Seven CRM trends from Europe: Life Sciences sector.

By Daragh Henchy.

It is great to be back working with The Customer Experience Company. Over the past 2 ½ years I have been in Europe, where have been some exciting developments in CRM. I had the great fortune to work exclusively in the Life Sciences sector where some very interesting developments have been taking place, relevant both for that industry and applicable to other industries.

Traditional CRM had and still has great benefit, but most deployment efforts still fall short with regard to the main purpose – managing the customer relationship more profitably. However, over the last 2-3 years the convergence of various CRM, marketing, CE strategy and technology  elements have converged to the point that the customer experience can be affected across multiple channels in a co-ordinated fashion, and that the knowledge captured can be used to optimise further experiences.

There is a term for this. This is Closed Loop Marketing, or CLM. 

CLM is a set of processes used to improve the effectiveness of sales and marketing interactions a company has with its clients across channels. CLM provides companies with the ability to track and measure the effectiveness of their interactions on both individual and aggregated levels. When successfully implemented, it enables companies to target their audience more effectively (by message and channel), adjust message content by leveraging the real-time feedback that is being captured and provide personalised content and/or messaging to better meet the specific needs and interests of their clients.

Within the Life Sciences sector CLM is also characterised by the specifics of the product or drug type, guided by the legal and privacy requirements of the region. Most importantly, CLM focuses on, and captures the actual customer interaction, the moment in time where the customer is directly interacting with the brand or employee, and mines this information for improvement. This contrasts with after-the-fact reporting that is prone to error, mis-interpretation, and time lags currently experienced.

In many ways CLM revisits the original promise of CRM, but with industry consolidation, advances in technology, and greater consistency in processes, the ability to capture the customer experience and act on it, in a seriously competitive sense is closer than ever.

So what’s happening in European CLM at the moment?

1. Most Pharma organisations are undertaking, or have recently completed a  2^nd wave of CRM (re) implementation, which are:

• Business Driven, with business owners
• Engaged with offshore technical partnership
• Scoped to target  20 -35 Affiliates

2. Pharma companies target success of their CRM implementations mainly by:

• Business Alignment
• User Acceptance
• Data Quality 
• Data Integration
• ROI

3. CRM as a true business strategy is still only partially implemented in most companies:

• Segmentation models  use basic information to generate 3-5 tiers
• Cycle Planning still occurs over a 6 month period
• Current usage of CRM systems is more focused on Territory Management and the possibilities of the systems are only partially used
• Only few companies have successfully implemented operational and comparable KPI’s across countries

4. The Industry is in a transition, implementing new commercial models around:

• Account Management
• Network Management (e.g. KOL/Market Access/etc.)
• Multichannel CLM

5. Whilst most Pharma companies have implemented a corporate CRM strategy with a globally led central team, local operational units have differing levels of liberty:

• A few companies have started to enforce global Technologies, with differentiation on the market potential of the different countries / regions
• CRM re-launches (with or without replacing current applications) are monitored in several different countries at once

6. Companies are evaluating Outsourcing or SaaS solutions as an option to increase ROI of CRM related Applications

• I found two instances of large Pharma companies seeking to replace their current CRM technology with a SaaS solution.

7. Companies intend to integrate new functionalities (esp. Siebel customers) with other solutions (CME/ Portals/ eDetailing/Network Visualization/ ICM/ BI/ etc). Many companies have implemented CLM / eDetailing pilots, but have not changed their underlying processes. 

For more information please contact us on 02 8071 4550 or enquiries@customerexperience.com.au.