In the high-stakes pharmaceutical industry, competitive intelligence provides vital insights to assist in making critical decisions for strategic excellence. However, not all intelligence is of equal value. Paying attention to the quality of pharma competitive intelligence is part of effective competitor analysis and is thus crucial. The insights gathered from competitive intelligence (CI) engagements are intelligence, not data – thus, CI-based insights do not easily lend themselves to most quantitative methods for robust quality assessments.
The Issue with Pharma Intelligence Gathering
Lately, there has been an excessive reliance on the usage of key opinion leaders (KOLs) as sources of primary competitive intelligence. In our surveys, we found that:
- Approximately 80% of the intelligence comes from KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) or their associates.
- Around 75% of questions are answered by sources lacking domain credibility from most decision-makers’ perspectives, i.e., nearly 75% of the questions are answered by sources whom most decision-makers would not consider to have credible insights on the questions they answered.
As a reader, you might want to benchmark what fraction of your primary intelligence comes from KOLs.
Sources of Intelligence Affect Quality of CI
One of the key factors that affects the quality of pharma competitive intelligence is the sources of intelligence. Expecting KOLs to be knowledgeable about the commercial or corporate aspects of competitors is unrealistic. Even if they know, they are likely to be bound by non-disclosure agreements – precautionary and astute interpretation needs to be exercised when leveraging such insights. But why do CI agencies resort to this route? The answer is simple – it is the path of least resistance in the collection of intelligence, predominantly for a couple of reasons:
- Most KOLs are more accessible than sources in the competitor organizations.
- The inherent structure of the team of the CI vendor. Analysts who collect intelligence for the vendors mostly have a life sciences background and are comfortable talking about science, R&D and clinical aspects. There is nothing wrong with this; in fact, it is an excellent attribute to have in the intelligence collection team.
However, in order to collect intelligence from the company sources, not only ‘life science skills’ but also ‘commercial skills’ are required. Teams, where members have a dual background (i.e., individuals with a life science and a business degree or experience), tend to excel; however, such individuals or teams are rare in vendor organizations. Why? Such individuals are expensive to hire and they do not tend to stick in the CI vendor organizations for a variety of reasons.
Besides a life science and therapy area background, the key factors collectively falling under the ‘commercial skills’ that impact the quality of pharma competitive intelligence, particularly from an intelligence-gathering perspective, include:
- Understanding how the organizations are structured
- Knowing how decisions are made
- Comprehending how information flows through the organizations
- Identifying who are the originators, disseminators, and users of information, etc.
Sources Network is A Driver of CI Quality
Another critical success factor that significantly enhances the quality of pharma competitive intelligence is the ‘network’ of the vendor. The network not only increases access to the sources but also leads to additional sources via referrals, thereby amplifying the sources of high-quality intelligence. For insights to be actionable, the sources of intelligence need to be knowledgeable about the intelligence and/or have proximity to the intelligence being sought. In a separate article, we outlined the indicators of inadequate competitive intelligence within the pharmaceutical industry that pharmaceutical companies should prioritize addressing.
In summary, pharmaceutical competitive intelligence gained via primary research is one of the frequently utilized decision-making aids. Most competitive intelligence firms claim to provide actionable insights. However, truly actionable insights come from credible sources of intelligence. Paying attention to the sources and respondents is vital for leveraging intelligence and its subsequent use in decision-making.
BiopharmaVantage specializes in providing premium quality competitive intelligence services for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. If you would like to explore how we can assist you, then please contact us.