360|Connex: The AI-rooted tool that informs and maximizes pharma's KOL engagements

Across pharma companies, teams invest so much time and resources in engaging with their key customers, whether it be at congresses or one-on-one meetings with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), and have such a plethora of data surrounding these activities and interactions, that recording and making sense of it all—let alone maximizing the value of engagements according to organizational objectives—can seem a near impossible challenge.

It is a struggle that Scott Reese (pictured below) and his colleagues at Evolution Health Group knew about only too well, having heard pharma clients tell them countless times about their lack of a system for managing KOLs, feeling overwhelmed at the volume of interactions and failing to derive full benefit from these activities as a result.

A solution based on pharma’s needs

This prompted Evolution Health Group to launch  360|Connex, not just as a major addition to the agency’s core competency of KOL mapping and identification, but as a potentially revolutionary insight generation tool for pharma companies.

“One thing that definitely gave rise to it was that, in our client engagements, we found they had fairly rudimentary ways of managing physician and KOL relationships, like using simple spreadsheets, and all of them were frustrated,” Mr Reese told The Pharma Letter.

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“The thing that was missing was something to allow them to utilize data scraping in order to have a much deeper and more profound view of these individuals, and help brands to make better decisions on what activities and topic areas will be the most successful.

“So, we have come up with a way to manage, engage and realize data insights that help to drive better decision-making within the organization.”

Invaluable insights for medical and commercial teams

360|Connex allows companies to easily profile, score, map and measure engagements, creating operational efficiencies and leading firms to engage with the most critical KOLs who can most impact their business, all through insights that are based on real-world knowledge and marketplace impact.

Giving real-time access to engagement data and analytics, the easy-to-use software provides customized interfaces to optimize workflows, and is highly configurable to meet the business needs of both medical and commercial teams.

The tool is a massive upgrade on existing customer relationship management systems that are out there and were created to handle sales, since it builds long-term conceptually relevant relationships with KOLs, be they thought leader liaisons or medical science liaisons.

Click to schedule a 360|Connex demoKey features of the platform include dynamic individual KOL scoring, encompassing AI-generated, real-time reporting. This brings together about 40 different data sets on areas including the clinical, academic and publishing experience of individuals, along with their congress contributions, society leadership and media presence, to determine how knowledgeable and influential they really are.

“We combine those to create an impact score, a score of zero to a hundred, that helps clients determine who is going to most impact their business,” Mr Reese explained, adding that possessing such insights can help guide spending decisions.

“The other thing I would add is that the system allows for you to schedule, manage and track all your engagements, from scheduling advisory boards to one-on-one interactions.”

Planning for congress engagements, be they KOL receptions, thought leader forums or other events, becomes insight-driven, strategic and easy, as does measuring the success of these
activities to better inform future plans.

Bespoke and easy-to-use—but delivering phenomenal change

Examples of the impact that using 360|Connex has had on companies have been striking.

“Once they began using our system, the change within the organization was phenomenal and the quality of engagements rose substantially. Key customers report better experiences with the pharma company”“What we have found is very interesting, we have a real change effect within the organization,” Mr Reese said. “One of our clients, a major pharma client with a profound oncology portfolio, had very little thought leader liaison oversight.

“Once they began using our system, the change within the organization was phenomenal and the quality of those engagements rose substantially. This was with a very simple pilot platform, and it quickly turned into an enterprise-wide, radical change. Key customers report better experiences with the pharma company.”

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While the change can be transformational once a company is successfully up-and-running on 360|Connex, the process of migrating data and starting to use the software—once a firm’s bespoke requirements have been established—is swift and simple, including the pooling of historical data within the system.

“Once we engage with a client, it’s not one-size fits all,” Mr Reese said. “Every client has a different way of viewing how they engage with KOLs, and we determine how they can best utilize the system.

“We’re a white glove service software company. We believe that we have to provide that level of in-depth service to each and every client, to have the most effect on the organization. Then on the whole change management part as well, we help with managing that.”

All in all, the 360|Connex platform has, for the first time in the industry, applied AI and advanced analytics to answer a question that every pharmaceutical company has: how do we maximize and accelerate our impact on customer engagements and convert that to real value for the company?