Transforming engagement on an enterprise scale

A top 20 pharmaceutical company implemented insights management enterprise-wide, saving $3 million in hard costs and generating 10x ROI in the first year of deployment.

In-person or live virtual engagements have major drawbacks:

• Time-limited – the biggest talkers have an outsized impact on resulting insights
• Need everyone to be available at the same time, excluding people in some time zones
• Require a common language, limiting who can participate
• Hierarchy influence or seniority bias can skew the discussion
• Limit follow-up questions that could reveal important nuance or novel perspectives

An insights management platform enables more frequent customer touchpoints, improves cross-functional information sharing, and lowers costs compared to traditional engagement methods. Asynchronous group engagement, supported by advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, lowers logistical hurdles, allows for deeper and more considered insights, enables efficient information sharing, and provides critical reporting and analysis capabilities that save time and accelerate strategy.

Several business teams within a top pharma company already used the Within3 insights management platform to address insight-gathering challenges. Wanting to capitalize on the success of these implementations, senior leadership formed a task force to drive use of the platform with the following goals:

1. Create a new organization-wide strategic insight-gathering capability
2. Centralize contracting and management of insights management technology
3. Increase awareness of the platform within the broader organization

The client and Within3 worked together to set users up for success. This partnership included:

• Awareness and training – Onboarding included guidance on using the platform. Ongoing awareness activities included informational webinars, peer-to-peer sharing, email campaigns, and internal newsletters.
• Consultative support services – Within3 client success team members provided pre-launch consulting on the goals and objectives of each engagement, as well as support during and after each engagement.
• Management reporting – The client and Within3 met monthly to review current and upcoming engagements, assess awareness and training activities, identify challenges, and suggest improvements to the program.

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The company used a standard ROI model to estimate the value of the expanded program, taking into account several factors:

• Hard costs – costs directly saved by teams by engaging virtually versus alternative methods. The company estimated that it saved an average of at least $25,000 on each online session, exceeding $3 million saved over 125 sessions in the first year of the program.
• Soft costs – the financial impact of hours saved by business teams engaging virtually. To calculate ROI, the company assumed each virtual meeting saved at least an average of 40 hours of internal coordination and meeting time. Using this formula, soft cost savings due to increased internal efficiency totaled $500,000 in the first year of the program.
• Revenue lift – the impact of the business insights and associated improvements to business results from internal and external customer engagements. To estimate revenue lift, the company tied a 1% revenue impact to brands within 12 months of launch that used online discussion sessions. These launch stage brands were chosen because market feedback resulting from Within3 engagements most directly and immediately affected market performance. Based on this approach, the revenue lift for the program was estimated at more than $10 million.