By Tallulah Price, Senior Strategist, Inizio Evoke
Pharma’s omnichannel conversation is coming of age.
That was my main reflection after attending the recent Pharma Omnichannel Excellence Conference where I joined pharma leaders to explore what’s next for omnichannel.
It’s clear that now’s the time to take ambition through to activation and forge a new path for omnichannel excellence. To go beyond the number of channels or AI pilots used and really focus on engagement that feels relevant and useful enough to change behavior. For me, this is the omnichannel that will work in the field, in local markets, and in the moments where HCPs are making decisions under pressure.
Here are five key takeaways I took from the conversation.
1. Let’s redefine efficiency as relevance
In omnichannel, efficiency is often reduced to speed, scale, volume, or time saved. But as Pavel Bogdashov, Omnichannel Manager at Boehringer Ingelheim, put it: “Thinking of efficiency metrics as ‘more’ or ‘faster’ is the classic trap. The focus when it comes to efficiency should be improve relevance.”
After all, a faster irrelevant message is still irrelevant. And a perfectly orchestrated journey that doesn’t reflect the HCP’s true experience is still a missed opportunity. A better measure of efficiency is whether every interaction is useful and relevant. Is content aligned to the HCP’s needs? Is it delivered through the right route? Does it land at the right moment? Does it help a field team have a better conversation?
In a world where HCPs are time-poor and information-rich, relevance is not a nice-to-have. It’s a must-have.
2. Let’s close the execution gap
Although brand and engagement strategies are often clear, there’s still a significant gap between those strategies and what actually happens in the market. Greg Draper, Commercial Operations Director at Inizio Engage summed it up:
“Future vision is not the problem. The real problem is turning vision into coordinated capability, workflow, and measurement.”
Greg Draper, Operations Director, Inizio Engage
There are certainly lots of barriers to overcome – from disconnected teams to limited local visibility, and complicated frameworks to regulatory uncertainty. Kiren Dulai, Global Senior Manager, Omnichannel Enablement, Strategic Marketing Lead, Canada, Mundipharma, captured it well: “Treat activation as a capability rather than a series of isolated campaigns.” It’s a useful reset that highlights how omnichannel can be much more than a central planning exercise – that it can work as an ongoing tool and skill set that markets can understand, adapt, and use.
3. Let’s embed AI into workflows people actually use
There’s a healthy skepticism around AI hype, and rightly so. After all, if its role is limited to creating more assets or automating more steps, AI’s real potential won’t be realized.
What if we used it to help teams make better decisions? To identify changes in real time and make HCP experiences more personalized? The focus now is on embedding AI into workflows people actually use – empowering them with better insights, next best actions, and clearer signals on what is and isn’t working. It’s about pro-practical AI, rather than AI for AI’s sake.
4. Let’s differentiate through trust, governance, and human capability
As AI becomes more embedded in omnichannel, it’s time to revisit what trust means and how we protect it.
Building ethical governance through approved content systems and evidence standards is key as AI becomes a new intermediary between people and information.
Perhaps most important of all is investing in people to enhance human judgment, rather than replace it. Jon Buckley, Senior Director, Experience at Inizio Evoke, made an important point:
“If everyone is working on the same large language model without human intervention, it is a race to the vanilla. It’s not human versus machine, it’s human through machine.”
Jon Buckley, Senior Director, Experience, Inizio Evoke
Ultimately, approved content libraries, clear evidence discoverability, robust governance, and team capability are no longer operational details but strategic differentiators. They will help to build and redefine trust by ensuring that output is grounded in evidence and context for true credibility.
5. Let’s make behavior change the new gold standard of KPIs
My final and perhaps most important takeaway is measurement. Today, pharma measures activity such as volume, frequency, clicks, downloads, and open rates. Going forward, the focus needs to shift to measuring the value of engagement.
When this value is determined, we can ask whether omnichannel engagement is creating behavior change. Did the HCP understand something differently? Were they empowered to have a better clinical conversation? Did it increase confidence or prompt action?
There’s a shift from measuring and reporting, to learning and optimizing. This provides a clear purpose for omnichannel – moving beyond activity toward impact.
Summing it up is simple
Perhaps the biggest challenge now is delivering simplicity in a complex world. It’s time to move from quantity to quality. From activity to behavior change, and from AI hype to pro-practical AI. To be relevant, useful, and human.
And that is where partners like Inizio Evoke can help. We have the experience and connected capabilities to support healthcare brands from strategy through execution to in-market performance, helping teams build omnichannel strategies that can exist in the real world, not just on a slide.
Because the future of omnichannel will not be won by adding more complexity.
It will be won by making every interaction matter more.
Interested in hearing more? Connect with us here.