Innovating the GTM Model at the Commercial End of the Life Sciences Value Chain​

What initially seemed like a crisis quickly revealed an opportunity. HCPs, restricted from face-to-face visits, began engaging more meaningfully through digital channels. Digital interactions (once treated as secondary) suddenly became the first choice. By 2025, HCPs are not only accustomed to digital engagement; they actively expect it. Having experienced seamless digital interactions in their personal lives, they now demand the same quality from pharma and life sciences brands.

As Steve Mason, Salesforce Customer Experience Expert, famously observed: “Our best experience anywhere becomes our expectation everywhere.”

Figure 1: HCPs' Preferences Are Changing

Figure 2. There Is a Gap in Channels Used by Pharma Versus Those Preferred by HCPs

Figure 3. HCPs Prefer to Engage at Times When Reps Are Unavailable

These findings highlighted the growing limitations of the traditional GTM strategy. Fast forward to 2025, and those limitations have only become more pronounced. Today’s HCPs are far more digitally savvy, selective, and time-constrained. They expect interactions with pharma brands to mirror the seamless, personalized experiences they receive in other industries.

The 2024 Indegene Digital Affinity Report further underscores this acceleration. It found that a significant share of HCPs now fall into higher digital engagement categories—Digital Explorers (40%), Digital Regulars (25%), and Digital Enthusiasts (8%). These segments demonstrate how quickly digital expectations have intensified since 2021, with the most engaged cohorts setting the bar for omnichannel engagement.

Why the GTM Model Needed to Evolve

Extending Innovation Across the Life Sciences Value Chain

Yet for many years, that same spirit of innovation was slower to take hold at the commercial end of the value chain. Commercial practices were often shaped by legacy field-rep–centric models and market conditions from an earlier era. The pandemic and the acceleration of digital engagement changed that dynamic, making it clear that the commercial side of the industry must innovate in parallel with the scientific side.

Today, leading companies are extending their innovation mindset into go-to-market models. Commercial excellence in pharma and life sciences is now defined not only by scientific progress but also by the ability to deliver seamless, data-driven, and digitally enabled HCP interactions. Just as research organizations use data to guide discovery, commercial teams are using real-world insights, advanced analytics, and AI to orchestrate omnichannel engagement strategies that are outcome-focused and customer-centric.

The lesson is simple: innovation cannot stop in the lab. To unlock the full potential of the life sciences value chain, organizations must bring the same creativity, agility, and rigor to their GTM strategy as they do to their pipeline.

Omnichannel as the New GTM Pharma Imperative

The need is clear. HCP interactions today are defined by limited time, high digital fluency, and rising expectations. Physicians want to engage on their terms, across multiple touchpoints, and they expect those interactions to feel coordinated and relevant. For brands, this means orchestrating digital and field activities into one continuous experience, rather than treating each as a standalone effort.

What differentiates leaders from laggards now is not whether they do omnichannel, but how well they do it. The most advanced companies are applying AI and machine learning to surface the right insights, recommend the next best action, and adjust campaigns in real time. This is where commercial excellence in pharma and life sciences is being redefined: through evidence-based orchestration that aligns resources to where they can create the most impact.

In this context, omnichannel is not the finish line. It is the new baseline for GTM pharma models — and the springboard for the next wave of innovation in how brands engage, influence, and build trust with HCPs.

Scaling Pharma GTM Strategy with Digital Rep Equivalence

Extending the innovation mindset to market requires making the most of what works and augmenting it with what is needed for changing times. As the conventional field rep sales model has proven less effective with evolving HCP expectations, life sciences brands are increasingly augmenting it with a disruptive digital rep equivalence model.

Digital rep equivalence leverages data and analytics to deliver the same impact as a field rep through digital-first omnichannel marketing. It analyzes the interaction data of millions of HCPs to replicate the effectiveness of in-person engagement while enhancing customer experience at a fraction of the cost.

An effective digital rep equivalence model is built on three core tenets: understanding customers’ digital and prescription behavior at the individual level, aligning those behaviors to an omnichannel strategic plan that maximizes the best of field force and digital capabilities, and deploying and optimizing this plan at frequent, consistent intervals.

Figure 4. Digital Rep Equivalence Understands HCPs, Plans Omnichannel Engagement, and Optimizes Campaigns

Source: Indegene, 2022

Apply Simple Solutions for Complex Times

What Does It Take to Achieve the Same Impact as Field Reps with Digital Rep Equivalents?

To make this vision a reality, three factors are essential:

Here is how you too can achieve the same (or better) impact from a digital rep equivalent as that from a field rep, at a fraction of the cost.

1. Use data from millions of digital touchpoints to create robust HCP profiles

Big data sets such as closed-loop marketing activity data, sales data, anonymized patient-level data, and demographics information offer deep insights and recommendations on HCP behavior. Use predictive scoring approaches, leveraging ML techniques to predict key HCP behavioral characteristics, like their content and channel preferences and their probability to prescribe a certain type of treatment.

Then apply advanced scoring models considering multiple factors and narrow it to a single score such as Digital Affinity – essentially how likely would an HCP respond positively to digital and virtual promotions. Such a score helps you differentiate digitally-savvy HCPs from those who prefer more in-person engagements.

Here is an illustrative equation to calculate a Digital Affinity Score.

The channel scores are predicted engagement scores and are calculated at an individual channel level. w1, w2, … wn are weights assigned to these channels based on the importance of these channels to the overall conversion.

You can use these scoring models to create derived variables, which are then used to define multidimensional HCP personas for smarter targeting and prioritization of your brand's sales and marketing efforts. These multidimensional personas also help you personalize the sales and marketing strategy, resulting in better customer experience and a higher engagement.

Figure 5. Digital Affinity Score Leverages Multiple Factors to Create HCP Profiles

Source: Indegene, 2022

2. Statistically model and score channel impact

A modeling equation, using sales (Rx) and channel interaction data available at HCP level looks something like this as given below:

TRxpost = α.TRx pre + β1.fn(F2F callspost)+β2.fn(channel 1post) + … + βn .fn(channel npost)

here, TRx is the total number of prescriptions, Β is the relative impact of each channel toward new sales (TRxpost), and Α is the carryover effect from past sales (TRxpre). With such modeling, you can derive Channel Impact Scores for each of your segments or microsegments.

Figure 6. Channel Impact Score Presents Digital Channels' Impact Relative to Face-to-Face Interaction

Source: Indegene, 2022

Statistical models use data from benchmarking studies and customer experience surveys to predict changes in customer behavior and factor them into the models to adjust channel impact scores. For example, in-person meeting and events will have a reduced impact score now compared with pre-Covid-19 times due to a change in HCP behavior during the pandemic. Similarly, the impact of digital channels and virtual meetings will continue to be higher in the post-pandemic era.

Figure 7. Channel Impact Score Adapts to Changing HCP Preferences

Source: Indegene, 2022

3. Personalize omnichannel call planning to engage HCPs more effectively

Figure 8. Omnichannel Call Plans Mimic the Field Rep Experience

Source: Indegene, 2022

Omnichannel call plans are optimized with business constraints or spend targets to arrive at a channel mix best suited for a specific sales target. You can then use what-if simulations to measure the performance of multiple scenarios and choose the best one.

Now Is the Time for Commercial Innovation