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Use of AI in Sales and Marketing - Pharmaceutical and Medical Technology Companies
Additional insights surrounding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in sales and marketing in pharmaceutical and medical technology companies are detailed below. Each insight is supported by more than one source, and they all directly relate back to the sales and marketing force for pharmaceutical and medical technology companies.
- In 2018, only 15% of businesses were incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and only 31% indicated that they planned to use it in 2019. According to Veeva, pharmaceutical sales has the potential to be transformed by AI technology. Directly from the article: "Not only will AI continue to improve sales rep effectiveness with suggestions on their next best action, but it will also become more pervasive and embedded in commercial processes."
- According to Accenture, AI could help workers to use their time more efficiently, increasing labor productivity by up to 40%, which is just the sort of boost that sales reps need.
- Even before the pharmaceutical sales rep meets their customer, the impact of AI can be enormous. Artificial intelligence machine learning can segment customers into very specific areas which would allow sales teams to personalize their activity to a higher degree. For example, in addition to the therapy area, doctors can be segmented based on factors including interest in new drugs, location and availability.
- Novartis decided to use AI to better inform its sales reps what to say during meetings. Novartis’ former pharma chief executive, Paul Hudson, told FiercePharma that the company’s ‘virtual assistant’ will make sure his sales team are “talking about the things that the healthcare professional is absolutely interested in.”
- In 2017, Pfizer Australia partnered with AI provider, Complexica, to simulate sales and marketing strategies and resolve tricky ‘what-if’ scenarios.
- AI could completely change the way inventories are taken at pharmacies. For many sales reps inventory taking can not only be tedious, but it takes away valuable time from interacting with health professionals. Additionally, doing a manual inventory can be riddled with errors. Instead, images could be taken of the pharmacy’s shelves and then analyzed using artificial intelligence to provide useful data about a company’s own drugs, as well as those of their competitors.
- When data is provided to an AI system, pharmaceutical companies, and their sales teams can target the right customers, personalize messaging, and determine the most appropriate type and frequency of interaction.
- This link provides five use cases for AI and machine learning In commercial pharma. The subjects covered are; taking the next best action with customers, dynamic customer segmentation for improved engagement, AI-driven planogram solutions to improve the productivity of field reps, automated data matching and clean up for better insights, and industry benchmarking to improve business performance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, and based on these insights, when AI is in control of some responsibilities that currently lie with sales and marketing reps, they will go into meetings better prepared and equipped with targeted resources, giving them the power and confidence to close more deals and boost sales.