SPEAKERS:
Sarah Kelly, Solid Tumour Portfolio Brand Lead, UK & Ireland, Bristol Myers Squibb (Moderator)
Nadia Hergli, VP, Medical Affairs International, Chiesi Group
Eva Perez Casesmeiro, VP, Head Data, Digital IT – US & I Marketing & Customer Engagement, Novartis
Iria Gala, VP, Digital & Customer Engagement, Novo Nordisk
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Customer-centricity remains aspirational language rather than operational reality across pharma organizations
• Coordination failures can create customer spam crises with duplicate touchpoints damaging company reputation
• Customer engagement functions must orchestrate medical, commercial, and market access through transparent editorial calendars
• Small biotech collaboration models offer blueprints where lean structures eliminate silos through forced interdependence
• AI-enabled strategies require technical teams at inception, not implementation, for effective cross-market integration
A key opinion leader called during COVID with a blunt complaint: pharma companies were sending 20 emails per week. Another discovered medical and commercial webinars scheduled on the same day for identical audiences. "Some pharma realized that we had in the same country in the same day for the same customer, a medical webinar in the morning and a commercial webinar in the afternoon," shared at Pharma Customer Engagement Europe 2025. Sarah Kelly warns the consequences extend beyond annoyance: customers receiving uncoordinated touchpoints damage company reputation.
The pharma industry has embraced customer-first language universally in mission statements, strategic plans, and leadership presentations. Yet an uncomfortable truth persists beneath the rhetoric. "I think that the pharma industry has embraced actually this concept, but from a language perspective because in several occasions I feel that it remains still more aspirational than really operational reality," observes Nadia Hergli. Kelly acknowledges the gap between mindset and execution.
What prevents translation from aspiration to operation? Hergli identifies organizational dynamics that undermine collaboration: "Every single department has ego, pride and every single department will say, oh my God, this is the most critical and important role. This goes to a race against visibility, a race about credit actually, which is not in line about commitment to a shared purpose." When medical affairs, commercial, market access, and corporate communications each optimize for functional KPIs rather than customer outcomes, coordination becomes secondary to internal competition.
The tension manifests in practical ways. Medical teams prioritize scientific accuracy and balanced messaging. Commercial teams focus on product differentiation and market share. Market access concentrates on reimbursement positioning. Communications manages corporate reputation. Each function operates with valid priorities, but without orchestration mechanisms, customers experience cacophony rather than harmony.
Coordination Without Control: New Operating Models
How do you align passionate experts who each believe their content is critically important without triggering territorial battles? Novo Nordisk has piloted an orchestration approach that reframes power dynamics.
"We in customer engagement, we are the wedding planners," Gala explains. "We are not the most important people there, but we are the one that make the magic."
The wedding planner model works by creating transparency mechanisms, editorial calendars mapping all planned customer touchpoints across medical, commercial, and market access functions.
When teams visualize their collective impact on specific customer segments, organic coordination often emerges. "When people realize that I am not the decision maker, I'm not going to say which is the message to arrive," Gala notes. "I will only say if you transpond all your strategies to a customer, probably that is not helping any of you." The approach requires governance for inevitable conflicts.
The model benefits smaller brands that typically lack visibility in resource allocation discussions, giving them defined spaces in customer engagement plans. Regional teams gain clarity on global initiatives, enabling them to plan complementary local activities rather than duplicate efforts or compete for customer attention. Eva Perez Casesmeiro reframes the underlying tension: "I don't think we have conflicting interest. I think we have complex processes that have different timelines, but we all want to achieve the same."
This perspective shifts problem-solving from resolving conflicts to streamlining processes: a more tractable challenge requiring coordination tools, clear swim lanes, and transparent communication rather than organizational restructuring. Gala emphasizes starting simple: "Just taking some of the egos out really think that we are solving for our doctors, we are solving for our payers, we're solving for our patients. Put that on the center and then have the right processes."
When Resource Constraints Force Collaboration Magic
Hergli brings unique perspective from navigating both worlds, large pharma companies and small biotechs, including rare disease units within big pharma that operate as hybrids. The contrast proves instructive. "When you work in a biotech actually you work in a very lean structure, very fast paced, very also interlinked and interdependent," she explains. "So actually you have no choice. The magic happens because you have no choice."
Small biotechs achieve natural cross-functional collaboration through structural necessity. With few people per function often reporting to single leaders, a Chief Medical Officer overseeing regulatory, medical information, advocacy, and clinical teams, silos become impossible luxuries. Real-time information flow becomes standard practice because everyone must know everything to execute their interconnected responsibilities.
Big pharma structures, by contrast, create extensive support functions that inadvertently enable siloed optimization. Hergli invokes the Formula One pit stop analogy: tire crews, engineers, and mechanics each perform specialized roles, but success requires precise synchronization around shared outcome metrics, not individual function speed. "At medical affairs, actually we sit at the crossroads between the patient, the science, the healthcare ecosystem and the business," Hergli observes. "And we do see frictions actually. But also, by the way, we do see also some potential when we reconnect around the same purpose."
Kelly reflects on the biotech lesson for larger organizations: "It sounds like when you're smaller in a smaller biotech, that just goes out the window because everyone's just getting the job done. And so how do we drive that in big Pharma?" The answer lies in recreating forced interdependence through process design rather than waiting for structural constraints to mandate collaboration.
Why HCPs Won't Visit Your Content Portal
Pharma companies have invested heavily in HCP portals loaded with medical information, product details, and webinar recordings. Engagement remains disappointing because of a flawed assumption about content value.
