What Does Real Digital Transformation Look Like?

Life Science Marketing Radio

I saw this LinkedIn post from Erasmus Holm, Chief Marketing Officer for the Nordics at MSD, and was curious to learn more. He mentions that the pandemic, although demanding a lot of change, hasn’t necessarily had the lasting effect we expected. He sees companies reverting to the old ways of doing things.

I asked him about how he sees digital transformation, a term I hear a lot, but whose definition has seemed squishy to me. The light bulb came on for me partway through our conversation. It’s not a transformation of just how we do things (interacting digitally, webinars, etc.). It’s a transformation of what we can actually do. What new life science products and services are possible in the digital world?

He makes the point that the human element is as important as the technology.

So technology and buying, you know, software and implementing those kinds of stuff, which is sometimes easy, and often where companies start it's often the mistake, because you underestimate the human transformation that goes into it.

But specifically, it is this critical need for both companies and people, that are really born in the digital age, to understand that we live in a time where digital and real world experiences… are expected just to seamlessly blend into each other.

Amazon, Google and Netflix have raised the expectation for every interaction we have with a company. We should be thinking bigger about ways to serve our customers. Everything revolves around people. Not just our customers, but our colleagues.

…How do you embed innovation? And that comes down to the sort of human aspect of things as well. That if you set up the right teams, you create the environment for people, you start innovation to happen.

And then if you have technology embedded in a company, suddenly you start seeing services and solutions that can actually both do something for the customer and do something for the company in the long run, besides the core product, because we're still a manufacturer of a pharmaceutical. And we're really good at that.

I wondered if a real digital transformation meant not just evolving how customers hear from us, but actually offering new services, possibly changing the business model or expanding it. It’s eye-opening when people talk about what their companies do beyond their core:

It's three phases for us, right? It’s almost like the research development of a product. That's the same for us in the evolution. The first and foremost, we know that we are a research company. The next step, then that's what many pharmaceutical companies end up realizing: Okay. We are also a communication and information company. And thirdly, we are also a technology service data company.

For me, the takeaway is for everyone to think more broadly about the businesses within their business to look for transformation opportunities.

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