Digital behaviors are not only impacting how healthcare is delivered, but also how promotional healthcare content is disseminated by life sciences organizations. However, for many life sciences companies, existing platforms cannot sufficiently handle the increase in rich-media digital content, especially when it comes to promotional material review and approval (MLR), digital asset management (DAM) and Web experience management (WEM) processes.
Such platforms must meet the needs of multiple stakeholders. To keep up with ever-changing messages — and repurpose relevant collateral across the enterprise — brand teams require accelerated review and approval of creative content. Meanwhile, commercial operations strive to keep costs down by repurposing and reusing digital assets across geographies and lines of business.
MLR, DAM and WEM platforms must also meet IT strategic directives, as well. These include platform rationalization to minimize the need for in-house expertise; cloud-based SaaS solutions to minimize IT support costs; integrated platform vendors to achieve a single point of accountability; simplified user training and support services; and greater volume discounts on application licenses.
To address all of these imperatives, it has become essential for the medical, legal, regulatory, IT and commercial operations disciplines to work collaboratively on choosing a platform that satisfies their sometimes conflicting needs, while also supporting broader business objectives and IT directives. We have created a model (Figure 1) that helps cross-functional decision-makers rate and rank proposed criteria and parameters for an integrated promotional content ecosystem to determine the best way to address key business and IT requirements.
A Cross-Functional Model for Rating MLR, DAM, WEM
Interactive
Figure 1
Creating Clarity
Using the model’s pre-defined parameters, life sciences companies can more accurately identify the solution that best fits their organizational needs. Because every organization is unique, there may not be one perfect model output. However, by ranking the various parameters through the collective lens of stakeholder requirements, the model can provide qualified, customized, directional guidance for any organization.
This entire process has the added benefit of uncovering significant discrepancies about important parameters across various functional areas. While some departments may be entirely focused on cost reduction, others may be resistant to change because they fear business disruption, while still others may simply want to leverage existing content.
By partnering earlier in the discussion and evaluation process, IT can help improve cross-function collaboration and bring clarity to the proposed benefits of a solution, which is critical for obtaining buy-in for a successful transition to new tools.
Next Steps
When life sciences companies embrace a collaborative assessment model for evaluating technology platforms, they can better address cross-functional stakeholder needs. To get started, life sciences businesses should take the following steps:
Create a governance advisory committee comprised of functional leads to provide guidance and accountability for their respective representatives on a promotional ecosystem technology assessment (PETA) team.
Require co-owners (IT and business) of the PETA team to create a chart that clearly establishes scope, goals and deliverables.
Engage the PETA team across functional representatives, with the primary goal of defining and/or refining the criteria and parameters of the key areas of strategic focus in the technology assessment model.
Once the model is complete, assess the preliminary output, based on the strategic partners’ insights and inputs.
Schedule live demonstrations of select platform providers to clarify strengths and gaps in the model.
Regroup internally to refine the parameters and/or ratings of the platforms being evaluated.
Review final findings with the PETA team to ensure alignment.
Review final directional output with the governance team.
With the right approach, IT can collaborate with business stakeholders to shape the technology roadmap for building an optimized promotional content ecosystem. The benefit of leveraging a scorecard is that all voices can be heard and robust discussions can be had across functions, revealing outputs clearly visible to all. By debating the valuation of various criteria parameters in an open forum, all interests can be weighed, challenged and agreed upon within the model.
The focus then goes beyond individual functional interests, as the model’s output serves cross-organizational needs.
Read more about our model for evaluating promotional content ecosystems and transforming the promotional review and approval process.