Big data has become a common term across all businesses nowadays, with information and data now serving as a commodity for many organizations. This also applies to the life sciences sector, where big data is used to optimize clinical trial efficacy, improve the targeting of patient populations, and accelerate drug development programs. But it also has its uses on the commercial side, where business development managers can leverage the data that they have at their disposal to produce the best results for their organization.
The data your company has on hand can come from two different sources. The first of these is internal data within your existing systems such as client information, sales indicators, and the performance of your products – if applicable. The second is utilizing external data such as third-party industry databases. These are primarily used to scout for new prospects to partner with as well as potential customers to avail of your product/service. Although a database can also be implemented alongside your existing client nurturing strategies, in addition to being utilized for competitive analysis. Ideally, your big data strategy would want to take advantage of information both internally and externally.
For service-oriented companies operating in the life science space, business development tasks mainly include managing inquiries for the service, as well as preparing proposals for selling your product/service to pharma, biotech, or medical device organizations. This can open the possibility for greater integration of data into the business development process so it ultimately becomes a data-driven function. Big data can take the company’s business development further to generate relevant insights and create a solid competitive advantage by conducting a deeper analysis into your historical performance, which can be aided with detailed reports of the relevant KPIs and information available to your business development department.
This can be further used with finding the best leads for you. Prospecting for new partners and clients is a primary task for business development professionals. Big data and analytics can play a key role in aiding this process. With access to large datasets such as Biotechgate, you can have a wealth of information at your disposal that will pinpoint the ideal prospect for you with minimal effort. Big data has also led to a variety of other algorithms and AI being used in business development and sales functions. This includes creating lead scoring systems in your existing CRM to determine the value of prospects. These algorithms assign various points to different criteria, with the total value determining the quality of the lead. Big data can come into play by combining external data with previous client history to analyze the characteristics of their best-performing customers to determine the ideal point allocation. For example, you may find that established biotechs had a higher tendency to go further down the sales funnel and close in comparison to start-ups. This detail can allow you to refocus your business strategy and pay greater attention to that segment. This process can be further automated by utilizing an API from your data source, like the one available for Biotechgate.
Overall, it can be overwhelming when using big data to help advance your organization’s business development. The best practice is to analyze the historical performance of the department, as well as using existing customer information to gain an insight into what has performed best in the past so you can optimize your approach for the future. Combined with external information such as databases, you can simultaneously improve your lead generation.