Omnichannel Orchestration in Pharma: How to Create a Seamless Customer Journey for Patients and HCPs
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly synchronizing their marketing and communication channels in response to growing demands for consistency from patients and healthcare providers (HCPs). Indeed, HCPs alone now expect more personalized levels of engagement across channels, and not just through digital channels.
"To avoid the ‘digital fatigue’ of too many emails or ads that aren’t relevant, [pharma marketing teams] need granular data about the physicians they’re targeting, coupled with robust analytics to help determine what messages to send and how to follow up—along with a consent model designed to meet the needs of both today’s and tomorrow’s legal and regulatory landscape," says a report by Pharmaceutical Executive.
By integrating multiple communication channels into a cohesive strategy, omnichannel approaches enable consistent messaging and tailored interactions. Here, we’ll explore how pharma organizations can achieve omnichannel orchestration to create seamless customer journeys.
What is Omnichannel Orchestration?
Omnichannel orchestration is a strategic approach to the organization’s customer experience (CX) strategy that streamlines how companies engage with stakeholders. In the pharmaceutical industry, stakeholders include healthcare professionals (HCPs), patients, and other players in the healthcare ecosystem.
The most notable aspect of omnichannel orchestration is that it integrates various communication channels and organizational functions. According to a report by McKinsey & Company. "Transforming engagement experiences by adopting analytics in commercial models and engaging stakeholders across multiple channels has become increasingly important. At the same time, conventional access to HCPs has become more challenging."
The overall objective of omnichannel orchestration is to create a seamless, consistent, and personalized experience for all stakeholders.
The Benefits of Omnichannel Orchestration
Omnichannel orchestration in pharma offers significant benefits but also presents unique challenges.
Consistency and Continuity Across Channels
One key advantage is consistency across touchpoints, ensuring patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) receive coherent messaging regardless of the channel they use. This consistency fosters trust and improves the overall customer experience.
Additionally, omnichannel strategies enable continuity in interactions, allowing customers to seamlessly switch between channels without losing context or having to repeat information.
Personalization and Contextualization
Personalization is another crucial benefit of omnichannel orchestration. By leveraging customer data across channels, pharmaceutical companies can tailor their communications and offerings to individual preferences and needs.
In the past, personalization in pharma marketing relied on basic data to create more personable communications for stakeholders. Today, organizations can leverage their data insights to reveal the motivations, pain points, and needs of their audiences, catering to each touchpoint to fulfill them.
This personalized approach can lead to improved engagement and better health outcomes.
The Challenges of Omnichannel Orchestration
However, implementing omnichannel orchestration is not without challenges. One major hurdle is the integration of different software systems.
Systems Integration
Pharmaceutical companies often struggle to create seamless communication between e-commerce platforms, inventory management systems, and order-handling processes. This can lead to lost orders, frustrated customers, and potential damage to the company's reputation.
This is often the result of organizational silos, which present a significant barrier to successful omnichannel implementation. Many pharmaceutical companies have separate teams managing different channels, which can hinder the development and execution of a unified strategy.
Operational Complexity
Coordinating multiple channels and managing inventory across various distribution points is another complex challenge. This can lead to stock imbalances and affect order fulfillment efficiency, potentially resulting in dissatisfied customers.
Additionally, managing returns and reverse logistics across different channels can be particularly complicated in the pharmaceutical industry, where strict regulations often apply.
Data Security and Privacy
Finally, data security and privacy concerns also pose significant challenges in omnichannel orchestration. With sensitive patient information flowing across multiple channels, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations while maintaining public trust is crucial.
A data breach could result in legal consequences and severe reputational damages.
Key Components of Omnichannel Orchestration in Pharma
Omnichannel orchestration in the pharmaceutical industry requires several key components to create a seamless and effective customer journey. These components work together to ensure consistent messaging, personalized experiences, and improved engagement across various touchpoints.
Here's a breakdown of the essential elements:
- Data Integration and Management: Centralizing data from multiple sources to create a unified view of customers, enabling personalized interactions and informed decision-making.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Vital repositories for storing and managing information about physician preferences, enabling hyper-personalization of experiences.
- Marketing Automation Tools: Platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud empower omnichannel orchestration managers to track physician progress along the knowledge exchange journey.
- Content Management Systems: Centralized platforms for creating, storing, and distributing consistent, compliant content across various channels.
- Analytics and Reporting Tools: Solutions that provide insights into campaign performance, customer behavior, and engagement metrics to optimize strategies.
