Empowering Alnylam’s Multichannel Field Teams with Data-driven Insights

Reimagining Data-driven Insights for Stronger Customer Interactions

Pivoting the conventional use of CRM from purely a source of information to a source of actionable insight presents exciting opportunities for pharmaceutical companies to enable multichannel key account managers (KAMs) and encourage responsible prescribing.

Following a period of accelerated adoption, the uptake of digital channels by field teams to connect with healthcare providers (HCPs) has skyrocketed. Now more than ever, life sciences organizations recognize the importance of a solid data foundation to fuel digital excellence.

Maximizing the Potential of Analytics

RNAi therapeutics pharmaceutical, Alnylam, partnered with twentyeightb to explore their data’s potential and provide insights to accelerate adoption of Veeva’s digital channels. Together, they utilized the Veeva CRM MyInsights platform to provide Alnylam’s KAMs with instant access to actionable insights to better understand their territories and enable smarter actions.

Alnylam were keen to encourage a culture of CRM within the organization, transforming the CRM from a transaction-based tool to a dynamic “central nervous system” of intelligence. With a focus on rare disease treatments, the measurement of customer engagement quality – over quantity – came very much to the forefront.

The collaboration targeted four areas:

1. Information aggregation. Bring multiple data sources into a single platform and display them in imaginative and convenient ways, rather than delivering them through separate tools and processes.
2. Actionable insights. Surface important territory and customer data changes to inform decision-making.
3. Process flexibility. Build a flexible analytical solution leveraging Veeva CRM MyInsights that suits Alnylam bespoke business practices and is future proof against any new data sources.
4. CRM adoption. Make using the CRM a habit-forming experience and drive adoption across all user groups.

Taking a Field Team-centric Approach to Drive Adoption

A critical component of this project was designing and developing dashboards at the core of the KAM’s workplace. Instead of leading with new tools and asking the field teams to change their behavior around them, embracing a user-orientated approach was a priority.

A field team-centric approach involves listening to KAMs, empathizing with their pain points, and embracing design thinking to identify alternative solutions that best fit their needs. Alnylam involved field teams in the design process to collect feedback and make iterative improvements during the testing phase.

It was critical to address any concerns or apprehensions a KAM may have when faced with an entirely new CRM solution. One of the most important factors was demonstrating a positive relationship between a user inputting data into the CRM and the solution offering useful insights in return. The development team followed Nir Eyal’s Hook Model’s principles to build habit-forming features that become an intrinsic part of the user’s day-to-day regime. Guaranteeing a positive end-to-end experience provides an invaluable opportunity to collect feedback. Alnylam can apply this information to refine its approach and, ultimately, enhance the system’s intelligence for a multichannel field force.

Rare Diseases: The Ultimate Testing Ground

Alnylam’s RNAi-based medicines targeting rare conditions provided the ultimate testing ground for Veeva CRM MyInsights. While all KAMs rely on data to identify potential leads and connect with HCPs, the lack of highly specialized HCPs working in rare diseases requires incredibly detailed data and sophisticated insights to pinpoint viable prospects. This scarcity and demand for high-resolution data presented a unique opportunity to create an e-detailing solution that translates vast data sets into actionable insights to empower the multichannel KAMs.

“Data is everything for rare disease prescribing.” — David Andrew, CRM Lead for the CEMEA Region, Alnylam

Encouraging Appropriate Prescribing

Throughout the entire development process, the guiding principle was to design a system that encourages appropriate prescribing. In the context of vending RNAi therapeutics, this refers to the distribution of pharmaceuticals to certified HCPs whose patients will benefit from access to specific treatments while providing complete transparency about their associated risks.

Rare Diseases Require Precision

The vast majority of pharmaceutical CRM systems rely on off-the-shelf templates to simplify complex and unsorted events from the real world into organized and usable insights. The unique challenges associated with prescribing for rare diseases require more precision. twentyeightb leveraged the flexibility of Veeva CRM MyInsights to develop a highly specialized set of custom offline dashboards that address Alnylam’s requirements and provide accurate insights for their field teams.

