As pharma’s customer base grows increasingly diverse and omnichannel customer engagement becomes a necessity, pharma’s traditional commercial execution approach can’t keep up. To improve the customer experience, pharma companies have to start by changing the experience within the commercial organization—arming teams with the data-driven, actionable, customer-level recommendations they need to succeed.

That’s why global professional services and technology firm ZS has launched VERSO, an AI-based product family designed for intelligent commercial execution. VERSO deploys artificial intelligence and machine-learning-based algorithms to transform vast amounts of data into suggested actions that are personalized for each individual user and each customer. It helps pharma organizations move away from segment-level thinking and closer to commercial teams’ holy grail of delivering tailored experiences via one-to-one engagement.

Two new software products—VERSO Field Insights and VERSO Brand Insights—join ZS’s existing Orchestration Engine in the new VERSO product family. Together, these products help pharma organizations optimize their efforts across customer, channel, content and cadence, delivering actionable recommendations and a rich user experience at the point of commercial execution. VERSO Field Insights and Brand Insights offer personalized insights, dynamic targeting and suggestions to field representatives and brand managers, respectively, using industry-specific algorithms that learn and evolve based on user behavior and feedback. These recommendations are powered by VERSO Orchestration Engine, which supports omnichannel efforts by analyzing both traditional pharma data sources and new data sets to discover customer trends and provide users with recommendations for their next best actions. VERSO Orchestration Engine also can connect with leading campaign management and marketing execution platforms through APIs for the execution of next best actions.

“VERSO is truly transformative in today’s AI-powered era,” said ZS Principal Saby Mitra, who leads the firm’s customer-centric marketing technology practice. “It not only dramatically changes the trajectory of how omnichannel customer experience should be designed and delivered in pharma, but also enables commercial teams to drive significantly stronger business outcomes.”

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The VERSO product family was built based on ZS’s deep expertise in pharma commercial strategy and execution, extensive experience with data science and advanced technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning, and deep understanding of pharma commercial teams’ day-to-day needs and responsibilities. Its user interface offers tap, text and talk functionality so that users can easily access insights on the go.

The field force at Astellas Pharma Europe Limited (APEL), which is a charter client of VERSO Brand Insights, has found that the product saves them considerable time and delivers information conveniently. “It’s a new way of working that has an immediate impact,” said Andrew Pasfield, director of business intelligence and analytics at APEL. “Our people bought into the fact that they could consume the analytics very quickly from a news feed on their phone.”

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This immediacy is crucial, as is pharma organizations’ ability to glean valuable insights and make better, more informed decisions about their changing customer base, according to ZS Principal Mahmood Majeed, who leads the firm’s global business technology practice. “Companies that take steps to innovate how they consume and respond to customer insights will uncover missed opportunities they couldn’t see before, which amounts to a significant competitive advantage.”

VERSO is a strategic addition to ZS’s mature technology portfolio, complementing Javelin™ software for commercial planning and REVO™ Analytics, which spans the analytics spectrum from data management to dashboards to advanced analytics. “Pharma companies are facing increasing complexity, and they need accurate and actionable insights to drive their commercial strategies,” said ZS CEO Chris Wright. “With VERSO, ZS’s product portfolio now enables our clients’ success throughout the whole commercial planning, execution and analytics continuum.”

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