Start small, start now.
Regulations, complex business model, customer reluctance… These are some of the factors that contributed to the pharma industry's delayed adoption of digital engagement. The pandemic changed everything: eliminating many of these roadblocks and shifting customers' expectations.
Under pressure to rise to the challenge, this industry is looking to make up for years of missed opportunities and build performant digital engagement infrastructures, fast. They are rushing through the steps of trial and error and iterative improvement that brought success to the digital leaders they seek to learn from, such as Amazon and Netflix.
Some companies have made incredible progress in the past year, having transformed their infrastructure, and ways-of-working to support this shift. Others, on the other hand, are uncertain on how to proceed, despite mounting pressure from stakeholders, and the availability of various solutions and systems.
What are some of the reasons that organizations find it so difficult to get started?
1. Lack of clarity about the impact of digital transformation on the business.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Big Data, Hyper-Personalization, Next Best Action, etc. The jargon sounds impressive, but the question at the back of everyone's mind is "How will this help us?". Unless this point is made very clear across the organization, when executives declare that it's time to join this party, cross-functional leaders will remain reluctant to divert efforts and attention away from the core business activities and focus them on initiatives with unknown potential for return.
As a result, revenue generating operations continue to operate as usual, while "special" digital initiatives are launched in isolation, receive little attention aside from the initial launch excitement, and quickly disappear.
2. The perceived high cost of entry. The promise of digital transformation is a 360-degree view of you customer, and the ability to engage with them in a way that is tailored and unique to each of them. The pitch deck from industry experts illustrates a beautifully interconnected ecosystem of platforms and systems, with data flowing in all directions. A mental checklist of required items starts to form in your mind: you need a CRM, an emailing platform, remote exchange tools, a virtual event platform, a customer preference management system, e-retail or sample order and management platform, online and social media platform, a service request functionality. To administer and maintain this infrastructure, you will also need teams of experts. And lastly, you will need data, lots of it, to generate this comprehensive 360 view of the customer.
Without a doubt, the cost of this setup is enormous. Teams are already lean, budgets are stretched. This level of spending almost seems frivolous.
3. The business disruption brought about by massive change. Launching new tools and new processes require hours of training from our customer facing teams, major downtime for crucial business applications and months of tracking down and fixing the inevitable bugs. To make matters worse, so many of the recently implemented applications and processes faded to oblivion only months after an intense training blitz. Customer-facing teams just want to be left alone to engage with their customers, while marketing budgets can't seem to accommodate yet another channel or platform to generate or adapt content for. A "change-fatigue" can be felt across the organization, and the tolerance for dealing with the consequences is wearing out.
The lack of confidence in the potential benefits, the heavy investment necessary and the negative impact on business activities would make any leader think twice about embarking on a digital transformation. Seemingly, a wrong decision could potentially cripple the business, make employees lose faith in their leadership, and frustrate loyal customers.
It doesn't have to be like this.
What are other ways an organization can be successful with their digital customer engagement?
You may have heard that digital transformation is not about technology, it’s about people. This means that it’s more about your approach than the tools you purchase, and that unless your culture embraces this approach, technology alone is not sufficient to succeed.
Here are 5 points to keep in mind when considering digital transformation:
Focus on your mission and priorities business, and what the different technology options can do for your business. Speak to someone who can understand your business strategy, challenges, and environment, and how each tool or system can bring value to your business. Build your digital strategy based on your business strategy, and use it as your guiding star.
Not all problems require off-the-shelf solutions. Can you use existing tools to build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or a proof-of-concept? Gather feedback from users and improve on the idea, until you have an effective solution. At this point, evaluate the cost and benefit of investing in a scalable version of this solution to deploy across all users.
Leverage internal resources. Identify roadblock in your digital engagement process, and challenge a team to find a solution. This team should include cross-functional team members such as key users, stakeholders, and people involved in different steps of the workflow. Empower this team to create and test a solution. Provide guidance and methodology, data, and resources, and trust throughout the process.
Create a people-centric change management plan that extends beyond training for end users. All levels of the organization must demonstrate this culture shift, and all users must feel supported and empowered. Acknowledge their concerns and fears and address them openly throughout the process. Share success stories, enlist early adopters to guide their peers, and don’t underestimate the impact of the reluctant-user-turned-champion!
Don’t try to change everything at once. Start with low hanging fruit, seek immediate gains to build momentum and trust within your teams. When tackling big systems and infrastructure, take the time to refine, improve and build upon each successful implementation. Review regularly, and, if necessary, adapt your plan based on your learnings at each milestone.
This last point is the most important one. To succeed in your digital transformation, iterate! Adapt, refine, improve, and build upon prior steps.
My advice to any organization seeking to initiate a digital transformation but overwhelmed by the process: start small - but start now.
I can help, call me.
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