Since the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare providers (HCPs), healthcare organizations (HCOs) and other stakeholders in the medical and life sciences industries have shifted the way they do business. Telehealth appointments, virtual meetings, online collaboration tools and other digital methods of sharing information have helped HCPs make more of their time, yet life science vendors are failing to adapt to this new way of doing business.

Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions were designed to automate the sales process and improve communications between sellers and customers. The goal was to save the sales team time, better monitor the sales pipeline and ultimately drive more sales. Yet the adoption of digital technologies and demand for a more personalized approach is forcing sales relationships to take place on customers’ terms.

Staying competitive in this new customer-focused business environment requires not only adopting new technologies, but also making a cultural shift. Data democratization, breaking down silos, and personalizing customer experiences are vital to creating valuable relationships and ensuring the long-term success of the organization.

In the 2022 Gartner® Market Guide for CRM in Life Sciences, Gartner VP Analyst Animesh Gandhi surveyed the current CRM market, identifying key successes and the critical functionality required to drive business effectiveness and agility. Here’s our perspective on the five Key Findings from the Market Guide that companies should consider when evaluating a platform that can drive commercial success on this new playing field.

1. Get everyone on the same page

The legacy of the life sciences CRMs is as a sales team tool. As Gartner notes in its Market Guide, “The traditional definition of CRM in life sciences has been synonymous with sales force automation platforms. This definition needs to expand and encompass customer service and marketing automation tools to effectively orchestrate customers’ journeys across multiple interaction points.”

Across industries, platform providers have recognized the vast benefits of integrating the work of various departments under one roof. To accomplish this in the life sciences, organizations have to overcome the challenge of dealing with monolithic systems and requirements for new tools and architectures. In our view, organizations must enable cross-department data sharing and true collaboration, which requires a cultural shift.  Companies must transition from a culture where different departments have their own CRM, data storage and processes to a system of data democratization, giving your teams the data they need to provide better customer experiences and uncover new insights.

Think of aligning data across marketing, sales, and compliance as another step in your digital transformation. Not only are you documenting the various digital touchpoints of customer interactions, but you’re also integrating them into a larger, customer-focused CRM that empowers the customer to become more proactive in their own experience. We believe using customer data and predictive AI tools lets teams provide more value-added content and interactions when and how the HCP prefers them. These new tools and technologies open the door to a different sales and marketing delivery model, one where life science organizations are a trusted guide, rather than a disruption.

2. Modernize your architecture

The shift to fully integrating a modern CRM includes IT as well. An advanced CRM requires an architecture that can keep up with new capabilities, but the reality is too many life sciences companies today are lagging behind.

According to the Gartner Market Guide, “Life science organizations find it difficult to adopt new digital engagement channels, such as direct messaging and seamless video conferencing, due to hardened business processes and monolithic systems.”

What does a modern architecture that is purpose-built for a customer-focused model look like? IT teams should seek a composable digital life science platform (DLSP) architecture that can manage the massive amount of data from multiple external sources and make it available to the appropriate people internally. Data and integration solutions must also be scalable to meet the needs of omnichannel customer engagements and provide business agility when new opportunities arise.

The goal is to better manage, access and analyze your data, employing data management and data integrity best practices. From our perspective, the more transparent and open the environment, the easier integration and implementation will be.

3. Meet HCPs where they are

According to Gartner, “Healthcare provider (HCP) expectations have shifted, with many finding digital information delivery to be more effective and increasingly preferable.” The customers you interact with are busy and want to be handed the exact information they need when they’re ready to consume it. Understanding how to meet this demand requires the right content, the right tools and the right customer data.

Rivalries and silos between departments are hardened within the culture of some organizations but only stand to hold back innovation and more personalized customer experiences. When medical affairs, marketing, sales and customer-focused teams maintain their own data and processes, it creates blind spots that prevent teams from delivering the kind of customer interactions HCPs seek. Without key sales data, marketing teams can’t fully understand the success of their messaging and materials, for example. We believe fostering a customer-focused culture means enabling better collaboration.

By adopting a modern CRM, the data from one customer interaction better informs the next. It’s also in our view that it helps address the challenges of current CRM automation, where generic, impersonal emails and sales pitches erode trust. The result is a customer-centric approach that delivers a seamless experience across multiple engagement channels. As Gartner envisions in the Market Guide, “Digital ‘concierge representatives’ won’t be asked to drop off samples or engage in two-minute elevator speeches, but rather, will invest significant time nurturing long-term relationships with their customers.”

4. How to integrate Advanced AI into organizational systems

The Market Guide states, “Predictive analytics tools for field teams continue to gain prominence, but are offered through stand-alone applications or isolated CRM modules, rather than being incorporated in users’ natural workflow.” We’ve all seen how the power of generative AI has spurred incredible innovation within life sciences organizations. Yet the potential goes far beyond research and development. We believe generative AI capabilities within a modern CRM are poised to make sellers more informed, marketers more insightful and organizations more attuned to the ends of their customers.

However, fully integrating AI must go beyond adding stand-alone tools on top of existing systems. It calls upon organizations to use new tools, create new processes, and explore an entirely new way of doing business.

When building a long-term AI strategy, we think organizations should take a systematic approach. The goal is not just automation and insights, but ensuring the sources of AI have been well-documented to maintain data integrity, provide transparency and sustainability. When you can trust your data, advanced AI can deliver truly personalized, actionable recommendations, such as customized, relevant content and which touchpoints are best for follow-ups.

5. Minimize risk with the right regulatory capabilities

Advanced CRM holds incredible potential through the value of customer data. But these new capabilities also require responsibility. Stringently protecting customer data is an ethical duty and, in many markets, a regulatory requirement. Yet not all CRM are up to the task of managing this complex regulatory landscape. As the Gartner Market Guide notes, “Life science organizations with global commercial operations face increasing challenges and risks arising from a combination of security, privacy and data residency regulations. These include California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL).”

We believe life sciences organizations must have the agility to keep up with changes within long-standing regulations. They also must be able to quickly adjust to regulations in markets where none previously existed. For example, organizations hoping to do business in China must now adapt to stringent new data security and privacy regulations around personal information, cross-border data transfer and other data. Companies once sought a single global approach to CRM; however, this approach fails to meet today’s regulatory compliance challenges.

Addressing challenges and identifying new opportunities

Your organization has no doubt observed the rapid technological shift in recent years, and it may have sparked concern of being left behind. Although life science organizations have some catching up to do, we’ve seen modernized CRM empower teams across the organization to provide smarter and better aligned customer service. It fosters collaboration and helps spur changes, such as optimizing sales models and more fully integrating data.

Ultimately, advanced CRM systems are about seeing the customer as a partner, using data and new capabilities to provide the experience HCPs are looking for, and creating new, long-lasting business relationships.

More stakeholders, more channels and higher expectations require life science companies to take a smarter approach to customer engagement. Meet HCPs on their terms with seamless, personalized engagements that fulfill changing needs and improve results. IQVIA OCE bridges intelligence with experience for HCPs and commercial teams alike. Intelligent connections across the commercial ecosystem improve collaboration across teams, drive HCP-centric experiences, and enable user-centric smart workflows for better decision making. To learn more, please contact us today.

Note: Blog is derived from Gartner Market Guide for CRM in Life Sciences

¹Gartner, Market Guide for CRM in Life Sciences, Animesh Gandhi, 7 November 2022.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.