What is special about my professional background and career is that I’ve worked in both domains: Medical Affairs and Commercial. And if I say I have a pretty good understanding of both worlds, this is not just a claim, but the result of years of personal experience, learning, and understanding.
I have spent most of my career inside the industry across various medical affairs roles. But I also held commercial positions and contributed to or led commercial initiatives and programs. Plus, early in my career I ran my own small company, where ‘business administration’, market development, and leadership are not just personal skills … but necessities. In addition, I found myself repeatedly in mediating roles between different functions. Between science and IT, between IT and business, and also between commercial and medical affairs.
And on top of that, I once had the pleasure of working in a cross-functional team for a couple of years – an incredibly high-performing and successful one, by the way – whose success was owed to many truly smart and brilliant colleagues in a lean specialty care unit, where commercial and medical colleagues worked side by side, hand in hand, and closely together day after day.
Medical affairs is my home discipline: I came up through it before moving to commercial, which makes me credible on both sides and an advocate of function-agnostic collaboration.
My years in the cross-functional specialty care unit were among the most enlightening experiences of my career. There I saw that the real power is … both – commercial and medical affairs – working together in a truly integrated way. Not one dominating the other or one “just” supporting the other. No: together.
And it makes total sense because for our customers, whether they are HCPs or patients, it doesn’t really matter what the internal label or function is of the colleague they are speaking to. They simply don’t care! They just recognize whether they are speaking to a company representative who understands them … or not. Someone with whom they can have a discussion at eye level … or not. Someone who takes their needs and expectations seriously and is able and willing to support them … or not.
Making a long story short, you will find me being an increasingly strong advocate and passionate proponent of ‘medical’ and ‘commercial’ working together cross-functionally, wherever possible.
A very common obstacle to making this happen is a kind of defensive reflex caused by some wording and phrases. I experienced this when I took the position as Global Head of Medical Customer Experience at Roche a few years ago. For some medical affairs colleagues, it had been a pure provocation to use “customer” in medical affairs; “customer” as a term with clear commercial connotations in their ears. And there will be examples of the opposite direction, where commercial is resistant to language used by medical affairs.
Yes, there are compliance firewalls, which are in place for good reasons. But sometimes I have the impression they are used as a bad excuse, an excuse for laziness, or an excuse not to invest in seriously thinking about how something can be implemented in compliance with regulatory requirements.
When I was recently doing some industry research with AI, the chatbots answered something that really caught my attention. It said that with CX, omnichannel, and other customer engagement innovations …
in pharma companies, a very prominent cause of failure is that companies are building things around internal functions but not around the external customer.
Yes, sure! Somehow, it’s a no-brainer and obvious to most people working to get things like CX, omnichannel, and other customer engagement innovations running in the industry. Our mission, and the way to achieve more business, is to serve the customer’s needs, not ours.
This is the future of our business. I’m deeply convinced of it. So, if you’re smart, if you’re clever, if you want to get your company future-ready, you start building things together around the customer and not around ‘commercial’ or ‘medical’ or whatsoever.
So, finally, did I really need an AI to come to that conclusion?
No! Of course not. As I said before, for many of us, this has been evident for a long time already. But I really like how the chatbot phrased it and got right to the point.
Building things around the customer is the future of our business. I’m deeply convinced of it. So, if you’re smart, if you’re clever, if you want to get your company future-ready, you start building things around the customer and not around commercial or medical or whatsoever.
Disclaimer: This article was written by a human. I only used AI tools to check spelling, grammar, and to improve the wording.