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Until recently, biopharma companies needed to rely on the same standard customer relationship management (CRM) tools used in other industries, bolting on complex, costly custom development work for healthcare-specific use cases. On top of being time-consuming and expensive, however, this approach also limits flexibility and scale moving forward.
Leading biopharma firms recognize that they must upgrade their approach and put the patient first to succeed in 2025 and beyond.
Legacy CRMs, which are built for physician-facing sales teams and/or rely on industry-agnostic data models, aren’t built to synthesize patient datasets. Patient-centric CRM solutions connect patient information alongside physicians, payers, pharmacies, and more to provide data visibility, streamline communications, and orchestrate the end-to-end patient journey.
The right patient-focused pharma CRM connects data and teams and removes manual processes for better patient and business outcomes. By strengthening patient and provider relationships and helping qualified patients start and stay on game-changing therapies, forward-thinking biopharma companies drive innovation and create new leaders in a patient-centric world.
Achieving these goals first requires awareness of the latest market trends and innovations expected to impact pharma CRM systems and patient engagement—from must-have features to broader change management strategies that will help your organization navigate the transformation towards patient-focused pharma CRM software.
The role of CRM software in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry continues to evolve. As pharma companies contend with complexities ranging from changing regulations to pre-launch and launch strategy expectations, they increasingly rely on advanced CRM systems to manage patient, provider, and healthcare organization (account) information, automate communication, and personalize engagement and support. With the rise of patient-centric commercial models, biopharma companies, especially commercial teams, need visibility, control, and coordination to power a modern patient experience.
Meanwhile, key technology trends like AI and machine learning are improving CRM efficiency by automating data capture and analysis and personalizing engagement strategies. These technologies can potentially give biotech and pharmaceutical companies deeper insights into customer needs and further simplify their workflows.
What’s more, with the right infrastructure in place, biopharma companies will gain more first-party data that can be used to inform their R&D investments and commercial strategies going forward. But this future for the pharma industry hinges on implementing the right patient-focused CRM for life sciences today that connects disparate data, systems, and teams and orchestrates end-to-end patient journeys.
Not every pharma CRM system is the same, so it’s important to evaluate capabilities and choose a holistic solution that prioritizes patient outcomes and will coordinate stakeholders across the treatment experience.
A consolidated view of data from multiple sources—including specialty pharmacies, HUBs, and copay providers—gives biopharma companies more accurate and comprehensive insights to engage and support patients, providers, and healthcare organizations in the path to get qualified patients onto therapy.
With sensitive health information, it’s essential that your CRM system is not only HIPAA-compliant but also takes a comprehensive approach to ensuring compliance, including robust role-based access controls to protect PHI and enable compliant coordination and communication across all customer interactions.
The best CRM will also be purpose-built for your different commercial teams (patient services, field access, reimbursement, clinical educators, and other field teams) to work from the same set of insights and collaborate more efficiently. For example, by integrating disparate data sets (from HUBs, SPs, sales, etc.), your field reimbursement managers can review key healthcare providers' metrics and identify patterns, such as a low PA submission rate.
This enables them to prioritize strategic engagement and tailor their outreach in ways that support specific providers or HCO account needs to improve patient outcomes. This is only possible in a robust solution with sophisticated permissions and access capabilities to enable different roles to interact compliantly within the platform without exposing PHI.
Another essential feature to look for in your new CRM solution is advanced analytics and reporting capabilities that deliver actionable insights. These capabilities illuminate key areas like patient start rate, time-to-start, pull-through, and more. Combined with other customer data points and sales performance metrics, this can provide a comprehensive view of a program's performance.
This is another reason that market access and patient services should always be given a seat at the commercial leadership table, so that comprehensive marketing, patient support, education, and sales strategies can be developed and refined to improve health outcomes.
As biotech and pharmaceutical businesses look to upgrade their performance in the coming year, they would be wise to follow these three high-level strategies:
Plan to structure your CRM system to provide a single source of truth for all your teams, including market access and patient services. Operating from the same set of metrics will help them collaborate more efficiently and support patients and providers more effectively.
The sooner you invest in the right patient-focused pharmaceutical CRM, the more data you’ll capture for advanced insights and analytics. This will become your greatest competitive advantage and strategic differentiation, helping to shape commercial models, launch strategies, and more going forward.
Furthermore, by analyzing your CRM’s real-time analytics, you can iterate on approaches and allocate resources more effectively with less turnaround time, ultimately driving better patient and business performance outcomes.
Myriad moving parts complicate launching a new specialty therapy in the pharmaceutical sector, and having the right data infrastructure and foundational tools is essential to staying agile and responsive to changing dynamics or market needs. The right patient-focused CRM will simplify and streamline the entire process, making it easier for teams to coordinate, communicate in real-time, track engagement metrics, and adapt to achieve a successful rollout long after the initial launch.
As we look ahead to 2025, advanced technologies like AI will continue to disrupt how companies operate and think about the future. In time, and with proper guardrails in place, the insights derived from these AI-powered analyses of vast data sets will enable biopharma companies to anticipate their patients’ needs with greater speed and precision.
Future innovations like AI only increase the need for organizations to invest in the right patient-focused pharma CRM foundation today. Ready to upgrade your CRM strategy? Contact our team today.
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