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    Case Study

    Digital transformation at Novartis to improve customer engagement

    By Donald A. Marchand and Polina Bochukova
    22 pages
    December 2014
    Order this case study
    Reference: IMD-3-2437

    The pharmaceutical industry was under siege, with regular price rollbacks and the powerful advance of generics frequently making news headlines. Many of the industry’s leading companies, including Novartis, were cutting their sales forces, while sales representatives who still had jobs felt increasingly disengaged. David Epstein, the head of Novartis’s Pharmaceuticals division, bucked the trend. He introduced a strategic initiative that aimed to fundamentally transform Novartis’ selling model. Epstein committed to an aspirational goal of equipping 80% of the company’s field forces worldwide with the latest iPad technology by the end of 2012, in just 15 months. A few months later, he set his teams an even more ambitious challenge: to equip 100% of the sales force by the end of 2013, which meant rolling out 25,000 new devices across the globe within a two-year period. Novartis was about to embark on a digital transformation journey, with the ultimate goal of providing the right drug to the right patient at the right time.

    Learning Objective
    • Leading organizational transformation programmes
    • New models of customer engagement in the pharmaceutical industry
    • Harnessing the power of digital for strategic and operational change
    Keywords
    Digital Transformation, Customer Engagement, Customer Relationship Management, Pharmaceuticals, Sales Force, Strategy
    Settings
    World/global, Switzerland
    Novartis, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals
    2011-2013
    Type
    Field Research
    Copyright
    © 2014
    Available Languages
    English, Chinese
    Related material
    Teaching note, Video
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