As pharmaceutical companies attempt to become more nimble and decisive, senior leadership will need timely access to relevant data, insight and recommendations. Brands can no longer wait months for campaign activity reports or ROI analysis. Senior product managers feel the pressure to make mid-game go/no go decisions and to reallocate marketing budgets even before a campaign is complete. This urgency requires a level of real-time access to data, ad agency transparency and partner collaboration that is still uncommon in this industry.
The attention that “big data” has been getting is warranted, but to date, most of the large data sets still reside in their respective marketing silos. The coming year will begin to see integration of marketing and response data across agencies, data partners, and internal IT, offering product managers and their bosses a real-time insight sandbox. This will require a new reporting framework that will increase transparency and accountability both internally and externally and give managers the ability to make smarter and more timely investment decisions.
Think this is a discretionary, nice-to-have capability? Think again. The music has changed. The reality of health care reform has set into motion a myriad of changes that will have a major impact on pharma, especially for those companies not nimble enough to dance to the new soundtrack.