A growing demand for digitalization
Dr. Andreas Hildesheim, Senior Global Product & Marketing Manager at BASF Pharma Solutions
As a means of ensuring cost efficiency, elevating customer experiences, and keeping up with industry changes following the pandemic, digitalization has never been more important.
For Dr. Andreas Hildesheim, Senior Global Product & Marketing Manager at BASF Pharma Solutions, it comes down to two key questions: Why is digitalization important for our customers and why is it important for BASF as a supplier to the pharma industry?
“As a supplier, it’s about efficiency and getting the necessary information such as product and compliance information or delivery status to our customers without them having to manually reach out,” Hildesheim says. “From a customer’s point of view, they are consumers in their private lives, so their expectations are rising. They want this information at their fingertips and that’s why these digital tools are so important.”
Marcus Pospiech, Director of Digitalization & Business Processes at BASF Nutrition & Health says digitalization is also important in reducing errors. “Pharma is a very regulated and sensitive industry,” he says. “The more manual errors, the more severe the impact because misunderstanding or forgetting a regulation can impact a product and people’s lives. Digitalization comes with a higher quality that is less prone to error. The more information exchanged digitally, the higher the accuracy and validity.”
Marcus Pospiech, Director of Digitalization & Business Processes at BASF Nutrition & Health
An integral part of understanding what exactly customers want, how their needs are changing, and what their pain points are requires keeping track of industry changes, feedback, and taking the time to listen.
BASF does this by collaborating closely with customer-facing specialists in technical services and sales departments, running internal and external validation sessions to make sure the market has an appetite for new ideas, and by embedding tools into customer touchpoints asking about their experiences.
“We established an iterative process,” says Hildesheim. “It’s not like we sit here, think about the next best thing to bring to market, develop it, and throw it over the fence. It’s this idea that we’re on a journey and we’re including internal stakeholders and customers to get their feedback and improve digital services so we have a high acceptance when we bring it to market.”
Pospiech agrees, describing the process of co-creation as a “win-win.” He adds that looking beyond pharma and further afield is another key strategy. “We look at general trends and transfer that to how we could solve problems in the pharma industry.”
