For a long time, the customer relationship between MedTech companies and healthcare professionals (HCPs), as well as healthcare providers (HPs), has been changing. The Medtech industry, like many others in the past couple of years, has been faced with an acceleration of nascent changes such as digital transformation and an increase in customer expectations – causing trends to solidify and become the new normal. Now, with basic assumptions around interactions and relationship building fundamentally altered, traditional customer engagement models can no longer deliver against their ambition for the future. We have witnessed different approaches by Medtech companies, some learning from inside and others from outside the healthcare space, to rethink their approach to customer engagement and how to make it more future fit.  

Based on our experience, we have identified three crucial ways to transform customer engagement strategies so businesses can succeed in this new world of Medtech. 

Hybrid Engagement with a Purpose 

COVID-19 has permanently changed how the healthcare system works, forcing Medtech to quickly shift to remote engagements and digitize offline processes. Now, that the pandemic is more under control, it is apparent that there is no way back. Today’s customer engagement preferences have changed.  

So, what does this mean for Medtech moving forward?  

Medtech needs to engage with customers in a blended way – balancing the online and offline worlds – making permanent use of remote channels while at the same time recognizing the points at which a more human interaction makes a difference. In-person interactions remain a valid and irreplaceable tool at various points in the customer journey, but Medtech companies need to be targeted and purposeful in which types of interactions they favor for this and leveraging virtual interactions and multi-channel where relevant and feasible. 

How to achieve a more hybrid engagement model? 

• Shift your mindset from sales to customer: One crucial element in our work in this space is about the organizational mindset shift – from a sales funnel mindset that focuses on closing the “deal”, to more of a customer journey mindset, where building longer-term relationships is of higher priority. The closing of a sale no longer marks the end of the journey, it is only one additional step in the MedTech-HCP/HP relationship.
• Adapt engagement approach to customer type and journey stage: Different customer groups have different needs and preferences at different stages of the customer journey – understanding the journey both from a funnel perspective (awareness to conversion to loyalty/recommendation), but also from a touch point perspective (I.e. which touchpoints does a customer use across their journey). For instance, a hospital’s procurement lead will have different engagement needs than a physician who owns a single practice. Vivantes, the biggest hospital system in Germany, has different needs than a rural doctor. Understanding these needs and preferences is key to identifying which type of interaction adds the most value at each point along the customer journey.  
• Capture individual customer preferences: Medtech should focus on customer preferences and align with them where possible. Accurate tagging in CRM systems helps paint a stronger picture of customer understanding and personalization. It is important that this knowledge is shared within the Medtech organization so that all stakeholders act upon it accordingly (sales reps from different divisions, marketing, etc). 
• Ensure engagement and experiences align seamlessly: Individual high-quality interactions are relevant but diminished if a customer feels that follow-on connections are disjointed. A set of well-orchestrated interactions across the journey can improve the overall customer experience. MedTech organizations should work towards ensuring sales and marketing have a holistic view of the customer and follow through on the captured learnings. 

Optimized Interactions in the Virtual Space 

The pandemic has forced many to embrace tools they weren’t previously comfortable with, and these changes are permanent. The use of online tools has grown – and HCPs are using online information sources more than ever. The key benefits of more digital interactions are around convenience – research shows aspects such as flexibility of timing, less travel, less impact on workload and a more extensive selection of webinars instead of conferences. But purely digital interactions also have their shortcomings: loss of personal relationships with the sales reps, inability to network and overall, less engagement between reps and their customers. The focus should be on optimizing virtual interactions and reducing these drawbacks.  

With so many competing demands on attention, nurturing and managing leads with targeted engagement is even more relevant in categories where the typical product lifespan is longer, given fewer windows of opportunity to sell the product. And digital channels allow for much more customized and recurrent interactions that permit Medtech to stay within the relevant consideration set. 

Excellence in virtual events is driven by recognizing where efforts should be refocused when designing the experience. The key is to ensure virtual interactions are optimized to take advantage of the technologies used to engage customers, rather than be seen as a lesser alternative to in-person interaction. How can that be done? 

• Update and optimize content online: While online sessions are usually seen as more convenient, it is also harder to keep the participants engaged and focused. Digitizing content used in offline interactions was the first step many Medtechs took – and quickly found that this was not sufficient. The content needs to be fully adapted to fit different channels and delivery mechanisms, in terms of level of detail, structure etc. 
• Use data and insights to underpin decisions: One benefit of digital is its measurability. Data and insights need to be used to ‘test and learn’ when selecting and enhancing channels, content and delivery methods. Establishing the right KPIs and monitoring them is key. Virtual interactions provide an excellent opportunity to collect further customer insights, which can help inform both future remote and in-person interactions.
• Reimagine interactions to facilitate discussion: Oftentimes, virtual interactions don’t provide the same opportunities for participants to connect with peers and share experiences. Duplicating offline approaches into an online channel does not work, and MedTechs need to refocus their activities accordingly. Optimized virtual events prioritize connection and community elements while reducing the relevance of purely communicational elements.  

