3 Tips From Roche to Help You Build a Global Pharma Content Strategy

Today, pharma content leaders need strategies for balancing local teams’ needs with broader priorities. From reducing effort and cost by reusing content to following best practices like modular content and digital asset management (DAM), here are three tips to consider as you build a global foundation for delivering personalized content for patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs).

Connect and collaborate

At Roche, I lead the content operations team focused on designing and executing the strategic product roadmap for our content operation and serve as the global product owner for content taxonomy and Veeva Vault PromoMats. The team partners with many stakeholders, including global and local content strategy leads, platform and channel owners, commercial medical teams, IT partners, analytics teams, and more.

Like many other pharma companies, we have an internal production model. My team works very closely with our production partners, who are on the front lines helping to advance the adoption of content operations behaviors and practices like campaign planning and maintaining content source files.

It is extremely valuable to connect stakeholders across the content ecosystem. For instance, when one region like the U.S. leads a specific initiative, you can ensure the knowledge and learnings filter up to global teams and vice versa. By fostering connections and inspiring collaboration, you can move toward achieving your enterprise-wide content ambitions.

Share essential content capabilities like DAM

GSK, where I previously worked, was one of the first enterprise pharmaceutical companies to launch Vault PromoMats for medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) and digital asset management (DAM) together.

There, a team of 40-plus librarians ensured that everyone followed DAM best practices. This approach helped drive adoption with the dozens of agency partners we worked with.

Regardless of your team size or the number of librarians you have, a change management principle called “what’s in it for me?” can inspire teams to adopt the change you’re promoting. For example, if local markets are using Google Drive and you want them to start using brand portals, share the benefits of accessing a dashboard to see who viewed and downloaded the content. This practice adds value by giving teams a better understanding of content engagement.

Identifying educational and training opportunities about digital asset management outside of your own organization is also helpful. For example, Henry Stewart is a good source of information specific to digital asset management and provides an opportunity to learn about DAM challenges companies face in other industries.

Balance local market maturity

It’s essential to be mindful of the range of maturity levels and budgets across global and local pharma markets. These variables will influence your strategies, such as the benefits of content reuse, particularly in markets with smaller budgets. Beyond cost savings, increasing content speed to market is everyone’s priority, and we know that adapting content takes less time than creating net-new resources.

Read the Q&A with Christine Conley-Smith to learn why pharma needs a global-to-local content strategy.