Jane Urban, Vice President of Customer Engagement and Operations at Otsuka, has spent two years building an integrated operations function designed to transform how the mid-sized pharmaceutical company engages with healthcare professionals. Her journey reveals valuable lessons about change management, cross-functional collaboration, and adapting to the evolving needs of modern clinicians.
Building an Integrated Operations Function
Urban joined Otsuka two years ago to create a new customer engagement and operations function, bringing together previously disparate elements of the organization. "My function was kind of a Lego block conglomeration of different parts of the organization," she explains. "We started with the data and analytics space and trying to make sure we had all the data we needed, but coupling that with all of the operational pieces as well, and then finally building a digital capability with an Omnichannel center of Excellence."
The early phase focused on identifying necessary functions, capabilities, and recruiting talent while maintaining respect for the organization's existing culture. Otsuka's Japanese heritage and mission of "wanting to be in business forever" provided a meaningful framework for sustainable transformation.
"Given that we want to be in business forever and that it needs to be a sustainable change, how do we do that while we still bring along the people that are working so hard and have been part of the legacy of success for Otsuka? It's a delicate balance."
Urban reflects.
Navigating Change Management Challenges
One of the most significant challenges Urban faced was managing resistance to change. "The hardest thing about all of this is the notion that you're going, as a leader, to have to make some decisions that people aren't going to like," she acknowledges. "Standing true to the notion that ultimately, on the other side of those tough decisions, there's a better future for the organization and maybe even for those individuals who are impacted."
This human element of transformation represents what Urban calls "the less glamorous, less sexy part of the journey" – the difference between "the Instagram version versus the real-life version" of organizational change.
Bridging Medical, Commercial and Brand Divisions
Urban's approach to breaking down silos starts with focusing on the customer experience. "A big part of it is really starting with our customer as the first point," she explains. "How do we think about that person's experience? The things that are making them frustrated or standing in their way."
This customer-centric approach helps align disparate teams around common goals. "When you have that many kinds of field-based personnel in your organization, I really love the idea of taking the barriers and the problems and looking at those first and then trying to back from there and see what we need," Urban says.
"Getting people to talk to each other sometimes is like step zero of the whole process. And a lot of times we realize there's a lot more we have in common in our goals than we have different."
Leveraging Data for Meaningful Engagement
Data serves as the foundation for Otsuka's customer engagement strategy, particularly the data collected from interactions and activities. "We kind of passively collect a lot of that data from our CRM system or from other platforms," Urban notes. "Those pieces of data allow us to stitch together an internal picture of all the different people in Otsuka that are talking to a given clinician."
This comprehensive view enables more meaningful interactions. "One of my pet peeves is I really don't think clinicians should have to figure out our org chart," Urban says. "Whoever shows up at their door should have at least some cursory knowledge to be able to say, 'I know what's been happening in your office over the last few weeks, I know where we're headed, I know some events that have happened recently and I can speak to those and have a really meaningful and value-add conversation live in the moment.'"
Adapting to the Modern Clinician
Today's healthcare professionals are increasingly digital natives, requiring pharmaceutical companies to evolve their engagement strategies. "In 2014 or so, people who are practicing medicine in the United States became more digital native than not in the population of clinicians," Urban explains. "If we continue to offer up the same sort of services and support that we've offered for the last 30, 40 years and expect that to be just as impactful as it was when it was sort of novel, I think that's where we maybe are missing the boat."
This evolution is particularly important as access to physicians becomes more limited. "We have not even close come back on frequency," Urban notes, referring to post-COVID engagement levels. "The number of times we get in front of these clinicians nowadays is going to be a lot fewer per time period. So each one of those conversations needs to be that much better and that much more planned out and that much more thoughtful."
Innovation Through Flawless Execution
Rather than pursuing flashy innovations, Urban emphasizes the importance of executing fundamentals exceptionally well. Otsuka's "decision engine" exemplifies this approach, running monthly analyses of clinician environments and incorporating weekly data updates to provide field representatives with timely, relevant information.
"We have what we call our decision engine, which is running on a monthly basis a full kind of relook at the environment of clinicians that we have and what's going on in their world," Urban explains. "That context can help give a much more timely set of information to our salesperson to engage with that clinician based on relatively recent information."
Looking to the Future
Looking ahead, Urban sees several areas poised for evolution. Data analytics and insights will remain fundamental, but with greater emphasis on "analytics-ready data sets" and standardized metrics. Operational changes will likely respond to clinicians' growing preference for on-demand services, potentially creating more direct-to-clinician capabilities.
Urban also anticipates disruption in promotional review processes: "How do we make that brain power triage to the most important, really tough decisions and simplify the way that the stuff that's kind of the same and is lower risk is handled?"
Artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role across functions. "We're already experimenting with how can we use AI in the med-reg-legal review process, in training, in data quality cleanup, in analytics," Urban shares.
Perhaps most importantly, Urban emphasizes the need for cross-functional thinking.
"That's one of my big missions in my team – that people are getting a flavor and a taste of all of the different components of this ecosystem between the data, the digital and the operations,"
she says. "The more we are thinking of that holistically across this whole area, the better off we're going to be anticipating and seeing around corners."
Key Takeaways
1) Start with the customer experience: "A big part of it is really starting with our customer as the first point. How do we think about that person's experience? The things that are making them frustrated or standing in their way."
2) Embrace difficult change management: "Standing true to the notion that ultimately, on the other side of those tough decisions, there's a better future for the organization and maybe even for those individuals who are impacted."
3) Adapt to the digital-native clinician: "Our clinicians are changing and that inherently means that the way we engage with those clinicians has to evolve with them."
4) Maximize each interaction: "The number of times we get in front of these clinicians nowadays is going to be a lot fewer per time period, so each one of those conversations needs to be that much better and that much more planned out."
5) Foster cross-functional thinking: "I want the entire team to be thinking about data, thinking about digital and thinking about operations, regardless of which place you are in your function."
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