Content is King (even more than before) 

Customers are looking for convenient ways to educate themselves on specific topics. An individual Medtech’s authority in specific fields can make them a trusted source to provide education or even build connections in a non-commercial way. But they are not alone in this endeavor, and companies are feeling the pressure to deliver high-quality, relevant digital content like never before. While not all companies can keep up with the accelerated pace of content creation, Prophet’s Altimeter colleagues found that those that are successful in meeting this demand have implemented an “Agile Content System.” For many Medtechs in particular, and healthcare companies in general, internal compliance processes  are a key obstacle to timely content creation, but there are simple ways to improve this:  

• Ensure technology and workflows are working to streamline approval processes: Approval and compliance processes need to be structured in a way that allows for speedy, efficient publishing. In healthcare specifically, reviews by multiple stakeholder groups such as the ethics boards, legal teams and subject matter experts can slow down the approval process significantly. A modular content creation approach can help, as well as clearer content ownership and roles. 
• Restructure content teams for greater agility: A centralized content team does not necessarily work for all Medtech firms. Depending on the key objective and business need (i.e. brand awareness building vs demand/revenue generation), the ideal structure should be set up but it’s essential they work together on a shared agenda. Our research shows that the most effective organizations balance both brand and demand.
• Set bolder, clearer goals that go beyond brand: Oftentimes, Medtech organizations are focused on content to drive brand awareness. With the changing preferences of their customers, there is a need to revise this approach. This shift in thought leadership (i.e. Siemens Healthineers Insights series or their Healthcare Challenges podcast), also requires a review of the KPIs to ensure the correct content metrics are being tracked and reported on. 

The state and success of digital transformation varies considerably around the world, with some distinct disparities between the digital “haves and have-nots.” The latest global research report from Altimeter, a Prophet company, provides not only detailed insights on the differences between individual markets but also some key learnings.

The U.S. market, for instance, is largely looking past digital transformation, having invested heavily during the last 10 years to replace legacy infrastructure and migrate more operations to the cloud. U.S.-based firms today are focused on strategic innovations (e.g., greater customer-centricity, digital product development). However, China, which never had to contend with outdated systems, was able to leapfrog ahead to advanced apps and immersive digital experiences.

In Europe, there is a wide variance of digital maturity. The U.K. market looks more like the U.S., but Germany is not quite as far along on its digital transformation journey. It’s also important to note that the most advanced firms in Europe have reached the same level of digital maturity as digital leaders in China and the U.S., but average firms generally lag compared to their global peers.

Europe is Catching Up in Its Digital Transformation Efforts – Quickly Enough Though?

Taking a closer look at Altimeter’s data in terms of C-level sponsorship of digital transformation initiatives, the U.K. has the highest tendency to appoint a CDO or CIO to own and/or sponsor digital transformation. However, Germany and the U.S. tend to rely marginally more on the CIO or CEO. At the same time, more American and Chinese firms report excellent results from their digital transformation programs, but most European companies report that they only have good or fair results.

A potential reason for this is that European firms are somewhat more conservative in their approaches to transformation overall. For instance, German firms prioritize employee engagement, digital literacy and operational efficiencies in their digital transformation agendas as much as they do growth. Innovation, on the other hand, is a much lower priority.

U.S. firms are notably more focused on profitability and revenue in their digital transformation programs than their European counterparts. It seems that many European firms are focused on keeping in step with their peers and competitors and that’s especially true in Germany. The implication is that many established European companies are still building a digital foundation for the future.

“more American and Chinese firms report excellent results from their digital transformation programs, but most European companies report that they only have good or fair results”

U.K. organizations are the most likely (69%) to cite using digital technology as an opportunity to become more efficient, perhaps partially reflecting the need to improve their lagging productivity rate versus the U.S. (46%), Germany (42%) and China (52%).

German organizations (58%) are the most likely to view digital technology as a priority investment to replace outdated or obsolete technology, as compared to the U.K. (40%), U.S. (39%) and China (18%).

Europe Invests Long-Term and the U.K. Adopts Agile Working Methods

Compared to U.S. firms, European firms also have longer-term expectations for their transformation investments. At least 40% of surveyed companies in Germany and the U.K. expect it will take at least two years to see positive results from transformation investments, versus 31% of U.S. firms. One reason for the longer time horizon is the relative lack of sufficiently digitally trained staff, which is a bigger challenge in the U.K. and Germany than it is in China or the U.S.

Of course, Europe cannot be considered a monolithic market. There are substantial differences between the U.K. and Germany. The U.K. firms surveyed have adapted better to digital transformation by, for example, adopting agile working to a greater extent than those organizations in Germany, which are more likely to have process-driven cultures.  Additionally, data silos are a much bigger problem in Germany compared to the U.K., which shows more leadership in data science.

