Gilead Sciences

When we embarked upon this omnichannel transformation journey, many years ago, the leaders at Gilead often asked ourselves “What is the connection between technology, platforms and our mission to improve lives?” When you talk about technology and transformation—it’s very easy to get lost in the tech itself, but to really see the impact of the work on our people and customers, I’ve been interested in trying to measure the real human impact of our omnichannel evolution.

Our omnichannel journey—like that of many biopharmaceutical companies—has been an eye-opening one with many learnings and key milestones along the way. In no way, do we claim to have it figured out, as this road is constantly moving alongside industry, patient and even public health trends. However, we continue to share knowledge and insights on our learnings and best practices in the path we have traveled so far. Here are a few of our key insights we have gathered along the way.

Making changes today for the customer demands of tomorrow

The pandemic has provided further reasons to accelerate our omnichannel strategies, with reduced in-person interactions with healthcare professionals (HCPs) becoming the norm globally. This was the case not only for pharma but other industries as well. Continuing to foster meaningful relationships while sharing valuable and updated information with our customers was critical during this time, but doing so in a smart, data-driven way would also be what would define our approach.

For example, we piloted an omnichannel customer engagement plan for a specific disease area and medicine in Korea. In that pilot, we were able to do a full engagement of a cohort of HCPs, taking them through a 10-week omnichannel journey and measuring their responses to different channels, moving them to other sources of information based on their interactions. Through this shared experience, we were able to learn precisely—from the number of webinars they were attending to the content of emails they were opening what was working, at what time, and what platforms.

Post-Activity feedback revealed 28 percent had an increased understanding of the benefits of the treatment and 46 percent showed positive micro-behavior shifts when exposed to an omnichannel rather than a traditional strategy. We also learned more about HCPs who did not respond to many of the omnichannel activities. The insights helped us reflect on specific areas we need to refine or rethink to address certain preferences of HCPs so that we are delivering effective communications that grows with our customer. The experience not only helped us create sharper engagement strategies, but it led us to important discussions around how we could do more.

It's important for us to do our homework and provide meaningful relationships based on HCPs' needs and not just what we, as an organization, want to try to give them. One of the things that we also learned is that HCPs are complaining of digital fatigue. That is something we have to be careful of because the whole industry is jumping onto hybrid models of communication, and there is so much information now available it is clear that we need to be more mindful and data-driven than ever before.

Transformation needs to be driven by every level of the organization

I truly cannot stress enough that for omnichannel transformation to work, it needs to be adopted at every level of the organization as a strategic goal and priority. One of the big things that we’ve been focused on in the early years, and will continue to do, is getting everyone on board to understand why we take this approach and how it benefits the work that they do.

Knowledge sharing is important. In the early days, there were a lot of misconceptions, and it has taken some time to really reinforce that omnichannel is more than digital. It's not there to replace human touch. It's there to complement. Putting the representative’s experience at the center of omnichannel has been one thing that has been really valuable to the change management at all levels, making sure that omnichannel strategy is not the responsibility of the digital manager that has been hired but those who are leading the relationships and encouraging them to think about how omnichannel will complement the existing ways of working and provide more effectiveness. I think as we do more, as we share the results, that will also increase people's confidence.

"Setting quantifiable goals for omnichannel strategy based on our deeper understanding of customers will help us move smarter as teams."

Measurement and benchmarks will become really important in our work. We have been trying to obtain external benchmarks of what the industry is doing outside of Gilead, just to show that we are not alone. We have conducted market research asking doctors about their experiences so that we can also set realistic and insight-driven goals for improving customer engagement in each country. Setting quantifiable goals for omnichannel strategy based on our deeper understanding of customers will help us move smarter as teams. 

Looking forward: the road ahead

As an industry, we have only scratched the surface on our omnichannel evolution. As I look ahead, there are several big areas of development that I am watching closely. Firstly, the continued integration of AI and cloud technologies to house all our data and help us better understand the activities from our interactions, how customers are engaging, and the next best thing to do. It will be interesting to see how we incorporate these capabilities into our marketing automation with face-to-face interactions to drive a truly differentiated experience.

Secondly, we still have a way to go in refining our IT infrastructure to handle the technology and the volume of data that we are seeing in an efficient manner. This is an area that our industry is developing and investing in through partnerships.

Finally, the legal and regulatory aspects which govern this space are changing to keep pace. Specifically, I have witnessed over the last few years the different provisions by country which have shaped the way that we can engage and interact with customers. I think that there is still some thinking to be done on how we can further develop and harmonize these provisions as a region to create a more unified way of working. This will likely take collaboration between industry and public sector and is a space to watch.

The strides that we have made as an industry to improve our engagement and continue to share scientific knowledge despite the challenges of the pandemic have been remarkable. I am heartened by the development of Gilead’s own omnichannel evolution and look forward to seeing where we go next in improving engagement to impact lives around the world and creating possible.