Doing More With Less: Building Smarter, Leaner Omnichannel Operations in Pharma

As commercial teams across the life sciences industry work to deliver more personalized HCP engagement with fewer resources, omnichannel operations have become the defining test of efficiency. Companies are under pressure to simplify complex workflows, scale content activation, and measure impact with greater precision, all while keeping execution lean.

At the Indegene Digital Summit 2025, Gary Holyfield (Chiesi USA), Lauren Jones (Incyte), and Anurag Thakore (Bayer) came together to discuss how they’re reimagining the way omnichannel programs are designed, funded, and managed. In keeping with the Summit’s broader theme of moving from chaos to clarity, the discussion focused on how structure, data, and empowered teams can transform fragmented operations into focused, high-value engagement models.

This recap highlights how these leaders are engineering smarter, more adaptive omnichannel systems that deliver measurable value across commercial, medical, and customer experience functions.

In omnichannel operations, efficiency isn’t about producing more campaigns or messages, it’s about ensuring every interaction delivers measurable value to the right audience.

For Holyfield, this shift means focusing on precision and purposeful engagement rather than sheer activity volume.

“Each activity must deliver more impact and value,” he said.

His five-person team, which supports ten rare-disease products, concentrates on a small number of initiatives that can scale over time instead of spreading effort across multiple low-impact projects.

Jones described how her team improved both efficiency and agility by better connecting data, analytics, and media functions that had previously been managed across multiple external partners.

“We took what was scattered across line items and brought it under one roof,” she explained.

By consolidating oversight and workflows, Incyte reduced redundant costs, improved turnaround times, and strengthened data quality. The model gave the team greater visibility into performance drivers and allowed faster, more coordinated campaign optimization.

At Bayer, Thakore introduced a unified design system to streamline campaign development, improving delivery times by 30 to 50 percent across brands and markets while maintaining consistency.

He explained that the early stages of transformation often involve unexciting groundwork (aligning brand templates, taxonomies, workflows, and review processes) before teams can move on to the more visible and creative parts of change. What he implied was that transformation succeeds not because of flashy innovation, but because of the discipline to establish order first. By investing in that foundation, Bayer built a scalable system where creative energy could finally be directed toward storytelling and insight, rather than chasing approvals or reinventing assets each time.

A strong data and process foundation emerged as a shared priority among the panelists. Jones highlighted Incyte’s decade-old decision to build its own data lake as one of the most important enablers of every new capability that followed. Thakore added that structured data and clear workflows are prerequisites for successful automation.

“Without structure, technology only amplifies chaos,” he cautioned.

The leaders agreed that investing in the fundamentals allows innovation to scale sustainably.

As omnichannel models mature, the talent equation is changing. Holyfield explained that his team is moving from tactical execution toward orchestration, where individuals coordinate data, content, and field insights into unified customer experiences. Jones shared a similar approach at Incyte, emphasizing the importance of hiring analytical and adaptive talent who can collaborate across disciplines.

The panelists agreed that centralization can drive efficiency only when it is paired with trust and flexibility at the brand level.

Thakore recalled how the company’s move to a centralized design and content model initially met resistance. Brand teams worried about losing control over timelines and creative nuance. Over time, as the centralized function began delivering faster, higher-quality outputs and more consistent storytelling, trust grew and adoption followed.

At Incyte, Jones shared that a similar effort didn’t succeed at first but became a valuable learning moment.

“It didn’t work the first time,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean we stop trying to move forward.”

She noted that the experience helped reveal where the organization was ready and where it wasn’t for broader operational change.

Panelists agreed that efficiency in modern pharma requires more than better tools. It calls for disciplined processes, empowered teams, and a culture that values focus over volume. By building on strong foundations and encouraging continuous learning, organizations can achieve omnichannel operations that are lean, scalable, and built to last.