Do we change or are we changed?
Numerous sources, newsletters and blogs like this indicate or tell us that the *habitat of the pharmaceutical industry* no longer is what it used to be. Pharma
By on Oct 20, 2009Numerous sources, newsletters and blogs like this indicate or tell us that the habitat of the pharmaceutical industry no longer is what it used to be.
Pharma reacts by streamlining their fixed cost starting to search for the most appropriate sales model. Pitifully in many cases the business model remains untouched.
The news sales model however will be using new pathways, changed processes, trying to leverage know-how and habits of the last century. The majority of industry appears being reactive, rather than proactive and we still see methods in place that remind us of the times when we were very young. Selling to prescribing physicians was the ultimate goal when product management hammered the same message to everyone with huge field forces and DTC was thought to be a flourishing investment.
Changes pressed on pharma by politics of whatever kind are making many of these past approaches obsolete. The answer is to adapt to and adopt new ways of working and above all start new thinking. Business life is getting more complex and so are our sales models:
Market access now consists of steps: FDA or EMEA approval, approval of reimbursement of various instances and cost-benefit thresholds need to be dealt with. Guideline makers are yet another threshold deciding on therapeutical gold standards, treatment patterns and pathways. Once these obstacles have been overcome more novelties are waiting, making business even more complex.
Decision making units in hospitals, pharmacy chains, group practices, networks of care givers and patient care trusts are to be convinced that a product needs to be put on their list of favourites, purchased, prescribed applied and be used in a fully compliant way by care seekers. Old habits in many countries told us not to approach patients It is forbidden!, but we only need to differentiate between promoting to patients and assisting patients to better care for themselves. It is about supportive empowering, as we do with all the other stakeholders.
At the end of the day social networks of people nowadays decide about the prescription of a drug in a very much regionalised if not individual setting.
Taking these changes into consideration the biggest of all questions is: Are we and our people really ready to leave comfort zones? Will and can we change and is our employer enabling us to do so?
About a decade ago, John P. Kotter (HBS) has published a number of his findings elucidating drivers and prerequisites of change and demonstrating the reasons of failure. Today we must experience that the major issue of change is about leaving individual comfort zones. By definition this might be painful and creates uncertainty since we found ourselves very comfortable with doing business as usual: old habits therefore die longer. Implementing change into an organisation needs a lot of details to be considered and many steps to be taken, before the novel approach can be brought to fruition and will be up and running flawlessly.
Another point of major importance in this context is our individual development from a kind of subordinate obedience of early ages into people who have access to information, carrying high value education and are brought up being encouraged using individual insights and a sound understanding of the forces shaping our market place nowadays it might even be more than the 5-forces Kotler thought about. It is about insight and understanding, supportive experiences, deep knowledge and the ability of changing perspective.
After we achieved this, we will be able to become proactive instead of only following changes imposed and forced on us and still in many cases be too late....