Transforming Data into Action: Using Commercial Analytics to Drive High Performance in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Today, more than ever, pharmaceutical companies are under unprecedented pressure to stand out from the competition in an industry facing pricing pressures, promotional saturation, regulatory scrutiny, reduced product differentiation and increased customer and channel complexity. Some of these companies are finding the means to pull ahead of the pack through leveraging analytics in broader and dramatically more effective ways. They are creating the organizational capability to develop and execute against differentiated insights—what Accenture calls "industrialized analytics."

In an industry that faces the dual paradox of being awash in data but often lacking in insight while also being reliant on data from generally similar sources, industrializing their approach to analytics offers pharmaceutical companies a means to drive competitive differentiation. No longer is it enough to gather and maintain data on customers, products and promotional activities. Industry leaders must consistently be able to not only gather and integrate compelling data, but also analyze it and swiftly use the insights to make informed business decisions. Leaders must be able to do this continuously to ultimately steer their company on the road to high performance.

Accenture research shows that high-performance businesses consistently use information analytics to gain competitive advantage.

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What is an analytic competitor?

A recent study by the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business in Wellesley, Massachusetts, found high-performance businesses were five times more likely than low performers to cite analytics as a key contributor to their competitive edge. "Firms … are outsmarting and outmaneuvering the competition because they have made information analysis and management a distinctive capability, one that is fundamental to their formula for doing business," observes Paul F. Nunes, an executive research fellow at the institute.

Accenture sees these "analytic competitors" as companies whose exceptional market position and superior performance derive directly from their ability to collect, analyze and act on data.

How does a pharmaceutical company become an analytic competitor?

To become an analytic competitor, pharmaceutical companies must industrialize their analytics by developing the processes, systems and technology required to efficiently transform data into action. This requires a systemic means of creating proprietary data, managing and analyzing that data in a way that is relevant to business strategy and, finally, efficiently and repeatedly transforming the analytic results into informed decisions and actions that drive high performance.

Do you compete on analytics?

To gain the full potential of what analytic competitors can derive, pharmaceutical companies must take a different approach and mindset to analytics. The disciplines required to build industrialized analytics capabilities include:

• Senior management sponsorship and commitment, so that analytic capabilities are seen as a key driver of strategic success as well as to provide the support needed to change the organization's capabilities and culture to embed analytics into decision-making processes.
  
  
• Data generation and management, which requires the development of tools, technology and expertise to generate, capture and maintain proprietary data that enables differentiating insights.
  
  
• Analytic skills and methods capable of addressing a broad range of needs, including marketing mix optimization, sales force sizing, call planning, multi-channel marketing, contracting optimization, etc.
  
  
• Management decision support tools to bring analytics closer to decision makers, where the most value can be gained.
  
  
• Reporting templates and tools to streamline your core reporting needs, making insights available to decision makers throughout the organization.
  
  
• Data translation and insight generation to provide the ongoing support that pharmaceutical companies need to translate analytic outputs into actionable insights.

The case for transforming into an analytic competitor

Accenture recently conducted a High Performance Marketing and Sales study where executives from 18 leading pharmaceutical companies were asked for their views on the drivers of commercial performance in the industry.

Analytics was rated as one of the top five factors critical to outperforming the competition in the next three years. Accenture sees two compelling reasons why pharmaceutical companies should transform themselves into analytic competitors:

• The significant profit opportunity: Accenture experience indicates that industrializing the use of analytics in the pharmaceutical industry can improve a company's profitability by 5 to 15 percent.
  
  
• The competitive necessity: Analytics will be a requirement for effectively competing in tomorrow's pharmaceutical market. The ability to link data to insight to action will be a key differentiator for pharmaceuticals

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