Innovation Journal - Cognizant

REWIRE - FASTr
”We have to be agile. We can’t keep losing these short-term market
opportunities because of process bottlenecks. It takes three months to
implement a change in promotional strategy, and this is costing us
severely, both at the top and bottom lines. While our field and contract
sales are critical to our success, we need a platform that will help us to
be agile and manage them effectively. We need to drastically reduce
our time-to-market from the current 12 weeks.”
Such were the thoughts of a brand leader at a leading pharmaceutical
company. After years of high margins and deep pockets, the pharma
and biotech industries are in an era of slower growth. In an
environment where 20% of physicians refuse to meet sales
representatives 1 , decreasing returns from each promotional visit are
etching deep lines on executives’ foreheads.
On top of that are the worrisome headlines that appear in industry
reports: ”The 10 biggest-selling drugs are about to lose their patent” or
”Global pharmaceutical R&D productivity declining, as sector relies
heavily on aging portfolio.” 2 3
The healthcare industry has become very volatile, and the need to
implement strategic decisions faster is the call of the day.
Nitin Choudhary, a Senior Engagement Manager and on-site project
lead from Cognizant’s Enterprise Analytics Practice, could very well
read the anxiety on the face of the brand manager. He thought his
strategic and account planning team should start working on the
multiple realities that his client was facing, which includes:
Shortened interaction times: Field sales representatives’
interaction time remains critical, even in agile targeting.
Channel of choice: Field sales representatives continue to be the
most effective resource for directly connecting with, and forming a
relationship with, prescribers.
High-cost channel: Personal promotion is an expensive channel,
accounting for about 30% of marketing spend and each rep visit
costing about $80.
System complexities: A multitude of system and ramp-up
constraints deter changes in targeting plans.
With Cognizant’s maturing understanding of pharma sales and
marketing solutions and client business, Nitin thought, the client
needed to accelerate “strategy-to-reality” planning and identify a way
to enable quick, on-the-go decisions to respond to dynamic market
conditions.
The time to market for a typical strategic decision in a product launch
took eight to 12 weeks, including identifying the business needs, how
the brand will be promoted, the amount of mandated effort, the target
locations, access issues, etc.
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