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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

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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

Available Languages

English, Chinese

Related material

Teaching note, Video

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