"My personal ambition is to go from a push to a pull strategy instead of keep telling customers what we want, give customers what they want in the channel that is their preference and in the times that work better for them," Gala articulates.
The pull strategy requires reimagining portals as service platforms solving daily clinical workflow problems; patient identification algorithms, dosing calculators, CME tracking. These tools make educational content a byproduct of utility rather than the primary offering. When HCPs visit for tools they need regularly, they naturally encounter product information in relevant context.
Channel strategy must also adapt to geographic preferences. Social listening reveals Brazilian digital opinion leaders concentrate on Instagram while Japanese DOLs prefer YouTube, requiring localized approaches rather than one-size-fits-all platforms. "We need to stop willing our customers to come where we want. We need to find them where they are," Gala insists. Meeting customers where they already congregate enables participation in existing conversations rather than forcing adoption of company-preferred channels.
Perez Casesmeiro emphasizes anchoring strategy choices appropriately: "I think we need to remember why we do what we do. Your energy is limited, your resources are limited and you need to deliver for the patients and for the healthcare professionals that you serve. So that's our North Star." The proliferation of attractive technology solutions creates temptation to experiment broadly, but disciplined focus on customer needs prevents resource diffusion.
Technical Teams at Strategy Tables
The path from aspiration to operational reality requires structural changes, not just mindset shifts. Novartis demonstrates one model, integrating commercial functions across its top 11 international markets including culturally diverse Germany, Japan, and China, using AI-enabled technology. The critical success factor? "What you want is a tech and AI enabled strategy," Perez Casesmeiro insists. "So get your technical people there from the beginning, that will make the difference."
The traditional sequential approach, commercial teams develop sophisticated customer engagement strategies, then hand requirements to technical teams for implementation, wastes resources and produces suboptimal solutions. Early technical involvement enables realistic assessment of data availability, system integration requirements across markets, and emerging AI capabilities that could enhance strategic options. Technical teams can identify where automation eliminates manual coordination burdens or where data integration enables personalized customer experiences at scale.
Perez Casesmeiro offers practical advice for those feeling excluded from strategic conversations:
"My team tells me, oh, but we don't have a seat at the table. My advice is to be proactive, go find the table and get a chair and share how our expertise can support shared goals. Maybe they were not aware or did not understand. Maybe you have to make it easier for them."
This partnership model extends beyond technology. "Our customers don't see the different roles that we all represent," Kelly reminds. "Our customers see the company that we represent and the products." Internal functional distinctions become invisible to customers experiencing unified company touchpoints. When medical, commercial, and market access messages arrive uncoordinated, customers perceive organizational dysfunction regardless of the sophisticated rationales justifying each department's independent optimization.
Building Capability for Digital-First Engagement
The shift toward increasingly digital go-to-market models requires systematic capability building across three dimensions. Novo Nordisk started with foundational work: creating a glossary ensuring consistent terminology. "Can we all talk about the same thing in the same manner to ensure that when we're meeting a customer journey means a customer journey and not a pathway, not a digital asset," Gala explains. Without shared vocabulary, cross-functional collaboration stumbles on semantic confusion.
Training extends beyond front-line commercial teams to back-office functions. "This needs to be much more a company mindset," Gala argues. Technology upskilling ensures infrastructure readiness for emerging capabilities. Change management acknowledges the emotional reality of transformation: "I haven't met anyone that says that. Oh, I love not knowing what is going to come. I love not knowing what is going to be my job or how to do it."
Perez Casesmeiro adds perspective on navigating constant change: "The only constant is change. So I don't think there's anything new. The difference here is that it's happening very fast."
From Aspiration to Operation
The transformation journey requires patience and persistence. Organizational change messages need approximately eight repetitions before achieving stickiness. "Someone said that for people, for a message to stick, repeat eight times. So probably do 16," Gala advises. Starting with believers before scaling broadly allows proof points to accumulate. Simple tools, Excel-based editorial calendars, transparent customer journey maps, can drive meaningful coordination improvements without waiting for sophisticated technology solutions.
Hergli shares an example of cross-company collaboration that demonstrates possibilities beyond internal silos. Working with a partner holding commercialization rights in Japan for a Chiesi product, the companies coordinated regulatory filings for a new indication. "We have been helping them from a medical perspective with discussing with the healthcare professional and key opinion leaders, but also from regulatory perspective, from marketing perspective," she explains. The cross-functional, cross-company collaboration succeeded because shared purpose transcended organizational boundaries.
Kelly synthesizes the discussion into actionable principles: have one clear goal, communicate prolifically across functions, ensure everyone has voice in strategic conversations, and use meetings to hold up mirrors when customer-first principles are violated. "I think there are some practical things that we can be doing on a daily basis to achieve this vision," she notes. "We're trying new things and we're having to break down the silos global to regional, regional to local, but also within our functions, within our organization."
The imperative is clear: move from customer-first language to customer-first operations, one coordinated touchpoint at a time. As Perez Casesmeiro reminds, overlapping functions create organizational resilience: "No one operates alone. Shared responsibility is crucial in ensuring we don’t fail. There is too much at the stake for patients and healthcare professionals." The challenge isn't eliminating complexity but learning to navigate it effectively, transforming bureaucratic friction into collaborative strength that ultimately serves patients and healthcare professionals better.
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Discover more on this topic at Pharma USA 2026 (March 17-18, Philadelphia) - North America's largest cross-functional pharma gathering. Visit the website here.