In Germany, digital marketing is still mainly viewed in terms of ad campaigns. And in both the U.K. and Germany, digital marketing is generally below average in owning the customer experience. There are also varying priorities for the future: U.K. firms put less focus on hiring and training in digital transformation and as a result, business model changes are less likely to happen in Germany. Also, cybersecurity and cloud adoption are important priorities in the U.K., while cross-functional collaboration platforms are of less relevance in Germany.

Don’t Focus on Infrastructure, Focus on Creating an Agile Organization

Our digital transformation research, as well as our market experience, suggests that firms are better served by focusing on organizational changes and improved agility rather than updating infrastructure. After all, infrastructure is constantly advancing so that’s a job that will never be completed. But increased organizational adaptability and agility will help organizations adjust to ongoing change and proactively drive it.

Approaching these challenges in the right way is key. To do so, companies should follow a three-step approach:

1. Digital Benchmarking: Conduct a rapid heatmap assessment of your organization’s (enterprise-wide) digital transformation maturity. Identify where the opportunities for improvement are, and how your business benchmarks against best-in-class digital maturity (both in your market(s) and globally).
2. Digital Immersion: Run a digital innovation workshop with key stakeholders across your organization to share the latest digital trends (not just specific to your industry, but also apply learnings from other industries) and explore the digital art-of-the-possible to identify opportunities for augmenting your own digital transformation journey.
3. Digital Mobilization: Build (or revisit your existing) digital transformation vision and roadmap, ensure all roadmap initiatives are tied to commercial value and make certain tracking mechanisms are in place to guarantee the realization of this value.

Companies are well aware that quality content — engaging, personalized and distributed at scale — is an essential part of modern marketing. Whether it’s using light-hearted memes or in-depth reports, an agile content strategy builds relevance and brand awareness while also establishing companies as thought leaders in their industries.

Though businesses worldwide are developing increasingly sophisticated content strategies to generate leads, demand and revenue, our latest research – surveying 484 executives across the U.S. Europe and China – uncovered some powerful focus areas for companies, specifically in Europe, to hit those goals. Here, we outline the three digital content imperatives European companies should be actioning against now:

1. Optimize Your Organizational Structure

A slight majority — just over 50% — of all European companies in our research use a centralized creative team, which manages content across departments and geographies. That’s not surprising, since for many years, that’s been the go-to model.

In the past, there were good reasons to consolidate content production with a central creative team. This internal agency model allowed for better governance, more consistent quality and a quicker production time. As businesses became more digital, they moved away from creating awareness through brand-centric content and focused more on mid-funnel content, such as thought leadership or buying guides. These factors were instrumental in companies shifting content production away from external agencies.

But this model is only sustainable up to a point and as many companies transform for the digital age, conditions are rapidly changing. Badly judged centralization can constrain the ability to tailor content locally and add significant differentiated value. Our research showed that German companies are most likely to rely on a centralized approach, at 60 percent. That compares to 53% in the U.S. and 44% in China. The European companies we spoke to said that aligning multiple teams around a unified content strategy is their biggest challenge, at 27%, this compares to 23% in the U.S. and 15% in China.

A better way: Increasingly, more companies — and 32% of our global sample — have moved beyond centralization, setting up additional content-producing centers. Typically, they still have a central creative team, which sets much of the overall content strategy. This team creates and enforces editorial guidelines for quality and owns the visual and verbal identity for consistency. It can also hold the technology and provide training for data-based content creation and the measuring of content success.

The work with our clients in Europe has shown how helpful this organizational structure can be in meeting the unique content demands of different business units and geographies. It’s vital in European markets, which often face other regulatory guidelines.

2. Embrace Tech and Data to Create, Personalize and Measure Content

The biggest challenge for today’s content producers is to consistently produce personalized content at a large scale — and do it in a way that increases revenue. To do this, companies need more than the right content. They need to deliver it to the right person, at the right time and in the right channel – and that requires using more data and automation.

Yet companies in Europe are most likely to say that their solution is simply to hire more content creators, at 24%, compared to 18% in the U.S. and 13% in China. Producing content at scale isn’t something that can be solved by simply adding more employees.

“An agile content strategy builds relevance and brand awareness while also establishing companies as thought leaders in their industries.”

Only 11% of European respondents say they use AI to create and deliver personalized content at a large scale, based on AI-driven customer segments and analytics. That compares with 22% of those in the U.S. and 25% in China. (Germany presents the most extreme example of this at two percent, versus 10% in the U.K.)

And just 10% say they rely on AI-driven analysis of demographic, behavioral and psychographic data, enhanced with third-party data to create customer segments. That compares to 19% in the U.S. and 35% in China.

