Pharma Insights 🩺

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

First, as you know, we would love to hear from you 
so don't hesitate to drop your comments

or questions in the comment section. 

I will share them. I would love to share that.

On this special occasion we have my colleague 
and social media guru Malén D'Urso

and she's going to help me introduce your ideas 
to the panel live in this stream

and my second announcement

and I promise this is the last one,

I wanted to remind you
that we would love to hear from you directly

in how we can improve our comments so for this 
we have prepared a brief form with some topics

on what we can bring or what topics we can discuss in the future

so please do not forget to leave your comments and questions.

Malén will be there and 
as well, she's going to post the link

for this form so please complete it!

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.

I want to thank our attendees as always for being so kind
and for taking the time, for allowing us to do this.

We love to be on camera with Stefan,
so this gives us an opportunity.

And please if you have any questions
or any comments for our attendees,

for our speakers, sorry,
attendees, you can always

leave them on the comment section
or you can look for them on LinkedIn.

I highly suggest that, and get their inputs.

For me and for us, this it for today.
I want to remind everyone that

please fill out the form so we know 
what you want to hear about next.

And thank you all. Have a great rest of your Thursday!
And have a great Friday and a great weekend!

So I will see you all for our next Pharma Insights.
Bye, everyone! 

Bye, bye!

Thank you! Thank you, everybody!