Corona Crisis – Impact on Pharmaceutical Field Forces and Digital / Multi Channel Strategies

A market research study across 63 pharmaceutical companies in D/A/CH (between 22nd of April and 6th of May 2020) unveiled significant challenges and opportunities for pharmaceutical companies.

Results of the industry survey

The results raise some key questions:

  1. To what extend is Pharma really prepared to go “Digital”?
  2. How robust and aligned are the different channels?
  3. Are physicians being approached via preferred channels/ time/ content?
  4. Closed loop in place? How integrated are Advanced Analytics in customer interaction, strategy and planning processes/ tools?
  5. Customers’ needs and wants, reflected going forward? Customers decision making process, changed?

Results of the study are showing a fairly wide spread of readiness. Putting this into the light of respondents expectations, that physicians behavior will change significantly:

  1. Physicians are expected to be even more difficult to be visited by reps
  2. Physicians will be far more determined to define time slots for rep interaction themselves
  3. Multi-Channel acceptance will increase significantly
  4. The changes are here to stay

And the majority of respondents is clearly expecting that Pharma/ physician interaction will not return to the way it used to be prior the crisis and the healthcare systems as such will undergo meaningful changes. Last but not least, a significant number of respondents is expecting field forces to further shrink. To counter act the new reality,  engagement level of the respondents companies seems high, especially upgrading digital strategies is top of the list.

Onepager for the results of Corona industry survey 2020

If you would like to learn more about the study’s results, implications for all stake holders, risks and opportunities associated with it, please contact us:

Martin Walter from SALETELLIGENCE or Björn Komischke from MundiCare.