This blog is the second of a two-part series. It highlights three of the six reasons for emerging pharma companies to move away from siloed point-solutions and choose an integrated end-to-end commercial data and analytics solution.
The first of the two-part series focused on the importance of finding efficient, effective, and flexible solutions that address most challenges that befuddle emerging pharma companies, such as the need for:
Part 2 of the series addresses critical but straightforward hygiene factors that enable emerging pharma companies to focus on key product and commercial objectives while being competitive in the marketplace. These simple rules also help clear the clutter in deciding to choose the right solution.
Emerging pharmas have their strength areas. Emerging pharmaceutical companies are nimble and bring a focused approach to drug science; that is not always the case with large pharma companies, which spend seven to ten years and up to $7 billion on developing a single blockbuster drug.1 But emerging pharma companies also have their limitations, and a solid go-to-market approach is one of them. Here, the large pharma companies have the advantage with their sales forces and marketing muscle to bring newly launched drugs to their patients.1
Even though life sciences industry experts are noticing a synergistic partnership between small pharma companies and their larger competitors, emerging pharma companies must ensure a robust commercial strategy in-house. This task is daunting because of the characterized challenges that smaller companies face - relying on lean data, analytics, and IT teams. Some of the product and go-to-market-related challenges that emerging pharmas can face are:
An end-to-end integrated commercial data and analytics solution can prove to be of immense value in such situations. Here is how:
Click here to read about Axtria’s commercial data and analytics solution to commercialize an orphan drug launch for an emerging pharma company.
Ensuring data quality and governance is of utmost importance for all organizations making data-driven decisions. Especially for rapidly growing emerging pharma companies, it is common to overlook basic data hygiene requirements and compromise data accuracy, accessibility, and overall quality. A robust data and analytics platform comes with pre-built data governance capabilities, accelerating data standardization and harmonization and taking care of all such requirements from the get-go through to business expansion.
Emerging pharmas are typically known to start small with a vast potential to scale rapidly. It is essential to ensure the proper mechanics are put into place to foster flexibility and seamless organic growth with such a lifecycle. When the business grows, expectations from the commercial data and analytics systems will change continuously. For instance, when an emerging pharma company launches its first drug or indication, the organizational focus is primarily to assess market needs and gaps to ensure flawless implementation. As the business grows, the focus shifts towards optimizing sales and marketing operations.
People involved across business functions will need to be comfortable with the data and analytics systems to adapt to such changes. By ensuring pharmaceutical innovation through its people, small and medium-sized pharma can focus on different levers influencing costs and performance.
An end-to-end commercial data and analytics platform compares well against siloed point-solutions to ensure consistent enterprise-wide adaptability with business growth. Emerging pharma companies can expect such advantages because the right commercial platform enables:
Another vital offering of a robust data and analytics platform is the modularity they provide. Any such platform will have core components, including commercial data warehouse, MDM, field reporting, HO reporting (including brand/marketing reporting), search-based analytics, and advanced analytics workbench. Such modularity will help adapt as the commercial strategy progresses across a product’s lifecycle, from pre-launch to post-launch.
In summary, an integrated commercial data and analytics solution can be a real silver bullet for an emerging pharma company’s continued success – something that can never be guaranteed with a collection of siloed point-solutions offered by third-party vendors. It is critical for small and medium-sized pharma companies to acknowledge their unique position in the market, recognize their strengths and weaknesses and lay the best-suited data and analytics foundation from the get-go. Doing so will not only help them launch their products fast and appropriately, but it will also significantly help them during the post-launch commercialization as well.
The pharmaceutical sector’s future is promising, where organizations of all sizes play a dedicated role. The right choices regarding the fabric of data, insights, operations, and evaluation will be the deciding factor to give emerging pharma companies a competitive edge against the competition.