Commercial IT Leaders and the Shift from Enabling to Owning Business Outcomes

– By Vivek Ghai

The life sciences industry is undergoing a major change, driven by a relentless pursuit of customer centricity and the power of personalization at scale. In this dynamic landscape, pharma leaders face a mounting challenge: maximizing the effectiveness of their pharma launches amidst an evolving regulatory environment. The recent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) further complicates the already intricate process of reimbursement strategies and market access.

These factors, combined with evolving patient expectations, complex needs of healthcare professionals (HCPs), and an ever-growing data landscape, are forcing pharma leaders to rethink their strategies. The old playbook, built around static processes and limited personalization, no longer meets market demands. But these challenges also present opportunities. Technologies like Generative AI and hyper-automated AI, alongside advancements in data capabilities, offer possibilities to streamline processes and improve effectiveness across the pharma value chain, from drug development to commercialization.

In light of these challenges, commercial leaders require strategic partners who can facilitate transformation rapidly and drive impact at scale. This is where commercial IT leaders are taking on a bigger role, emerging as crucial partners to the success of life sciences organizations. They are shifting their focus from enabling to owning business outcomes.

Let’s explore how this is happening in more detail.

Leading the Digital Charge: Today’s commercial IT leaders are shifting from passive maintainers to proactive architects of business success. They have shifted their focus from traditional metrics like uptime and service levels to business-aligned objectives like customer acquisition cost, product development, revenue growth, and, most importantly, enhancing the customer experience.

This includes metrics like time to market for new drugs, number of prescriptions filled, successful patient onboarding, and improved adherence to treatment plans. This shift is evident in their approach to investments, evaluating ROI and angible contributions to overall business goals. A recent Gartner survey reinforces this, with 42% of CIOs seeking growth within the current scope of their role and 43% aspiring to expand their scope with additional leadership responsibilities.

Unlocking the Power of Data: Commercial IT leaders are increasingly harnessing the power of modern data systems capable of ingesting structured and unstructured data to derive insights that inform commercial strategy and drive innovation. Their expertise is no longer limited to traditional forecasting, market intelligence, and market mix modeling. With a strong data foundation and processing pipelines, commercial IT leaders can leverage modern analytics to guide marketing, sales, and customer engagement initiatives. They are now at the forefront of adopting advanced analytics such as:

• Omnichannel Analytics: Providing a holistic view of customer interactions across all touchpoints
• Patient Analytics: Deepening understanding of patient needs and behaviors
• Predictive Analytics Powered by AI and ML: Forecasting future outcomes and enabling proactive decision-making
• Next-best-experience (NBX) Recommendations Powered by Explainable AI: Providing personalized guidance for optimizing customer interactions with information about the underlying reasons driving the recommendations And many more

Generative AI has also become part of the commercial IT leader’s toolkit. They are using Generative AI to enable innovative use cases in collaboration with business units such as:

• Social Listening: Monitoring and analyzing online conversations to understand brand perception
• Research Insights: Extracting valuable insights from research data
• Rep and Marketer Copilot: Empowering sales reps and marketing teams with real-time recommendations and support
• Content Value Chain: Streamlining content creation, transcreation, approval, and tagging for different markets
• LLM Chatbots: Implementing advanced conversational AI for personalized interactions

Delivering Measurable Value: A recent survey by Indegene underscores the significance of innovation alongside commercial IT’s impact on operating costs. 55% of commercial IT leaders highlighted the influence of innovation and continuous improvement as a crucial measure of their function’s success.

This emphasis extends to contribution to revenue growth (52%), time to market of commercial content and campaigns (52%), and customer satisfaction (47%). These data points further emphasize the evolution of the commercial IT function and its impact on commercial success.

Designing Customer-centric Solutions: The rise of hybrid engagement models in recent years, with digital interactions playing a critical role, is also influencing commercial IT leaders’ approach to technology investments. They see an opportunity to play a more pivotal role in driving customer engagement.

The Indegene survey showed that 51% of leaders prioritize tech investments that can help them enhance customer experience, and 44% prioritize tech investments that can help them generate new revenue streams. This shift signifies a deep understanding on the part of these leaders that technology should not dictate the customer journey but rather adapt and enhance it to cater to individual needs and preferences.

Fostering Collaboration Through Technology: As more commercial IT leaders adopt a growth mindset, collaboration between business and IT becomes crucial for success. A strong partnership can deliver personalized experiences at scale for the patients, HCPs, payers, and other stakeholders. Business and IT working together fosters a culture of agility and responsiveness, ensuring personalized experiences reach customers quickly and effectively in today’s competitive landscape.

However, data reveals a concerning gap, with only 25% of cases involving joint decision-making between IT and business units. This necessitates a paradigm shift; business and IT need to work together better to create an IT strategy focused on the business. This collaboration is crucial for achieving operational excellence and can lead to faster product launches, improved patient experiences, and increased revenue.

Building a Future-ready Workforce: The shift to hybrid and remote work models presents additional challenges in attracting and retaining qualified IT professionals with expertise in the life sciences domain. Attracting and retaining top IT talent becomes an essential step in realizing the transformative potential of technology.

Commercial IT leaders are recognizing the importance of building a futureready workforce. However, there is still work to be done as only 25% of these leaders rate their organizations’ talent engagement as “Excellent,” underscoring the need for engaging, upskilling, and reskilling existing teams.

Aligning Strategy and Resources for Funding theFuture: Establishing a dynamic budgeting process that aligns with the evolving IT landscape is also critical. While the rise of Generative AI and advancements in machine learning and automation offer tremendous opportunities, budgets remain finite, with only 54% reporting overall budget increases. Therefore, collaboration with business units is crucial to identify specific use cases that deliver tangible outcomes.

Implementing key performance indicators (KPIs) for IT investments and conducting regular reviews and assessments ensure alignment with organizational objectives and strengthen decision-making. The rise of the commercial IT leader is a game-changer for the life sciences industry. By embracing digital transformation, fostering collaboration, and investing in talent development, these leaders can shed their “service provider” identity and emerge as strategic partners, driving innovation and growth for their organizations.