Challenging times lay ahead for the sales departments in the pharma industry. The COVID-19 pandemic will surely not be the first disruption, as recent geopolitical tensions, and economic turmoil show. Agile and adaptive sales enablement is thus a must-have in the coming months and years.
K. Hariram reports on the OPPI 50th Annual General Meeting held in Mumbai on October 21. The report also features photos from the conference. Other topics covered include the role of emotions in pharma marketing, the importance in preparing much before-hand for the next level of your pharma career and the concept of the "tipping point" and its relevance for pharma marketing.
The digital revolution is the fourth industrial revolution. It changes models, processes and whole public sectors. In many reports you will find that, in terms of digitalization, pharma is just next to the public sector, as least digitalized. Pharma just started late. There are many reasons for that – it is one of the most regulated industries with lots of sensitive data involved and many ethical aspects. But the slowed down digitalization has a lot to do with some subjective reasons. Adopting digital technologies requires changing existing models which requires a different mindset – and this is difficult to achieve. Nowadays, in the situation of a global pandemic, we see that digital communication is not only necessary to be successful but it is a must in order to adapt to the New Normality.
The pharma industry in India is entering a very interesting variant of the post-digital marketing era. The term “post-digital marketing” is used to depict a state where the lines between physical and digital blur considerably for a customer. However, in the context of pharma, this means a state where the industry has stopped questioning the need for digital and has begun to implement very interesting digital marketing initiatives.
One interesting fact: most medical colleges and linked public hospitals in major cities were designed in the British era, with an open ward design. A medical administrator, tongue-in-cheek, put it succinctly: “When these hospitals were designed, nobody would have imagined that doctors will face violence”.
Time for design thinking in public healthcare delivery!