“It is clear the partnership with Salesforce will be one of the key success factors of our digital transformation.”

The Bayer Consumer Health division helps people around the world take better care of their personal health and improve their quality of life through innovative products and services. In order to promote its vision of self-care, sustainability, and create new ways to meet changing customer needs, the division set a new course for digital transformation in 2018 and began to digitise all business areas – from research and development to sales and marketing – with a commitment of €250 million in new digital investments. A key element of Bayer’s transformation is its new digital platform, ‘Data Powered Sales’, which digitalises sales, raises marketing to a new level, and will be further developed into a versatile global exchange platform.

The project at a glance:

• Strengthening digital touchpoints optimises face-to-face meetings between pharmaceutical representatives and doctors
• More efficient data collection serves as the foundation for improved customer relationships
• Optimal targeting of doctors and hospitals enables the most relevant content at the right time
• Improved segmentation streamlines the development of specific user journeys and campaigns
• Lays the foundation for further rollout of Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud in 2022 and beyond

Historically, the sales of the Consumer Health division in EMEA, LATAM, and APAC were primarily based on face-to-face meetings between medical representatives and doctors’ offices. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the company sought to offer more convenience for its customers through timely and relevant digital touchpoints.

In addition to the goal of supplementing or replacing face-to-face sales conversations with digital communication, the company wanted to understand its customers better. To do this, the company collects data about each touchpoint and enriches it with surveys and other information. The data stored in Sales Cloud➚ also forms the basis for automating digital communication via Marketing Cloud➚. This makes it possible to personalise customer relationships and better target doctors and hospitals with exactly the right content at the right time.

With the introduction of ‘Data Powered Sales’, the local country organisations were brought on board to establish a close partnership between global and local teams. In order to mobilise the local markets and manage the change, Bayer’s Digital Transformation and IT team identified local change process leaders to ensure that the regional teams benefit from the new tools.

With the help of Salesforce, fundamental questions could be answered: which doctors in the database prescribe Bayer Consumer Health products? Are there doctors who might primarily prescribe a specific product with whom Bayer has no contact? Data scientists used data from Sales Cloud, segmentation data, and doctors’ reactions to campaigns and supplemented them with geolocation data such as patient proximity to the nearest pharmacy. Salesforce’s data model now makes it possible to link all this data to drive the business - something that was impossible with the predecessor CRM system.

Salesforce serves as a common data platform that gives Bayer a complete 360-degree profile of all its users. Now, the company has visibility of the information it should collect. A database with many characteristics and data points has been created, making it possible to form segments such as channel preference, professional field of interest, and opinion leadership (preferred thought leader). In Marketing Cloud, these micro-segments are used to develop specific customer journeys and campaigns. This has enabled Bayer to acquire new customers and to encourage doctors who already recommend leading Bayer brands, such as Elevit, to prescribe additional products. To do this, Bayer has developed relevant content that underscores the importance of taking prescriptions regularly. “That was something we couldn't really do effectively before,” said Çağri Çaylak, Global IT Product Director and Head of Fragmented Markets at the Consumer Health division of Bayer.

Currently, the company is still in the early stages. But the more data is fed back from the doctors, the more preferences can be processed and used via Salesforce. This makes it possible to further optimise personalisation and launch more effective campaigns and journeys. To this end, the company has already integrated some functionalities of Einstein, Salesforce’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution, to improve newsletter subject lines and the distribution timing of messages, for example.

The biggest gain came from using Marketing Cloud in core markets in Eastern Europe, which was launched at the end of 2020. In the past, every customer interaction was face-to-face. Today, most interactions now take place digitally and a pharmaceutical representative has four touchpoints per doctor per month. Initially, the Consumer Health division focused on three pilot cities, but in the meantime, digital sales and digital marketing for a brand have been expanded to the entire country. Relevant key performance indicators are the overall reach, number of touchpoints, and open rate – all contributing factors to driving more sales growth. Medical representatives are enthusiastic as the Salesforce platform solution makes their work easier. They now leverage the platform to deliver invitations to an event or information about a new study to the doctor digitally. Doctors are no longer provided with all the content at once, as in a typical sales call. They now receive the information relevant to them at the right moment. Positive feedback received from Salesforce and doctors confirms that the information the company offers improves the customer relationship. Open rates (over 20%), click rates (over 3%), and feedback surveys on the content are in line with or exceed industry standards.

Because of the successful pilot, the sales team at Bayer Consumer Health are well prepared for the future. It plans to roll out Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud to more countries by the end of 2022. In addition, the company is considering plans to expand the Salesforce platform to WhatsApp and Telegram and identify additional solutions to meet growing business needs. “These activities will help ensure we are well set up for the future. It is clear the partnership with Salesforce will be one of the key success factors in our digital transformation, increasing investment and bringing in top digital talent across the globe,” summed up Brian Siegel, VP IT Customer Platform and NA Digital Lead at Bayer Consumer Health.