Small but Mighty: Driving Change in Pharma

Shifting from Tracking to Empowerment

An ongoing challenge for pharmaceutical companies is overcoming the tendency for field teams to view CRM dashboards as tracking tools — designed to monitor their progress, incentivize action, and grade performance. While many CRM systems do include functionality to monitor activity, Alnylam’s MyInsights dashboards aim to use data to empower the multichannel user.

Giving field teams complete confidence and clarity as to how they can benefit from the solution was paramount. The objective was to create a solution where the KAM feels in control of the data they provide and understand the value of sharing information to get more timely and relevant insights, and ultimately improve engagement.

“Alnylam’s tailored Veeva CRM MyInsights dashboards combine user-generated data with external sources to provide the guidance KAMs need to analyze and improve their performance.” — Sebastien Noel, Director of Multichannel Veeva CRM Europe, Veeva

Harnessing Data with Closed-Loop Marketing

Closed-loop marketing represents a powerful opportunity associated with e-detailing and an immersive CRM that works in harmony with sales processes. In the context of Veeva CRM MyInsights, this refers to user feedback and data analytics to inform decision-making at the start of a sales funnel.

Closed-loop marketing was a key focus in developing Alnylam’s MyInsights dashboards to supply field teams with highly relevant leads by learning from previous actions and refining Alnylam’s prospecting capabilities via a continuous cycle. Combining CRM data (e.g., when a KAM last met with a customer) with external data sources (e.g., HCP demographics, online journeys, and activity) provided a wealth of insights for the field team. Tracking engagements and feeding Veeva CRM MyInsights with a constant stream of feedback help optimize the sales cycle. To go further, Alnylam collected information about how HCPs responded to marketing materials to build detailed profiles and help KAMs tailor their engagement strategy.

Visualizing Data with Intuitive Dashboarding

Translating complex data insights into highly concrete and actionable soundbites is critical to avoid an information overload and help field teams make the best use of Alnylam’s insights solution. Developing intuitive dashboards and incorporating engaging visuals into the e-detailing interface involved building an HTML5 app that runs in Veeva CRM.

“Veeva provides a powerful and sophisticated system with industry-leading capabilities. Our task was to unlock its full potential by building an “app within an app” that would bring Alnylam’s data insights to the fore.” — James Harper, Founder & Managing Director, twentyeightb

The flexibility of building a dedicated app meant twentyeightb could develop tailor-made dashboards and include specific insights to support Alnylam KAMs. Involving end-users in the development phase was critical to optimize the e-detailing interface and deliver insights that resonate with field teams.

Benefits of a Modular Architecture

Both Alnylam and twentyeightb agreed that a modular architecture was necessary to enable ‘drag and drop’ changes without complex technical back-end manipulation.

“To future proof the project and avoid boxing ourselves in, we developed the dashboards so we could swap in and out data visualization components as new data sources became available. Ultimately, they were designed to be scalable, flexible and low maintenance.” — Rahul Arora, Associate Director, Strategic Technologies, Alnylam

“The foresight to augment Veeva’s advanced solutions is a credit to Alnylam’s strategic thinking, disruptive mindset, and determination to share their robust pipeline of innovative RNAi-based medicines across the globe.” — Sebastien Noel, Director of Multichannel Veeva CRM Europe, Veeva

Alnylam has led the translation of RNAi (RNA interference) from Nobel Prize-winning discovery into an entirely new class of medicines. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alnylam specializes in four therapeutic areas: genetic medicines, cardio-metabolic diseases, infectious diseases, central nervous system (CNS), and ocular diseases.

Veeva is the global leader in cloud software for the life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence, and customer success, Veeva serves more than 1,000 customers, ranging from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. As a Public Benefit Corporation, Veeva is committed to balancing the interests of all stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders, and the industries it serves. Veeva CRM MyInsights is an innovative data visualization capability that provides tailored insights right in Veeva CRM. It gives you the freedom to visualize your data any way you want. It uses information directly from your CRM so your data is always current. Your field teams get actionable insights at the point of planning and decision making, driving better execution.

twentyeightb is a Veeva content partner accredited software development company working exclusively in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector. The Cambridgeshire-based team work in partnership with creative agencies to produce digital sales aids and bespoke closed-loop marketing materials. twentyeightb are Veeva experts with a mission to unleash the true potential of their systems and other CLMs for clients.