Preventing Silos During Product Launches: Q&A with Dan Rizzo

Dan Rizzo
Global head
Veeva Business Consulting

Dan Rizzo, global head of Veeva Business Consulting, spoke with Pharmaceutical Executive about the state of product launches in the pharma industry. While recent technological advancements have proven to be beneficial in this area, they have also caused new complications that must be addressed.

Pharmaceutical Executive: How have launch strategies changed in the recent past?
Dan Rizzo: Over the last five to seven years, we've recognized that there's a natural relationship between software and data. We've invested more heavily into data products, and we have over well over 50 products across our commercial and R&D footprint. We’ve also developed an understanding around what's possible in terms of technical innovation, both in our software and data. This also relies on our customers and the industry adopting new ways of working and making sense of how connected systems and data should be working together.

In terms of our understanding of the launch environment, it’s become more challenging nowadays. Launches have always been the critical juncture within a commercialized organization to set their success trajectory. How they launch one product will ultimately set the leading indicators to the success of the remainder of the portfolio. If you think about how things stand nowadays, however, it's amazing that newer medicines being discovered and developed today are treating patients that have historically been undertreated or are finding newer or more novel ways to treat patients that have already struggled with different types of cancer or diabetes and have different mechanisms of action.

With this breakthrough in terms of scientific complexity and innovation, it also creates a lot more challenges for pharma to effectively communicate the innovation itself. About 15 years ago, the messaging and communication sales reps were leveraging to communicate the science that the treatments were built on were pretty concise. It was well understood within the medicine and physician community. Now, with these breakthroughs in scientific innovation, it requires a significant amount of education to make sure that physicians feel comfortable with that science and understanding.

Take that and pair that against the fact that physicians don't have as much time as they used to. Their time is waning and the scientific complexity of the newer medicines is increasing. The challenge that Pharma is trying to overcome is how to make those two ends meet.

PE: How is your company adapting to this changing landscape?
Rizzo: Our role as Veeva in terms of partnering with the industry is making sure that our customers have the right types of systems, data, operational practices, and operational efficiency to effectively develop and then ultimately commercialize their drugs.

If you think about where organizations are really struggling, sales, marketing, and medical are the three key functions in terms of playing a role at the time of a launch of the medicine. What we’ve seen over the last 10 years is lots of build-up of advanced technology in the sales silo, and then in the marketing silo, as well as the medical function. What we’ve seen historically is that, by the nature of that additional investment in technology and data, what is created is more knowledge and activity within those functions. So, sales teams are getting better at what they do, and marketing is getting better at what they do. The irony in all of that, however, is that it's actually created disconnected functions. It's firmed up the silos between sales, marketing, and medical even further. What that does is it creates a really poor experience for the physician.

The way that sales is engaging with a position is not informed by the way that marketing may have previously engaged just days prior. If you think about your experience as a customer, you really want to engage with a company and the products that they're discussing and sharing information about in a very connected way.

PE: What role does technology play in this?
Rizzo: This advancement in technology and the buildup of silos between marketing, sales, and medical is creating disconnected teams and processes. We're helping the industry break down those technical barriers by connecting systems and data and creating a way by which all of those folks understand the prior sets of interactions. They're creating the right type of personalized interaction moving forward.

That's a big piece in terms of the systems and the data. We're also helping our customers understand that in the industry, making sure that your processes are no longer being that barrier.

Effectively, what we have is increasing science, complexity, and innovation, which is great for the industry, but waning time and limited information to be shared. Typically, what you'd see is at commercialization, there was a heavy emphasis on the success and readiness of sales and marketing. But what we're seeing in the last few years is the importance of really relying upon the medical affairs organization and the way by which companies investing heavily enough in the way that that scientific understanding is being landed upon the physician community and the key opinion leader community as well.