Client Services
July 23, 2024
In the complex and highly regulated world of pharmaceutical marketing, procurement faces the difficulty of assessing the true value of what their organizations’ marketing dollars are purchasing. With the variety that exists in complex scopes and service offerings, achieving transparency can be quite challenging. However, productization— the process of transforming services into standardized, scalable products—offers a powerful solution. This approach can bring remarkable benefits in terms of transparency, clearly spelling out the value exchange and driving efficiency, consistency, and trust.
Let's dive into how productization enhances transparency and why it is so valuable.
Understanding Productization
Productization involves creating a scalable, repeatable, and predictable product from a service, capability, or technology. In the context of pharmaceutical marketing, this means developing standardized solutions that can be consistently delivered across different brands, therapeutic categories, and campaigns. That doesn’t mean there is no customization – there certainly is. But it is customization within a planned framework. As organizations move their purchasing to focus more on repeatable products vs. ala carte services, they can streamline their procurement processes, reduce variability, and ensure a high level of predictability and efficiency.
Enhanced Transparency Through Standardization
One of the primary benefits of productization is enhanced transparency, specifically from standardization. When solutions and services are productized, they follow a predefined set of processes and quality standards. This consistency ensures that all stakeholders—from procurement teams to marketing departments and regulatory bodies—have a clear understanding of what to expect – in terms of investment, process, deliverables, and often results.
Reducing Variability and Increasing Predictability
Productization reduces variability, which is often a significant source of inefficiency and opacity in procurement. Variability can lead to unpredictable costs, delivery times, and quality levels. By transforming services into standardized products, pharmaceutical companies can minimize these uncertainties inherent in the typical hours and rates model.
A productized approach ensures that every activity adheres to the same standards. This predictability is invaluable for budgeting, planning, and resource allocation. Companies can accurately forecast costs and timelines, which enhances their ability to manage budgets and meet strategic objectives.
Building Trust with Consistent Delivery
Transparency builds trust. Productization ensures consistent delivery and guaranteed results, which is essential for maintaining trust with both internal and external stakeholders.
For internal teams, consistent delivery means that marketing campaigns can be executed smoothly, without unexpected delays or quality issues. This reliability is crucial for maintaining the integrity of marketing strategies and achieving desired outcomes. This trust also extends to regulatory bodies, which are more likely to approve marketing activities that adhere to transparent and predictable processes.
Driving Efficiency and Innovation
Transparency through productization drives efficiency and seemingly counterintuitive- innovation. Standardized processes are easier to optimizeand automate, leading to time and cost savings. The transparency provided by productization creates a clear framework for measuring performance and identifyingareas for improvement.
In the fast-paced world of pharmaceutical marketing, the ability to innovate quickly and effectively is a significant competitive advantage. Productized solutions enable companies to rapidly deploy new marketingstrategies and adapt to changing market conditions without sacrificing transparency or compliance. The focus of strategic thinking is on the target customer engagement and how to improve their experience - and not on how to get things made and approved.
Efficiency isn'tjust about streamliningprocesses; it'salso about scale. As more products are included in a campaign, internal and partner costs are reduced. As more brands and franchises adopt consistent products, efficiency from scale increases. As the length of time a product is in market increases, more time is spent on optimization, and less time is spent on onboarding and setup. By definition, productsand the transparency they provide allow for greater opportunities for efficiency from shared value.
Conclusion
The real value of productization in pharmaceutical marketing procurement lies in the transparency it brings. By transforming services into scalable, repeatable, and predictable products, companies can achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency, consistency, and trust. Enhanced transparency simplifies regulatory compliance and internal audits.
The ability to deliver a transparent, reliable procurement process is a game-changer. Embracing productization is not just a strategic advantage; it is a necessity for those looking to lead in the pharmaceutical marketing landscape. If you want a reliable experience, consider trying out some products. You can test one to see how it works. However, the very nature of a product is to do more with less – so why not try a few?