not a conflict, it's not an either or

and the quote I saw was

Omni Channel won't replace reps

but reps that Embrace Omni channel

will replace those who don't

because it's about delivering a holistic experience

and we haven't really even touched on

the data that is generated from digital

and Omni Channel and how that can

massively augment the rep experience and

some of the best projects we've done

have been where we've taken online

activity and insight and delivered it

into the hands of the rep to make sure

that highly expensive, highly

important interaction is as relevant and

targeted and personalized and impactful

as possible not purely what's in the rep's head

but what's sitting in our CRM

what's sitting in our analytics platform

what's sitting in our profile databases

to make sure that

that critical point is as impactful as possible

and that's what we want to get to

but for now with sending emails

and go into therapy with us haha

Therapy is always good, you know

We need to create the therapy group

Let me know and I will create the group

Isn't that what Linked In is?

sorry I've been misusing it

That explains a lot ha ha ha

Chris, do you want to give a closing remark?

Yeah just I mean I think

if we recognize that Omni channel has

a role to play then that is to me that

is all about connecting the different

business functions so that it's not

it's not a sort of

one part of the business versus another part

versus local versus global

should be ultimately the customers at

the center of this, their needs and

ultimately the patients needs are what comes first

then we have to work backwards from that

but in working backwards

we just need to be honest about

what is it that's driving decision making

what is it that's going to actually

best help patients receive treatments

their clinicians better understand those treatments

that to me is you know that's the driver

for designing a go to Market approach

as opposed to

following just a purely

commercial outcome because

optimal use of medicine has to be

the goal of our industry

If we can do that and Omni channel's sort of

part effectively be the sort of

engine for making that happen

across different functions in the business

then we've succeeded

Thank you, thank you for that

I want to thank you all for being here

and taking the time. It was really interesting.

and I also want to thank our attendees

for taking the time

if you had a margarita, let me know
so I can make one and join you.

Spiritually ha ha

To everyone that is watching, thank you for joining. It was a pleasure.

We will see you in our next talk show

Don't miss it, it's going to be about CX, user...

CX for customer experience.

Sorry, I confused the name

Keep an eye on LinkedIn and you'll see when it's post.

So, thank you all for joining. Thank you so much

and I will see you all on our next Pharma Insights

Bye for now!

Thank you!