European companies are also noticeably more conservative about most uses of consumer data, citing more concerns about privacy than those in other regions. And for good reason, as data privacy legislation in Europe is more stringent than it is in the U.S. or China.

A better way: Our research shows that the best approach is investing in an innovative set of practices that make up an agile content system. These systems:

• Use data to inform content creation
• Produce content in modules for approval and recombination
• Centralize and automate content storage
• Upload a standard design system
• Measure content effectiveness beyond awareness and engagement

European companies need to push harder to create clear guidelines on how data is used. What is acceptable, and why? What are the guidelines for content aimed at consumers versus B2B efforts? These conversations are increasingly important as companies face a cookie-less future.

3. Tune Campaigns for Different Regions

European countries have long understood that regional differences are significant and strategies that resonate in Portugal might be a total failure in Finland. But in a world of digitally-driven content and AI that can be finely tuned for each market, those differences are not what they used to be. And they can often become excuses for inconsistencies that limit the effectiveness of a content strategy.

These disparities can also be seen in channel effectiveness, with European countries less likely to say their audience engages with them on critical social-media channels. Just 37% of European companies say Facebook provides their highest engagement rate, compared to 55% of those in the U.S. Also, only 15% cite LinkedIn as their most effective, compared to 20% in the U.S. (Interestingly, more European companies say Instagram is their best source for engagement, at 31%, compared to 22% in the U.S.)

Companies in Europe are more likely to use reach as the primary metric of effectiveness than the more advanced engagement metrics used in the U.S. and China. But, companies in Germany (36%) and Spain (34%) are more likely to lock those metrics away in silos specific to individual channels.

A better way: In developing a company-wide digital content strategy, investigate differing standards and requirements in each geography. What changes can be made for greater consistencies within markets, especially regarding automation and success metrics?

Every January, the Prophet team sets out our predictions for what the year ahead might bring. This year one of the predictions we made was that 2020 would be the year when failed digital transformation initiatives would face a reckoning.

And then 2020 happened.

Since COVID-19 first emerged in Asia at the start of the year and then took hold in Europe in March, we have lived through a period of dramatic change – the pace of which nobody could have predicted.

This is especially true when it comes to the adoption of digital technologies in our professional and personal lives. In the UK, the e-commerce share of total retail jumped from 20 percent to 30 percent in just two months, and even as lockdown eased, online grocery purchases continued to rise, almost doubling from mid-May to mid-June. In France, in just one week, there were almost half a million online telemedicine consultations, compared to 40 thousand the month before. And, following a surge in-home streaming in March, Netflix agreed to reduce the bitrate for its streams across the EU to lessen the demand on networks.

In the 2020 State of Digital Transformation report, my colleagues at Altimeter, a Prophet company, have surveyed leaders across the globe to understand how their organizations are responding to the shifts and trends that are shaping how they transform. For those of us in Europe, it provides a fascinating snapshot of the way coronavirus has dramatically shaped the role technology plays in transforming businesses.

Agile Becomes More Than a Buzzword

One of the most significant shifts in this year’s study is the key drivers of transformation efforts. In 2019, the top driver for digital transformation was growth opportunities in new markets. But in 2020, in reaction to the global pandemic and the associated economic pressures, leaders have shifted their focus to operations.

It is in this area we see one of the key differences between the leaders of transformation efforts in Europe and their North American peers. In North America, the top transformation driver is increasing productivity and streamlining operations (41%), but in Europe, the need to work with greater agility is more likely to drive transformation efforts (35%).

“It has become vital for organizations to become more digitally mature.”

The need for agile business practices is particularly pressing in Europe, which experienced a faster and deeper lockdown than North America. This lockdown has required leadership to adapt its transformation efforts to address rapidly shifting customer demands.

Europe Leads the Way in Employee Collaboration

COVID-19 has accelerated the need to shift to virtual ways of working, which has been mirrored by a boom in virtual collaboration tools. The 2020 State of Digital Transformation report shows that Europe is leading the way in this area, with 58% of respondents reporting that platforms to enable employee collaboration was either a top strategic objective for digital investment, or that employees frequently connect over digital platforms. This is particularly pronounced in Germany, with 65% of respondents in the top two levels of employee collaboration and engagement.

Seamless Experiences Command a Price Premium

The rapid adoption of digital technologies throughout the pandemic has shone a light on the points at which experiences break, with issues around technology being the most commonly received complaint.

The 2020 State of Digital Transformation report reflects this, with 52% of respondents reporting that they were yet to achieve a seamless sales and service experience.

But the benefit of doing so is also clear, and it’s an area where Europe leads the way, reflecting a relatively higher adoption of digital tools for sales teams.

29% of European respondents reported that they were able to charge a higher price premium as a result of offering a seamless sales and service experience online, compared with only 15% in North America and 9% in China.