22 years, what’s changed?
CSL’s Commercial Director, Lee Ronan, takes a look back at his time in the pharmaceutical industry:
Having survived 22 years in the pharma industry I thought I would write a little article looking back, and looking forward.
2002
We had just come to the end of the fud era (that’s the noise your sales data used to make as the postman put it through the letterbox), and the age of dashboards was beginning. My first role at Aventis pharma was supporting a dashboard role out to our field team (300+ reps – yes in those days pharma companies had a lot of primary care reps). Comparison:
- Back in 2002 excel was an analysts best friend
- Sales data wise we were starting to access our own sales at a account level, but competitor data was only available at a brick level
- CRM systems were really only call reporting tools
- We also all went to the office 5 days a week without fail
- And on top of this, the UK was considered a really important country!
2024
Fast forward to now, we see a lot of positive changes:
❎ Excel has massively improved, and is still your best friend (thank you, Bill)
💊 Sales data is now available at GP practice level for all products (thank you, NHS)
🤖 AI is starting to aid us in the workplace (thank you, future robot overlord)
💪 Flexible working has massively improved quality of life (thank you, Covid)
📊 Super advanced dashboards bringing together disparate datasets
📈 More chart types than you can dream of! I would say we have perhaps reached “peak chart” whereby they are as good as they need to be
But we have also seen a few backwards steps:
↘ Field team numbers have shrunk massively
👎The UK no longer carries the same weight internationally
💷CRM systems have got bigger, more expensive, but not yet providing significantly more value to the field teams
2046
So, what will be different in 22 years time I wonder.
Will there still be sales reps? – Probably, after all, people buy from people
Will AI have replaced us all? – No, AI will help us do more but it can’t replace us all
Will the UK still be important on the global scale? – Maybe, although if the current trend continues potentially not!
Will someone actually maximise the potential of CRM – hang on, I think I just saw a flying pig out of my window!
For support with business intelligence insights, drop me an email at leer@csl-uk.com and I look forward to getting back to you.
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