Over the last decade or so, most life sciences companies have considered any effort to evaluate CRM options and migrate their existing platform to be a time-consuming, expensive, and unnecessary exercise. Even those who were unable to effectively leverage their existing CRM to support increasingly demanding business needs as the market was changing, and they were facing bigger and more urgent challenges, were hampered from making a move due to the investments they had already made  to simply patch their current ecosystem. Their previous approaches had essentially rendered them paralyzed.

This is about to change.

Disruption is coming¹ and the only question is when and how companies will address it. Decisions on timing and the approach to migrating a CRM can make the difference between future winners and losers. While the time to decide might not seem urgent, this blog examines some reasons why this decision and execution should happen sooner rather than later.

1. Start supporting your customers’ business needs sooner. Are your business needs and challenges currently being optimally met? If the answer is no, you probably are not able to deliver what truly matters to the customer now in an agile and flexible way with your current CRM setup. Too many transformational initiatives have been stalled or short-changed because of overall technology ecosystem deficiencies and complacent mindsets. Challenges you face demand that you act now. Enabling customer engagement solutions that support hyper-personalized customer experiences can only be achieved through consolidation of the fragmented technical landscape, open and extensible platforms, and modular approach. Successful ecosystems include a next generation customer engagement approach with omnichannel orchestration and advanced AI/ML-driven insight generation capabilities, as well as the delivery of intelligence contextually to the point of execution.
2. Avoid long period of instability and mounting costs supporting it. The waiting game does not offer many rewards. You are sitting on an end-of-life solution where no additional investment will be made, no true enhancements will be produced, and furthermore, a number of key capabilities may no longer be supported. One can argue that waiting makes sense for those who have decided to move onto a new platform because it allows time for that platform to develop further. But that is a risky prospect as a new solution will require years of development and usage cycles to allow for all the typical growing pains. It is not an easy undertaking to achieve a fully stable infrastructure, connectivity, and execution with custom applications and integrations, that also offers all the expected functionality. Not to mention, the promise of maintaining the same UI/UX carries its own limitations which will potentially impact  what can be customized and how easily can that be done.
3. Migrate on your own terms, at your own pace, and with partner you prefer. Deciding to move earlier allows you to take your time and identify the most suitable vendor to help you migrate without scrambling for resources. Given the sheer number of companies performing migrations, it’s likely demand will exhaust available resources, especially if they delay their decision and come to the end of the runway. Having performed multiple migrations and built out numerous accelerators, IQVIA teams have been sharing their experience by training and enabling both small, boutique and large global system integrator partners, to ensure you have a chance to work with your preferred vendor. Additionally, the trained system integrators’ new knowledge, skillsets, and experience are transferable from current skillsets, which will not be the case among the alternative vendors.
   
   Having the ability to set your own timeline, work around important business dates (i.e., a new product launch), dedicate enough time to improve processes with new technology, and even improve some elements of your tech ecosystem landscape, should all be key drivers in deciding to migrate earlier.
4. Future-proof and extend your investment sooner. Migrating to a solution that has already gone through its growing pains, and which has a well-established and robust product roadmap with room for specific customer enhancements, gives you a leg up on the competition. Many customer ecosystems have tight integrations and dependencies on the saleforce.com (SFDC) platform. The unmatched extensibility of SFDC allows customers to easily configure it to meet their needs and incorporate other apps to SFDC’s AppExchange; and, its connected data ecosystem accelerates time to insights and action, while interoperable data and tech stacks optimize the use and control flow of data.
   
   To migrate away from SFDC’s reliable platform could be a very extensive and disruptive process, potentially inflicting 2-10 years of instability on your organization. Instead, consider the value of migrating to an alternative SFDC platform CRM provider. With continuity of platform, you will achieve overall lower total cost of ownership while accomplishing more. IQVIA remains committed to the long-term inherent benefits and innovation that our open ecosystem approach drives with an expanding global network of Salesforce-based partners and expertise.
5. Improve productivity, uplift, and satisfaction now. Leveraging good open technology, streamlining technology investments and improved UI/UX and, and enabling contextual intelligence, will allow for the immediate positive impact that will compound itself while others are stalling. Providing velocity to customer engagement in an easy-to-use manner through access to real-time insights, drives sales force productivity in stakeholder engagements, and ensures portfolio success. The right technology is often the answer as an insight-delivery mechanism.

According to Claude Waddington, commercial digital transformation consultant, “Suboptimal CX is called out by several analysts looking at the current CRM environment. The omnichannel approach moves from a siloed legacy technology approach, to an ecosystem approach. The most powerful strategy of engagement and also cost effective model, takes into account the cost of integration and benefits gained through data unification, and an insights driven approach to physician engagement.”²

While existing solutions are full of challenges and fail to address complex and holistic needs, the good news is that the next generation of platforms and partners are willing to collaborate and innovate together with pharma companies to deliver the promise of a valued customer engagement ecosystem that addresses business needs and maximizes the return on the investment.

Best-in-class organizations are already personalizing experiences, but those on existing commercial ecosystems are ill-equipped to support the future of customer engagement. It is possible to quickly migrate to, tailor, and deploy purpose-built orchestrated solutions built on the world’s leading technology platforms to help accelerate time to market. It is also possible to easily connect with your existing solutions to deliver value to your business through a clear return on investment. Contact IQVIA to find out how.

¹https://www.iqvia.com/blogs/2023/03/understanding-implications-to-your-crm-environment

²https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/veevas-surprise-departure-from-salesforce-sparks-claude-waddington/