The market for launching new pharmaceutical and biotech products is crowded, competitive and data-driven. To hit the ground running and scale growth, pharma companies need a powerful analytics core. Yet many overlook an essential step to building analytics that sustain growth in the years that follow launch: mapping the organization's long-term analytics, data and system needs.
Usually, the oversight isn’t a result of a lack of effort or investment in launch planning. When preparing to release new products, commercial teams are under pressure to make vendor, data and systems decisions upfront and execute analytics projects swiftly. Sometimes, the decisions made to support the organization’s immediate needs can constrain its data and system choices and limit growth options down the road. Based on our experience supporting more than 80% of U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical launches each year, companies that create analytics solutions without a foundational roadmap in place face challenges when it’s time to evolve or expand capabilities as they mature.
Creating a roadmap is the best way to get around this challenge in the 15–24-month window before launch, but it’s also a solution for companies eager to course-correct after they go to market. To prime the organization’s analytics foundation for growth, teams should first identify business users’ needs and use cases, then map the data and analytics inputs and systems that support those needs. Following this three-step process leads to better business decisions, greater efficiency, demonstrated commercial success and a strategic plan that helps companies sequence analytics data and systems at scale. Beyond improving the company’s return on its investment in analytics, a roadmap also prevents the many cycles of reworking that stall progress before and after launch.
While every company's journey will look different depending on its needs and goals, we've prepared an illustrative roadmap for creating analytics that scale. Explore the steps below to see how emerging pharma leaders can make foundational decisions with foresight and unlock the insights their teams need to thrive in a dynamic healthcare ecosystem.