Daiichi Sankyo: breaking down barriers with social media

pharmafile | August 1, 2012 | Feature | Business Services, Manufacturing and Production, Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing |  Chatter, Daiichi Sankyo, NHS, social media 

Digital media is known to help create interaction and dialogue between groups and organisations, but new technology can also create new means of communicating within a company.

This is the thinking behind the internal social-media network Daiichi Sankyo UK has been using since last September. Named ‘Chatter’ the firm says the new facility has revolutionised not only how it communicates internally, but has also had a huge impact on how it works with customers and stakeholders.

The UK affiliate has found the new medium has made internal communications more incisive and efficient, allowing much greater knowledge-sharing and insight. By fostering better internal conversations, the system has also dramatically improved how the company relates to customers and external stakeholders.

The firm’s managing director says Chatter reflects its aim of responding to changes in the NHS, and to forge better relationships with customers.

“It’s a way of enabling a change in culture and mindset, and which in turn matches the change in environment that our customers are experiencing,” says Dr Simon Clough, managing director of the UK business.

What’s it for?

Clough was joint winner of PM Society’s Digital Pioneer Award, which recognised his vision “to revolutionise [Daiichi Sankyo UK] digitally from the inside out”.

This ‘inside-out’ approach also underlines the company’s conviction that new media need to be driven by concrete business objectives. “There’s a temptation to dive in and start doing exciting projects,” comments communications director Joanne Taylor.

“Where we start is: what are we trying to achieve, what’s our business aim? The technology is really the easy bit.”

The resulting projects may be very big or very small in scale, but must be worthwhile, Clough points out. The important distinction is to “make sure the dog wags the tail. We’ve held back from doing something trendy and then looking for a problem to solve”.

Central to the company’s adoption of Chatter, developed by customer relationship management specialists Salesforce.com, was the need to break down internal siloes that might hamper efforts to engage with a locally sensitive and outcomes-driven customer base in the NHS.

In today’s marketplace sales representatives need to work with colleagues company-wide if they are to understand and respond to diverse populations and health priorities; with tailored, value-added solutions. With strong siloes, comes narrow thinking Clough adds.                

“We had an opportunity in Daiichi Sankyo UK where collaboration could start within first and foremost, and the habits, the mindset that underline good collaborative behaviour could then be used externally.”

Daiichi Sankyo addressed this by introducing advanced key-account management processes. Marketing communications have followed suit, putting dynamic, real-time interaction at a premium.

Integrated approach

As Taylor notes, the traditional communications model where strategy is determined centrally and ‘pushed out’ has run its course. The new emphasis is on collaboration, integration and inclusiveness, including everything from strategic objectives to customer relationships.

The Chatter network links directly into the company’s CRM system, in line with the ‘Issho’ (togetherness) ethos inherited from its Japanese parent.

New apps and processes are co-ordinated and consolidated wherever possible. All Daiichi employees are equipped with iPhones and iPads, so access to the Chatter network is immediate and minute-by-minute.

So there is a constant feedback loop of ideas, questions, answers, experiences, suggestions and reports through Chatter that can be plumbed back into the day-to-day business of identifying and satisfying customer needs.

The system avoids the more formal, prescriptive and hierarchical tendencies of e-mail, and also encourages brevity, efficiency and focused thinking. Chatter imposes a 180-character limit – more generous than Twitter’s 140-character ceiling but enough to keep messages to the point.

Users can always attach files, links, keywords or private messages to their posts. They can also form groups, as on any social network, and direct particular communications to particular groups.

A ‘virtual coffee machine’

Taylor likens the effect to a ‘virtual coffee machine’, spanning the full range of interactions from the strictly business-oriented to the merely sociable.

Even these more trivial interactions have value, Clough insists. Posting a light-hearted YouTube clip on a Friday afternoon can bring employees closer together while encouraging informal communication and engagement outside hierarchical structures.

The beauty of the system, Clough notes, is there is no obligation to respond, or to stipulate a distribution list when posting. Everyone can ‘dip in and out’, scanning content in seconds, joining or leaving user groups, using the information when and where they feel it has relevance to them. Inevitably, some employees may feel an open network leaves them over-exposed. Accordingly, Daiichi Sankyo has left its staff to find their own way into the system.

Setting up Chatter involved minimal cost and effort, since the network was already part of Daiichi Sankyo UK’s newly implemented CRM system. Employees wanting guidance on how to use it were told: “there is no rulebook”.

While everyone in the UK business is now actively engaged with Chatter, different people are using it in different ways and to different degrees. Some prefer just to watch and learn, others to pitch in with their opinions.

Curious, but wary

According to Taylor, the initial response was ‘generally curious’ but a little wary. As staff gained confidence, though, Chatter has seen a ‘massive’ increase in usage. Now it is “hard to imagine business life without it,” while e-mail is looking ‘increasingly pedestrian’ as a communication channel.

Clough sees the network as a democratising influence. For example, monthly management meetings are held as open fora on Chatter and monthly financial results posted on the system.

For all that, the network does impose boundaries and a degree of containment. Among the scarier aspects of social media for businesses is the very openness and freedom of expression that makes these networks unique and valuable.

A social media site can be moderated, but unless a company is prepared to be on watch 24 hours a day, it may find itself interceding when the damage from a hostile post is already done.

That damage may also be collateral, such as an over-enthusiastic Twitter feed that strays over the line into advertising a prescription-only medicine. It is a particularly important consideration in a Japanese company where corporate reputation is paramount.

