Are Indian Pharma Business Leaders Adopting Digital Transformation?

This is the second part of the interview with Sunil Attavar, CMD of Group Pharma and President of KDPMA

MedicinMan: Going forward, are business leaders looking at digital transformation?

Sunil Attavar: Do we have a choice? We have been laggards in digital adaptation, especially in marketing and customer engagement. Though in manufacturing, R&D, pharmacovigilance and even in production, most of the companies have adopted IT and digital extensively.

The way companies are adopting to digital today is similar to how messaging services became big with the advent of WhatsApp. Unfortunately, this has again been a reactive response to a difficult situation, and I think we are seeing the good and bad within a very short time. The industry is looking at how best we can adopt digital opportunities and actually work on transformation.

This will require a lot of understanding, competency building and support from experts. I believe there is not enough talent internally to drive this change. Our industry, which is usually very inward-looking, will have to look beyond to help ourselves in this process.

While connecting with field staff and L&D activities will be much easier to adopt. Customer management, doctor interaction and outreach will be a more difficult process. However, the industry is known to be resilient in the face of challenges and every company that I speak to is talking about digital as the new way to go in the coming days and years.

MedicinMan: How are companies preparing their commercial teams to build digital capabilities, while at the same time keeping the business running, a bit like, fixing the plane while it flies?

Sunil Attavar: Your answer is in the question itself. We are actually fixing the plane while it flies. Some of us are going to be able to do it well and soar high and while others are going to have a very tough time and may even have crash landings.

We largely have had to implement internal training activities on the fly and I think to a great extent we have done well. The next level was actually training the trainer in terms of teaching the Medical Reps and keeping them engaged, which also has been reasonably successful.

In terms of doctor and customer engagement, companies who have built the right internal capabilities over many years are definitely doing a better job. However, a vast majority of us are learning as we go. We are still understanding the mindset of the doctor being able to accept and digest digital as a medium of engagement and outreach. Here, the doctor and your consumer have the power to switch on and switch off as he chooses. Fundamentally, we still need to understand what the doctor needs.

We will need to find a way to bring together the capabilities of the Medical Rep, the changed scenario of the visit and the ways we can reach doctors into one single strategy rather than looking at the physical and the digital parts separately. Our medical reps will continue to be the core of our promotion, and our digital strategy will need to empower them to not only do a better call but also support their efforts by building processes that will help them beyond the few minutes that they spend in the Clinic. Marketing budgets will have to move away from conventional investments and also think beyond hardware to increase digital engagement.

In the meantime, do join the Digital Excellence Pharma Academy, a partnership between MedicinMan and CredoWeb to facilitate digital adoption in pharma by equipping pharma professionals with the knowledge and skills through a series of 40+ webinars, virtual discussions and other online resources from May 2020 to April 2021.

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