Elevated insights: Smart data platforms help life sciences teams maximize ROI

Data in, data out. For years, life sciences companies produced insights this way—but that status quo is holding them back. Today, life sciences companies face many challenges as they deal with massive amounts of complex data. They’re also navigating increased rates of data availability and data capture, while becoming more data-oriented for day-to-day decision-making. How can companies realize the potential of all this data? It’s vital for the industry to adopt smart data platforms that incorporate intelligence into data processing and insights generation. 

Smart data platforms provide an intuitive interface for users to access, analyze and scale data capabilities, helping them make better decisions and optimize operations using robust integrated features and AI capabilities. Best of all, projects that once took months and required significant resources—such as new product launches or customer engagement initiatives—can now be accomplished in weeks with less investment. The ability of smart data platforms to package products based on use cases makes it easier for organizations to scale to different functions, use cases and geographies.

Functions across life sciences companies all benefit from using smart data platforms. IT teams leverage them to facilitate data governance—including data access and cataloging—manage vendor data quality and build operational processes. The business uses them to monitor processes, generate insights and build reports.

Not all smart data platforms are created equal, especially for each of these functions in life sciences. With a growing number of options available, how should pharma leaders evaluate and choose the right platform for their needs?

Rather than looking at features in isolation during your evaluation, you should make sure that the platform’s capabilities align with your business objectives and operational needs. Here are five things to keep in mind:

1. Smart data platforms can be customized for life sciences teams …
   
   Today, many smart data platforms available on the market are considered DIY from the life sciences company’s perspective, as internal teams own the usability and features while the platform’s developer manages infrastructure in the background. Through the platform, these teams have access to a wide range of data sources, allowing them to self-serve and create their own customized solutions and analyses, rather than being limited to prebuilt dashboards and reports. It’s never been faster or easier for large life sciences companies to develop tailored, data-driven applications.
   
   Smart data platform users can also access and modify certain business rules or curate data according to their organizational strategy and needs. This allows them to produce custom reports that go beyond what “out of the box” platforms offer.
   
   Real-world example: ZS partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim to build a cloud-native smart data and analytics platform that could scale globally, yet meet the specific needs of local markets with varying health systems, regulatory structures and customer contact preferences. The platform is a single source of truth that’s helped Boehringer Ingelheim significantly accelerate its analysis.
2. … But turnkey capabilities can help emerging life sciences companies accelerate
   
   Often, it’s large life sciences companies with lots of data that want to customize a smart data platform. For smaller, emerging life sciences or biotech companies looking to move quickly, the right smart data platform can offer turnkey capabilities, making it possible to accelerate time to market and maximize the platform’s ROI. Many emerging life sciences companies find that a platform’s out-of-the-box capabilities offer what’s needed for them to produce transformative insights.
   
   At the same time, emerging pharma companies appreciate knowing that if they master the platform’s turnkey capabilities, they can continue to move forward and become more proficient with the platform. The right smart data platform should provide built-in flexibility through productized services, empowering emerging pharma companies to start with essential capabilities and seamlessly scale to advanced use cases as they grow. Unlike stand-alone tools, these preconfigured solutions are integrated within the platform, allowing companies to expand functionalities—such as sales analytics, patient engagement or AI-driven forecasting—without disruption. This ensures faster time-to-insight, optimized investment and a clear pathway to more sophisticated data-driven decision-making.
   
   Real-world example: Theratechnologies used ZAIDYN®, ZS’s cloud-native smart data platform, to provide its field teams access and visibility to commercial data and analytics. ZAIDYN allowed the company to develop an updated commercial model and convert more territories to contribute to year-over-year sales growth. Eighty-five percent of territories contributed to its sales growth in 2023, up from 20% of territories in 2021.
3. You only have to pay for what you use
   
   A smart data platform may offer solutions for 10 or 15 user personas, ranging from field professionals to case managers to medical science liaisons. But if a company only needs to use two solutions, they only have to pay for those two solutions. As a company successfully uses the platform and wants to add new solutions, they can.
4. There are plenty of opportunities to innovate and explore
   
   Along with turnkey features to help kick-start the journey, smart data platforms empower innovation by seamlessly integrating gen AI features with scalable data infrastructure. They provide flexibility to develop, test and deploy custom algorithms, which empowers organizations to tailor AI solutions to their needs.
5. Smart data platforms boost collaboration
   
   Before smart data platforms, large life sciences companies navigated a fragmented data landscape. And various stakeholders had to contract with different vendors to build their own reports and data solutions. This led to inconsistencies, as data metrics and outcomes from disparate systems don’t always align.

To enhance governance and collaboration, many large life sciences companies are establishing global capability centers (GCCs)—centralized hubs that standardize data processing, ensure compliance and drive cross-functional insights.

Within a GCC, a smart data platform does more than serve as a single source of truth that integrates new data sources and makes them available to relevant teams. It empowers team members with the self-serve capabilities needed to manage operations across the globe from a centralized hub. A GCC using a smart data platform eliminates the need for individual teams to build their own custom solutions, while fostering greater collaboration and trust in the data and insights.

By providing a common foundation for data-driven decision-making across the organization, smart data platforms act as a unifying force. Offering a harmonized approach to data management and governance, these platforms can reduce the possibility of data quality or integration issues, while ultimately enhancing the life sciences company’s data-driven capabilities.

Smart data platforms are constantly evolving to become more powerful and useful. Moving forward, we expect that enhanced analytics capabilities through AI and machine learning will power smarter data processing, predictive analytics, the automation of data management tasks and more.

The life sciences companies that have adopted smart data platforms have revolutionized their ability to harness the power of data. These platforms provide a personalized, intuitive interface so that teams across the organization can make faster, more informed decisions. By offering turnkey capabilities and flexible pricing models, smart data platforms have accelerated time to market and maximized ROI, while also fostering greater collaboration and data governance. As the industry continues to evolve, implementing these transformative technologies will be crucial for life sciences companies to stay ahead of the curve and deliver better outcomes for patients.