Survey: Pharma Commercial Teams Want More Data Analytics Solutions

The commercial teams of pharmaceutical companies are looking for more data analytics and business insights and they’re willing to spend more money to do it. Those are some of the findings of a recent survey of pharma industry executives at U.S.-based companies.

The survey was conducted by independent survey company Global Surveyez, but it was commissioned by Verix, a Santa Clara, California-based company that provides an AI-based technology platform that supports life sciences commercial operations. In other words, it has a financial interest in the topics covered by the survey. Verix competitors that also offer analytics solutions for pharmaceutical commercialization include Whiz.AI, Axtria, and ngram.

According to the survey results reported earlier this month, 76% of respondents turn to consulting agencies for business insights and data analytics, beating technology vendors at 58% and data consolidators at 32%. Just 21% of survey respondents use in-house solutions.

The top challenge for pharma companies is lack of automation, making it difficult to extract timely and accurate insights, a problem cited by 74% of respondents. Pain points—a different question than top challenges—included increasing brand share, effectively allocating resources across brands, and targeting the right healthcare providers. However, the pain point responses were fairly evenly spread across with no single one standing out.

Given the pain points responses, it’s probably not a surprise that 79% of respondents agreed that accurate insights would positively impact brand performance. Survey respondents expressed interest in artificial intelligence-driven data analytics solutions. Results show 69% of commercial teams are increasing their budgets in this area versus 5% of respondents who said they are reducing this spending.

The Verix survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of last year. The Verix survey and report includes responses from 100 senior-level pharma industry executives spread equally across sales, marketing, and brand. The companies represented in the survey have annual revenue of at least $100 million. Here’s a link to the survey and report.

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