In December 2016, InCrowd was awarded two major Fierce Innovation Awards, one for “Best Technological Innovation” and the other for “Best in Show for Technological Innovation” in the life sciences, a category meant to recognize products and services that are “utilizing new and innovative technology to better serve the industry and promote innovation.”
Fierce Awards has now published it’s companion “Innovation Report” on award winners, with a feature (pg. 9) on why InCrowd won for “Best Technological Innovation.” Fierce writers noted:
The company’s offering is one of the first automated approaches in the healthcare sector that combines Awareness, Trial and Usage (ATU) studies in addition to other longitudinal brand perception analyses to collect valuable perceptions from prescribers, buyers and healthcare stakeholders, as well as tracking competitors. And it does it much faster by using technology like APIs, mobile access, survey automation and real-time reporting.
The report also includes a special article (pg. 21) by InCrowd’s VP of Marketing, Meg Oates-Zalesky, on innovation around agile product launches in the life sciences industry.
Here is the article in full, “Your Drug is Innovative–But is Your Product Launch Strategy Stale?”
The life sciences and pharmaceutical markets are more dynamic and complex than ever. As teams prepare for their product launches, events unfold that they could have never anticipated. Add to that the pressure to make sure innovative therapies hit their one-year revenue mark.
In this landscape, most life science rms still create lengthy product launch plans so hard-baked that shifting gears mid- stream – with even a mild course correction – is a near impossibility.
Successful marketing teams are taking a lesson from the agile methodology that has pervaded software development, and applying it to the product launch process. They produce beta- style versions of their key assets and concepts, test them with real-time market research, rework messages and plans, and evolve as needed. They don’t cut corners – they rely on technology to accelerate the process.
THE AGILE EVOLVE, AND THRIVE
In life sciences more than other sectors, there’s the added requirement of making sure data supports messaging used to launch products. Because data is the bedrock of therapeutic value propositions, and data quality is imperative, marketers usually source insights directly from high-writing prescribers. What they often forget is that the data must also be sourced in real-time to be of any use, and allow for any course correction.
For example, clinician consideration of novel treatment paradigms can change overnight and thwart product launch plans just as quickly. In the event of an adverse reaction, marketers need to know immediately how prescribers are perceiving it. Similarly, if a competitor is gaining traction in one disease category, would a shift in focus to alternative disease categories where fewer therapeutic options exist deliver a faster path to revenue?
Increasingly, agile research and product launches can help marketers with the above.
FIND KPIs THAT MATTER
Many life science product launches are leveraging new technology for agile life science market research. They access the perceptions of targeted clinicians on an ongoing basis, and use this real-time data to frame solid launch strategies. Market researchers who conduct regular, focused monitoring of their markets are able to identify the KPIs and track what will move the needle for their products. These players have learned that massive surveys that take months to gather aren’t necessarily more informative than those that regularly measure a few metrics that matter.
MAKING MARKET INSIGHTS A DIALOGUE
Successful life science marketers rely on InCrowd’s real-time market insights platform to bring agility to their product launch strategies. By making market insights a dialogue, instead of a one-time event ahead of the launch, these marketers run more successful campaigns that help deliver much-needed treatments to market – fast.