- Compliance and Regulatory Management: Systems to ensure all communications and interactions adhere to industry regulations and guidelines.
- Digital Engagement Platforms: Tools for virtual advisory boards, interactive educational webinars, and other digital touchpoints that facilitate scientific exchange.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: Technologies that analyze data to predict customer behavior and personalize interactions at scale.
- Cross-functional Collaboration Tools: Platforms that break down silos between commercial and medical affairs teams, fostering seamless information flow and visibility into engagement strategies. These can include centralized data lakes and data management tools.
- Interoperable Technology Stack: Ensuring that various tools and platforms can communicate and share data effectively, unlocking the full potential of omnichannel orchestration.
By integrating these components, pharmaceutical companies can create a robust omnichannel orchestration framework that delivers value across multiple channels with precision and efficiency. This approach enables real-time adaptability to market dynamics, regulatory changes, and emerging scientific evidence, allowing companies to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Strategies for Successful Omnichannel Orchestration in Pharma
To implement a successful omnichannel strategy, pharmaceutical companies should focus on developing a deep understanding of customer preferences through data analysis and market research. This insight informs the creation of personalized content that resonates with target audiences.
Prioritizing the integration of digital and traditional channels is crucial, aligning online and offline touchpoints for a seamless experience.
Technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning can also play a vital role in omnichannel orchestration. These technologies analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and predict customer behavior. Given the pharma industry’s penchant for collecting vast data sets, AI is becoming a critical tool for streamlining insights generation in an omnichannel sales and marketing environment.
Additionally, pharma companies should consider the suggestions of omnichannel experts for strategy advice and learn from the examples of other organizations in their industry.
McKinsey & Company Suggests Leveraging DataOps
According to a report by McKinsey & Company, the key to overcoming many of the challenges associated with omnichannel and systems orchestration is to take "a DataOps approach" to orchestration. This is a holistic process to improve data management by leveraging technology and processes across the organization.
More specifically:
"Cross-functional teams build a data stack that can integrate data from multiple sources. They then define standards for data governance and ownership, access management, development priorities, and data products," the report says.
GSK Prioritizes Change Agility
Pharma organizations are already accustomed to making frequent releases of minimal viable products (MVPs) to generate value. MVPs themselves are "big accelerators for omnichannel initiatives," says a report by Pharma Marketing Network.
In a quote cited by the report, Yael Jones, Senior Director of Digital Marketing at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said the following about achieving agility through a fast-fail strategy:
"[Companies] need to get much more disciplined around experimentation. When you launch an omnichannel initiative where there is so much to learn, it’s especially important to proactively ask: What’s the hypothesis, what do you aim to learn, what does success look like? Then you see whether your hypothesis was proved or disproved; and if disproved, it’s not a fail—because you’ve learned and will optimize as a result."
Other Pharma Leaders Recommend Taking a Unified Approach
Breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional communication is critical to achieving omnichannel orchestration. However, leaders from Pfizer, Novartis, and AstraZeneca suggested at a panel discussion that companies should take a more holistic and unified approach when organizing themselves internally, as well as addressing customers themselves.
Instead of treating different teams and data streams as separate entities, they advocate placing the customer at the center of the strategy.
For example, Pfizer’s Digital Transformation Lead for I&I Franchise, Michael Rowbotham, highlighted the need for marketers to work cohesively. He compared the approach to musicians harmonizing in an orchestra. Each function plays its part, but they should all contribute to a larger, coordinated effort.
Additionally, these leaders recommend focusing heavily on simplifying processes and strategies.
An executive from AstraZeneca emphasized the critical need to eliminate complexity and focus on clarity in omnichannel initiatives. By drastically simplifying approaches, companies can ensure alignment across teams and better leverage data to provide seamless and consistent customer experiences.
Enhancing Patient and HCP Experiences with Omnichannel
Implementing a successful omnichannel strategy in pharma requires a holistic approach that prioritizes seamless customer experiences across all touchpoints. By integrating data, technology, and personalized content, pharmaceutical companies can create unified journeys that meet the evolving needs of both patients and healthcare professionals.
To achieve true omnichannel success, pharma companies must focus on breaking down organizational silos, leveraging insights generated from data, and continuously adapting to changing customer preferences across channels.
To learn more about how your organization can achieve omnichannel success, don’t miss Future Pharma 2025. It’s taking place from June 24th to 26th at Westin Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts.
Download the agenda and get tickets for the event today.