The enclosed Chatter system allows Daiichi Sankyo to quickly learn if an employee has picked up on the wrong message and correct it ‘publicly’ within the network – although Clough stresses this has not happened yet.

Crucially, the network removes the assumption that everyone must have all of the answers. Pre-Chatter, a “willingness to say, ‘I need help’” would have been seen as a weakness, Clough notes.

How it’s used

A snapshot of some of the conversations initiated though Chatter on the day this interview was conducted gives an idea of the system’s broad frame of reference.

• The Speciality Care team shared information about changing team mindsets for better implementation of ‘integrated customer engagement’, as Daiichi Sankyo terms its KAM approach.

• The Supply & Distribution Group reported on a trial of a new system whereby every patient admitted to hospital will have a barcode on their wrist tag containing personal details, medical history and a medication record.

• A Healthcare Outcomes manager (HOM) posted on a successful meeting with a dispensary manager in Worcestershire. Daiichi Sankyo’s local HOM reported positive feedback after the British Hypertension Society talked to healthcare professionals at a medical centre in the north east about the NICE hypertension guidelines and the importance of treatment adherence.

• Several posts suggested ideas for promoting Daiichi Sankyo’s Japanese heritage, including a YouTube video shared by one of the medical team that looks at business etiquette in Japan.

While all of Daiichi Sankyo UK’s call records are still logged on the CRM system, the immediacy of Chatter means reps can jot down their take-out from a meeting while it is front of mind.

They can also get instant feedback from across the company, or source useful contacts when visiting a hospital unit for the first time. Moreover, the system is a boon to public affairs, providing a “regular rolling NHS news feed through everyone who is talking to customers, so we can select the best examples to illustrate what we are discussing”, Taylor points out.

This is a vital resource in an environment where companies need up-to-the-minute case studies to show what is happening on the ground in the health service. The recent All Party Group enquiry into medicines supply shortages was one such example, Daiichi Sankyo using Chatter to provide real-life evidence of pharmacists who were out of stock.

The network is also an invaluable source of intelligence on the therapeutic landscape for emerging company products. The government’s newly launched awareness campaign for lung cancer, for example, was highlighted on Chatter.

That was then

The ‘old’ communications culture within Daiichi Sankyo UK was one in which email was firmly embedded and meetings were face-to-face. Market research and focus groups were also part of the mix, so that “six months later a refined, usually agency-driven solution might pop out”, Clough explains.

That scenario “has really been turned on its head now, with the likes of closed-loop marketing and real-time information on how your proposition is being received by customers, and the ability to adapt off the back of that real-time information”.

Not that Chatter has replaced all other modes of communication. Face-to-face meetings are still held for topics that require more detailed discussion but the constant interaction through Chatter means “the quality of those meetings is improved significantly”, Clough comments.

Instead of a corporate intranet, which is “a glorified filing cabinet really, where you have know where to go to look”, Chatter has given Daiichi Sankyo UK “almost a giant glitter ball, where everything is outward-facing, everything is transparent, everything is broadcast and where you can pick the items that will help you”.

A barometer for the new NHS

While Chatter is by no means a panacea, it is “the barometer for how well we, as an organisation, are adapting to the new pharmaceutical environment”, Clough believes.

“We are all journalists and all our employees have the ability to report from anywhere within the NHS and the country about precisely what is happening. In a market where success is now contingent on timely and relevant joint working initiatives, it is easy to see how we can really improve our performance and that of the NHS.”

Chatter started as a UK-only initiative and the UK company was the first within Daiichi Sankyo to implement this particular CRM system. As things stand, there are only two other affiliates in Daiichi Sankyo (Turkey and Ireland) that have Chatter.                      

But the rest of the organisation is taking a keen interest and looking at developing versions elsewhere, Clough says. Technological developments in the CRM system used by Daiichi Sankyo UK are “taking place on a weekly basis via closed loop marketing”, he notes.

As far as Chatter is concerned: “we are constrained only by our imaginations.” One priority is aligning the system with the company’s emerging external digital media strategy.

Whither digital?

The pharmaceutical industry has its share of digital cheerleaders and its doubters too. Clough remains a pragmatic enthusiast. “We have all the latest technology available to us,” he notes. “All employees have iPads, iPhones and countless apps which enable improved communication and creativity.”

For example, Daiichi Sankyo is developing new apps for storing easy-to-understand guides on company Standard Operating Procedures. And it is working on an e-detailing tool for a range of customer joint-working offerings.

The company has also been lending its communications expertise to a Department of Health steering group on improving medicines adherence in the NHS. Here, the emphasis is on psychological profiling to segment patients and fit the technology to the profile.

An 80-year-old patient on polypharmacy, for example, is unlikely to respond well to text reminders, but a younger patient may do.

In keeping with the philosophy behind Chatter, the broader lesson is that pharma needs to reach out to new ideas, inputs and partners if it is to pursue a more collaborative approach both internally and with its customers.

That might involve working with communications or telecomms experts, or even talking to car manufacturers – as Daiichi Sankyo has done – to see how they put CRM into practice.

As for external social media, “we will leave that for another day”, Clough comments. While Daiichi Sankyo sees clear potential in areas such as patient communities and disease awareness, it is also conscious of the cost and effort involved, for example, in monitoring public sites and responding quickly to problems within a tight regulatory framework.

However ‘glamorous’ all of the new possibilities opened up by digital technology may be, first principles will prevail Clough stresses.

“We only do them if we think there’s going to be a value to our customer and, most importantly, to the patient. Now more than ever, he says, “the industry has to add value, and that’s at the forefront of every conversation.”

Andrew McConaghie