Alnylam Reaches a Broader HCP Audience Using Integrated Customer Data
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, a fast-growing biopharma that helps patients suffering from rare diseases, relies on a strong customer data foundation to connect and develop more impactful relationships with the most relevant doctors. Through this data-driven strategy, they are improving their targeting, their engagement with the healthcare ecosystem, and ultimately, their ability to deliver innovative therapies to patients.
I had the opportunity to speak with David Andrew, Alnylam’s CRM & Field Force Technology Lead (CEMEA region). He shared insights about how they get the most out of their customer data investment.
Delivering trusted data to the frontline
During his career, Andrew has seen significant improvement in the way companies are building their customer data backbone. But he noted that quality data is only half of the recipe for successful digital enablement. The other key ingredient is making that data actionable for the field force as part of their everyday workflow. The intuitive interface of OpenData and native integration with Veeva CRM provides an optimized user experience for Andrew and his team. With real-time access to customer data at their fingertips, they can connect with the right target contacts and have a single view of the customer.
“The difference between OpenData and other solutions is that it is fully embedded into our CRM, and it is more intuitive to use,” explains Andrew. “Our field users can easily search, find, and download additional records in real time, which allows them to be more productive and engage efficiently with more healthcare professionals (HCPs). They also get instant access to customized dashboards reflecting their territory through Veeva CRM MyInsights—all within their familiar CRM environment.”
Building a simplified data foundation
Eliminating data siloes has been a challenge in the life sciences industry for many years. But Alnylam has successfully built an integrated solution that gives them a robust data foundation and a 360-degree customer view. Combining the complete Veeva OpenData universe*, Veeva Network for master data management, and a data lake that streamlines all of their reporting requirements, they have reached a high level of data maturity.
One of the key success factors in achieving a strong customer data foundation is simplicity. “The integration of OpenData with Veeva CRM is seamless and very easy to manage,” said Andrew. “Data flows straight into our CRM, which removes a lot of the worry and effort involved in data mapping.”
Veeva OpenData provides managed data governance and proactive updates that propagate to Alnylam users before they are even aware of the changes. “With OpenData, we have a solid customer data foundation that we can trust,” says Andrew. “And when we need to request changes, they are done with speed—in the first quarter of this year, our data change requests were resolved within an average of four hours.”
Connecting with a broader HCP audience
As a company with a robust pipeline specializing in rare diseases, the ability to improve speed to market, efficiently identify new target HCPs, and quickly ramp up sales is essential.
Andrew explains, “Having unlimited access to the OpenData universe allows us to more easily find all the doctors we want to target, especially as the HCPs we need to communicate with do not always belong to a specific specialty like cardiology or neurology.”
Unlimited access to HCP and healthcare organization (HCO) profiles across all users and downstream systems is the number one reason Alnylam chose to have enterprise access to OpenData. Other benefits are simplified data budgeting, avoidance of siloed data purchases, together with easier targeting and profiling.
Enterprise data also allows Andrew’s team to provide efficient market analysis to the broader business. “When we are analyzing new markets, a common question is how many target HCPs there are in that market,” says Andrew. “I can easily run a report and not only quantify the size of a given target group but also identify the key cities and hospitals where the HCPs are located. This information is invaluable for our territory design.”
Full interoperability of the OpenData universe allows the whole organization to share common customer data across business functions, including sales, marketing, medical, compliance, and finance. “Market access is a growing user community at Alnylam,” shares Andrew. “These teams now use OpenData to help navigate the complex hierarchies and affiliations of the healthcare ecosystem.”
Secure data sharing with partners
Alnylam has a broad partner network and it’s essential that partners can perform targeting exercises quickly and without additional data cost. As many of these organizations are also Veeva partners, sharing data is a seamless, compliant experience since authorized data use agreements are already in place.
When Alnylam needs to match data from other providers, their enterprise-level agreement includes the use of Veeva DataMatcher, a self-service tool that allows customers to match third-party proprietary data with Veeva OpenData. The tool automatically matches records quickly and accurately, allowing Andrew’s team to integrate external data efficiently.
On a recent project with a European contract sales organization, a data matching exercise that would have previously taken a week was reduced to hours. “When I worked with other data vendors, matching data from partners was always a nightmare and typically involved lots of lookups on spreadsheets,” recalls Andrew. “I have been impressed by the ease and accuracy of DataMatcher—it removes this pain and hassle.”
For a more in-depth look at how to become more data-driven, read our eBook on Four Foundations of a Data-driven Company.
*Customers with an Enterprise License Agreement have access to the complete customer data universe within OpenData. This includes all data features (HCPs, HCOs, affiliations) for that market as well as valuable additional data insights (e.g. Market Access landscape) and data tools (e.g. OpenData Explorer web portal).