By: Olivia vonNieda, VP and General Manager, McKesson Compile, and Veena Attivilli, Head of Customer Success, McKesson Compile
In an increasingly competitive market and a rapidly evolving clinical and commercial landscape, biopharma professionals are often asked to do more with less while operating within compressed timelines. When biopharma companies evaluate healthcare insights and analytics providers, they should also consider the level of service offered. A data solutions provider with life science expertise and a firm commitment to transparency, iteration, responsiveness, and customer experience is critical in helping biopharma companies operate strategically and efficiently despite the increasing pressure they face.
Solutions providers with a customer-first mindset set high standards for themselves – consistently providing proactive, timely communication and extensive customer support resources. These practices help customers spend less time managing data and more time making impactful business decisions.
Life sciences expertise lends itself to empathy and efficiency
Empathy is walking in someone else’s shoes, and that’s a journey effective life sciences data solutions companies take every day. This industry experience uniquely positions them to not only understand but ensure that clients are using the right data sets to meet their objectives. A strong collaborator helps clients see beyond their own initial “ask” and instead looks at their goals to ensure they’re asking the right questions. We only hire people with experience in biopharma, and as a result, our customers often tell us that they value being able to speak to our data team in their own industry-specific language.
Transparency builds trust and enables proactive strategy shifts
As anyone who has been working with healthcare data products in the past year knows, real-world claims data has been unstable due to various factors, most notably cyberattacks and other changes in the industry. This volatility can impact the completeness of data and disrupt trend analysis, thus leading to less reliable insights.
Fortunately, the impact on analyses can be largely mitigated through adjustments in methodology, but it requires data companies to proactively communicate with their clients, alerting them to any changes in the recency or completeness of data. When we receive source data, we put it through multiple tests to detect volatility. If we see a significant change, we quickly alert customers about any impact on data volumes or changes in data sources, and possible implications for their analyses. By doing that, we can save them the time and frustration of discovering those changes for themselves.
Thoughtful, thorough customer support resources make it easy
In today’s dynamic landscape, data solutions providers must evolve to meet users where they are by tailoring their onboarding processes and support resources to be universally accessible, especially for non-technical users. By crafting a comprehensive and empathetic onboarding experience—complete with tailored training sessions, flexible office hours, clear explainers, and as many follow-up meetings as needed—companies can empower customers to effortlessly harness the power of data.
Moreover, solutions providers should be flexible and agile in providing data products in client preferred formats. This customer-centric approach with the individual in mind minimizes the time spent on setup, integration, and comprehension, enabling clients to dive straight into extracting valuable insights.
Fast response times are critical for timely decisions
Data informs essential business decisions for biopharma companies, and in a competitive and fast-paced market, data partners must provide information as quickly as possible. Solutions providers must provision data products and respond to questions promptly. Our team provisions data products within two business days and responds to customer questions within 24 business hours. For customers with dozens of employees working on multiple data sets, the volume of questions and requests can be high—for one customer, we received over one thousand questions in a quarter! Thus, planning for appropriate staffing levels is key.
The need for responsiveness can be further exacerbated by operating in a rapidly changing industry which means projects can shift mid-stream, so data solutions providers must be prepared to quickly adapt. When providing these quick answers, solutions providers also need to be available to explain them, truly making the data come to life for customers.
Customer service gets you to the right insights, faster
Information, particularly healthcare data, is rapidly becoming a commodity. There are many solutions providers out there, but those that will succeed are those that understand their client’s needs, are transparent, have developed rigorous processes to respond to clients in real-time, and keep pace with the industry’s evolution. Choosing a data solutions provider with these characteristics and offerings will enable rapid and accurate data-driven decision-making.