How the pharmaceutical and health industry profits from modern sales and marketing tools. When it comes to sales, most digitization skeptics have realized that novel tools and a highly-customized customer approach have become essential. During the crisis, the skeptics themselves have seen how much time they can save. The use of AI has created a situation where sales staff can customize the way in which they approach doctors more than ever before. Face-to-face visits and knowledge-sharing will remain, but they will become more selective. It is something Sarah is looking forward to - and to be able to jog more often during her lunch break. One issue that I repeatedly get asked about is digital sales and marketing. Here too, we see the effects of the coronavirus pandemic: When the conventional touch points and personal customer visits become a thing of the past, companies must review and adjust their activities, and ideally prepare them for the future. One example of how this can work: 

Sarah is a sales coordinator at an international pharmaceutical group. Often, she thinks about the time before the coronavirus, and how her work and tools have changed since then. She works exclusively from home, and she plans her days and meetings on her own. She has access to the central CRM, which allows her to track relevant parameters such as e-mail opening rates in real time, using a dashboard. 

CRM and digital assistants first support Sarah with targeting individual doctors. After that, the assistant provides analytics-based recommendations for how these selected doctors can best be contacted using a customized approach, and which contents would be of most interest to them. In this way, it becomes possible to send out automated but also personalized information packages and newsletters to each doctor. No more need for generic mass mails. No one reads them anyway. 

While face-to-face meetings became possible again the summer, they are not nearly as common as before the coronavirus crisis. More and more doctors prefer the digital approach. Conversely, sales staff have also realized that their daily work routines are not as efficient without digital aids. 

This means Sarah can save on driving time, which she can now use to target more existing and new clients. And it also means more time for taking breaks, e.g. jogging during the lunch break. Sarah receives a push notification as soon as a new doctor has registered and expresses an interest in a specific medication. Sarah can tailor these notifications to her own requirements. This process saves a lot of time, because previously she would have had to manually search through various customer databases. Digitally advanced pharmaceutical companies offer not just medication and medication information, but also services. The trend is clear: it is not just about positioning the product itself, but also the service around the product! This includes digital further training for doctors and webinars, e.g. webinars for introducing digital appointments. 

Pharmaceutical companies should tailor the way in which they approach their target group with a data-based segmentation strategy. In this context, a multitude of different digital and conventional channels are activated to communicate medical and commercial contents. The aim is to find out which channel and which contents are requested by each doctor. The more these individual preferences are matched, the closer and more positive the relationship with the pharmaceutical company. 

Why does this approach work not just for doctors, but also for Sarah? In the past, CRMs were often implemented as a Big Bang - which was precisely the reason why many of them failed. Digital sales and marketing solutions, particularly CRM, should be developed gradually and using an agile approach. This means that Sarah was involved in the process at an early stage. She was able to provide feedback for the first prototypes, and her actual user behavior in the system was recorded, measured and analyzed. In this way, the user experience for Sarah and the CRM gradually but surely moved in the right direction! 

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What the next stage of transformation may look like. Future business models must be digital and sustainable at the same time. Companies combining both will be ���ahead of the game.��� Let me say in closing that sustainability needs to be at the core of all transformation processes.   The recent CS virtual conference ���Transformation of Business��� featured exciting speakers, great insights and a lively discussion. At the beginning of the conference, I had the opportunity to have an inspiring discussion with Carsten Knop and exchange ideas. Our main focus was on what the economy and society need now, in the post-COVID world. 

The message is clear: Now is the time to define ambitious goals. Why do things not move forward at the moment? Here a brief summary of how we see it: 

The frequently referenced error management culture is still wanting ��� both in enterprises and in the public administration.    Projects and regulations are often specified down to the smallest detail, trying to eliminate any unexpected or unplanned occurrence beforehand. And that' s how we get in our own way.  Carsten Knop couldn���t have summed it up better: "Politics is just a reflection of society. We need more pragmatism, and more risk. When managers make a decision, they also have to acknowledge when the make mistakes; we finally need a corporate culture that allows us to make mistakes and to learn from them.���   What went through my mind was: try out more, think less about making mistakes!

After the pandemic, the corporate world will have to define their own future once again. So far, many companies have been flying by sight. But the fog has lifted. Now it's all about foresight ��� we need to define where we're headed. To this end, we now need new corporate visions with far-reaching, ambitious goals. This applies equally to the economy and the government: Ambitious goals that lead us to take bold action, that take us forward in the long term, and for which we will jointly develop solutions that will comprehensively change processes in day-to-day life and society. Ambitious goals will inspire us, both as employees and as citizens, and provide a sense of new beginnings after the COVID period. This mindset will not only drive digitization and digital transformation in a unique manner. The topic that will need our urgent and immediate attention in politics and in the economy is sustainability.  My personal suggestion is that sustainability should not be seen primarily as a matter of regulations or prohibitions. I see sustainability primarily as a driver for innovation. It is important for me to understand sustainability as an opportunity. A sensible, holistic sustainability strategy can provide us with the decisive competitive advantage. We shouldn't sit and wait for politicians to do something, but instead move forward purposefully as a company. 

For example, product origin: from supply chain and product labeling to holistic transparency. All this doesn't have to be a tiresome chore, but can be leveraged in terms of customer benefit. Then our customers will be willing to pay extra for it. The success of the Fair Trade Certified seal is just one of many examples. 

The relevance of sustainability strategies also becomes more than clear in the soon to be published Future IT Report ��� where we will see that: Two-thirds of all companies surveyed already have defined sustainability targets. Over 80% of respondents said that IT makes it easier for them to reach their sustainability goals. But: More than half of the companies say that, at this stage, IT and sustainability goals are not yet coordinated and aligned with each other. 

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Step-by-step towards a successful use of artificial intelligence ��� and where it is already proving its worth today. Monday morning, 8���a.m.���time for me to head off to my customer meeting.