Challenge
The coronavirus pandemic is threatening public health in China and globally, and creating a complicated business environment. In early February 2020, over 90% of professional businesses in China were closed indefinitely or operating at minimal capacity.
To combat the pandemic, many physicians from major cities like Shanghai were assigned to Wuhan to help manage patient care. Given this disruption and the fact that more than 50 million people were cut off from the outside world in hopes of controlling the contagion, access to physicians became exceedingly difficult for pharmaceutical sales reps.
Many cities rolled out measures to minimize the contagion, such as suspending vehicle traffic, limiting the number of days residents can leave their homes, and closing hospitals. While these measures did help control the spread of the coronavirus, it proved challenging. Those with chronic conditions like diabetes and congestive heart failure are typically required to visit their healthcare provider (HCP) more frequently as prescriptions can only be written for one or two-month periods. Due to the coronavirus crisis, the government eased this requirement, enabling an HCP to write prescriptions for a three-month duration—and even six months in some circumstances.
Approach
In response to this situation, the Aktana team worked with a major pharmaceutical client to quickly enhance two use cases for the company’s diabetes brands. First, within two weeks, insights were deployed to inform reps within each Chinese province about the new policy extending prescription duration. Reps used this information to get critical information to HCPs so they could treat patients.
Second, with access to HCPs severely restricted, Aktana worked closely with the client to more fully leverage non-personal channels, like WeChat.
We’ve jointly completed a great achievement—releasing a headline use case within 2 weeks from requirement to go live. This demonstrates our commitment to quickly adapt to business changes, especially under the current pandemic situation. This truly reflects our close cooperation. Let’s keep this momentum and continue to drive business impact into the future.
Head of SOE, Commercial Execution
Outcomes
Through close collaboration with this client’s brand and commercial teams, Aktana was able to quickly adapt the brand strategy to the volatile market situation by reprioritizing sales activities and optimizing non-personal channels for immediate business value. Specifically, the company was able to host more than 5 web meetings that reached more than 100,000 HCPs.
