With the ever-growing pressure and competition in the pharmaceutical sector, there is one growing need that of focusing more on core business and strategizing. However, it is still grappling with tasks that are repetitive in nature and may not require much of human discretion. Do RPA Companies offer a panacea for the industry that takes care of these time-consuming repetitive tasks?
It does and in more ways than one. Not only does it help one stay ahead of the technology curve, but also in taking sales and marketing a step ahead.
RPA Companies Can Indeed Remedy More than You May Think
GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) Pharmaceuticals is, in fact, already reaping benefits of implementing robotic process automation in its processes, dubbing the journey as “slow but rewarding”. The fact remains that the implementation must well-thought-out and one step at a time, but as you go about it, returns come in cosistenly.
There are more than one major areas where RPA solutions can be instrumental in bringing down costs in the long run and boost the return on investment.
Reduction in Processing Time
Processing the ever-increasing volumes of data can be a very time-consuming process, especially if quick turnarounds are what you have been expecting. RPA tools can help substantially reduce the processing time in such activities as invoicing, payment, rebates recruitment, HR related data processing, emails and reports and much more.
Facilitating Faster Clinical Trials
By standardizing and automating processes and procedures, RPA helps in accelerating clinical trials and approvals, that otherwise take time. It also helps in real-time reporting which is almost impossible in manual processes.
Improves Sales Force Responsiveness
On the sales side of the industry, it is interesting to see who robotic process automation vendors are enabling sales representatives to fetch and use data most effectively for sales engagement. Processes like generating sales orders, customer related data, placing sample orders, etc., is simplified with RPA
Automating Regulatory Submissions
Submission to regulatory frameworks is not only a tedious job, but also requires meticulous effort. With RPA solutions, technologies like OCR, that increase efficiency in this regard, can be easily and effectively implemented.
Data-Driven Marketing
Even the pharmaceutical market today heavily depends on marketing. CRM is just one part that is included in this endeavor. Gartner says that “By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human.” And that is, in fact, the scenario in the pharmaceutical industry too, where chatbots are becoming the face of marketing and customer relationship management.
The Way ahead with Help from RPA Companies
Gartner also suggests that at last 90% of large and mid-sized companies around the world are readying themselves to try out RPA in at least one form or another. And the pharmaceutical industry is no exception to that. Adoption, however, needs to consider one premise—the implementation is slow, but if kept steady, is due to lead you to heavy cost and time savings and higher return on investment. It’s high time CTOs, CMOs and other stakeholder started considering a business case for implementing RPA solutions in their pharma businesses.
Author
Venkat is highly passionate about solving Business challenges using Technology. He has been instrumental in bootstrapping the company and is currently responsible for leading strategies and innovations to help customers enhance operations and improve efficiency. Among several key projects he was involved over the years, developing an award winning IoT solution which monitors Food Safety, both while in transit and in storage for Emerson Electric has been very close to his heart. Currently over 500+ businesses across the globe are using this solution to track real-time location, temperature and safety of perishable and high value shipments.
