This year’s European Veeva Commercial and Medical Summit welcomed more than 1,300 professionals from the life sciences industry in Barcelona. At the event, Gerhard Arnhofer, VP, Head of Integrated Multichannel Marketing at Bayer, and David Ehrlich, CEO of Aktana, presented how Bayer is partnering with Aktana to incorporate AI across commercial operations to create greater impact through personalized experiences for healthcare providers (HCPs).
Gerhard and David discussed how intelligent engagement, fueled by AI, is transforming the traditional commercial model to become more dynamic, integrated, and data-based. According to the pair, one of the keys underpinning the notion of intelligent engagement is bringing strategy and execution together. In order to do this successfully, organizations must think through their brand strategy in deep detail and consider how suggestions and insights feel to users in the field and how intelligence is incorporated into non-personal channels. Together, Bayer and Aktana are not just connecting AI technologies but enabling change management, governance, and new workflows across the organization.
Gerhard shared that this initiative was initially met with skepticism but Bayer recognized the need to leave behind the traditional way of managing projects. Aktana and Bayer worked together in a step-wise approach through a process that not only included turning on suggestions and insights, but also how to effectively incorporate AI to connect teams, how to write suggestions for maximum engagement, and how to actively monitor the technology and user teams.
Gerhard and David discussed how organizations should think about intelligent engagement programs and delivered a step-by-step approach:
- Start with strategy: Organizations go through a lot of work to develop a commercial strategy, and that’s where we start. Both brand and sales teams are included to help develop and enrich strategy.
- Think about tactics: To drive sales and marketing execution, think about how tactics can mirror the way salespeople think by examining their natural routing, past history, HCP behavior, and more.
- Examine your audience: To optimize HCP engagement plans, look at all data to educate strategy and operationalize it.
- Measure impact: This process is not something you can implement, deploy, walk away from and look for results a year later. By monitoring success and reviewing the data on an ongoing basis, you can continuously improve your AI over time.
Later in the evening, we enjoyed the opportunity to sponsor the Veeva After Hours party and had a productive second day of networking, learning, and engaging conversations at our booth around the customer-centered commercial model.
Thank you to Gerhard and the Bayer team for sharing their experiences and successes with Aktana and the Veeva Summit audience. Thanks, as always, to Veeva for putting on a great European Summit. For more details on customer-centered experiences fueled by AI and intelligent engagement, view the slide deck from our Veeva European Summit presentation.