What happens when an industry as heavily regulated and historically slow-moving as pharma is forced to accelerate digital transformation? In today's episode, I welcome Florian Schnappauf, Vice President of Enterprise Commercial Strategy at Veeva Systems, to discuss how Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) are reshaping the pharmaceutical landscape and why their role is now more critical than ever.
The pharmaceutical sector faces mounting pressure to innovate faster, manage costs, and compete with digital-first biotechs. Research predicts the industry will spend $4.5 billion on digital transformation by 2030, a shift that has led to the emergence of CDOs in the pharma C-suite. But what does this role actually entail, and how does it help companies navigate the complexities of drug development, clinical trials, and commercialization?
Florian shares insights on how CDOs are not just supporting digital initiatives but actively orchestrating, building, and operating them. From managing the sheer volume of data generated by clinical trials to ensuring that digital tools enhance—not hinder—the drug development process, the CDO is now a key differentiator between industry leaders and laggards. We also explore how effective digital leadership can shorten timeframes from drug discovery to patient treatment, improve communication with healthcare providers, and ultimately ensure that pharma companies achieve more with fewer resources.
With regulatory hurdles, technological advancements, and shifting market dynamics, the pharmaceutical industry is at a pivotal moment. So, what does the future hold for digital leaders in pharma? How will CDOs continue to evolve, and what lessons can other industries learn from their journey?
Join us as we break down the digital transformation of pharma and the leadership required to drive meaningful change. And as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts—do you think pharma is adapting quickly enough, or is there still a long way to go?
Check out the What Pharma Needs Next podcast.
[00:00:04] The pharmaceutical industry is under immense pressure to innovate faster, optimise costs and ultimately deliver better patient outcomes. But in an era where digital-first biotech companies are setting the pace, traditional pharma businesses are challenged to rethink their approach. Enter the Chief Digital Officer or CDO. It's an emerging role that's rapidly becoming essential for driving digital transformation at the highest level.
[00:00:32] Well, my guest today is from a company called Viva Systems and together we're going to explore the rise of the CDO and how it's reshaping the pharmaceutical sector. So we're going to discuss how digital leadership is enabling companies to manage vast clinical data sets, accelerate drug development and improve commercial success.
[00:00:54] And with the industry set to spend $4.5 billion on digital transformation by 2030, I'm interested in learning more about how pharma businesses can stay ahead by integrating digital strategies effectively. So, how can digital leadership, not just technology, separate industry leaders from laggards? And what does the future hold for pharma's digital transformation journey? Let's find out by getting today's guest on.
[00:01:24] So thank you for joining me on the podcast today. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? My name is Lurian Schnabauf and I'm the Vice President of Enterprise Commercial Strategy at LIDA. That means I'm responsible for the commercial side of our business with the very large pharma companies in Europe. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today. So much I want to talk about and every day I try and demystify different areas that technology is impacting.
[00:01:52] And one of the big trends is the role of the chief digital officer, something that seems to be gaining momentum this year, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. So what do you think or what do you see as the key drivers behind this rise and why it's so pivotal for pharma's digital transformation journey? Because it's something that you don't automatically think of when many people listening will think of the pharmaceutical industry.
[00:02:17] So I think to understand what's driving that we need to take a look back a little bit into history, because traditionally the pharma industry has been lagging behind in terms of digital maturity behind other industries. For example, retail or financial services industries, they've long been using predictive analytics and other digital tools to, for example, personalize customer experience, right? In contrast, many pharma firms, they've not been doing that.
[00:02:45] They lack the data infrastructure in many cases. They're not looking into key digital metrics, for example. And they don't have a very clear ownership in many cases for digital processes. So digital maturity in pharma has traditionally been lagging, which means there's a clear need for transformation in that industry. And then one pivotal thing happened, which I think changed things quite a bit for the pharma industry. And that was COVID.
[00:03:13] When COVID hit, there was a very clear break between before COVID and after COVID. Things went unnaturally fast during that phase for pharma companies in particular. We're thinking vaccine development for COVID, for example. There was a very urgent need, something that the industry was not used to, to develop something in a very, very short amount of time. Now, COVID had two implications on the pharma industry.
[00:03:43] Two main implications had many implications, but two main implications. The first one was the pharma industry could not run their clinical development the way they used to before, right? Where you develop a medicine, you need patients to come into a hospital and get the trial drug, the experimental drug. So that couldn't happen because of distancing requirements. So they needed a new mode to develop their medicines, which was kind of reducing the personal interaction, right?
[00:04:13] And outside of hospitals, obviously, because very sick people were being treated in the hospitals. The second implication was that sales and medical field personnel were out there talking to the doctors, explaining them the benefits of treatments, were not able to do that anymore. They could not visit the doctors in their offices and in person. And so the pharmaceutical industry also needed a new commercial model, if you want, right?
[00:04:38] And so within very, very little time, the pharma industry has adopted a new way to run clinical trials, leveraging digital technologies. They've also adapted a new way to commercialize their drugs. For example, the way we do that by doing video calls with doctors, right? Just one example of using technology, which was not being really used before.
[00:05:04] So these were just two examples of how the industry actually was shook up by COVID. And one of our customers put it very nicely. He said, COVID has done for the digitization of the pharma industry what the industry couldn't do in the 10 years before. And I think that's important background for understanding where the industry is headed from a laggard through a shakeup. And now expectations are significantly higher. Targets are significantly higher.
[00:05:32] And the industry is doubling down on kind of going more into digital. And that includes digital officers, obviously. And something I find incredibly interesting is if we look at biotech companies, they're often described as digital first. But in contrast to that, of course, many traditional pharma companies are still playing catch up. So how do you see this new CDO role helping level that playing field? And what kind of challenges do these organizations face in adopting this new leadership model?
[00:06:02] First of all, biotech companies, so meaning small biopharma companies who either have a product on market or don't have a product on market yet, they have a huge starting advantage. And that is they don't have legacy. They basically start greenfield, right? Which also means it has a lot of other problems. They look for funding, et cetera. But the benefit of it that is if we look at it from a digital perspective, they can think it from the ground up.
[00:06:30] They can think it digital first, which many of them are doing. And in speaking to many of these biotech companies, they think of themselves as data businesses. Everything they do is basically creating, collecting, modifying, analyzing data, and then building a product using that data and basically selling that product.
[00:06:53] So for them, data comes first and they think about data streams, data architecture, data models throughout their company as the first thing from the ground up. While more traditional pharmaceutical companies don't have that luxury. They have been around for decades, sometimes centuries. And they have built up a technological stack, a data infrastructure over years and decades. And they need to basically work with what they have, right?
[00:07:20] So this is, I think, the very big difference between the biotechs on the one hand side and the established companies on the other hand side. And the chief digital officer plays different roles in these two scenarios. For the biotechs, he is kind of driving that data revolution and kind of putting that into everything the company is building up. On the pharmaceutical side with more established companies, his job is more that of maybe a supporter, an orchestrator, a builder who is shaking things up, right?
[00:07:49] So I think these are two, they carry the same name, but they're two different jobs to be done almost. Yeah. And I think if we add in the increasing pressure to innovate faster and deliver better outcomes combined with the increasing pace of technological change, there's so many big challenges there. So how does that CDO align digital initiatives with broader business objectives in the industry as complex as pharma?
[00:08:18] Because it's not like any traditional enterprise that we think of. There's so much more going on there, isn't there? And so much more to consider. Indeed. The pharma industry is a highly regulated industry for very good reasons, right? So that adds another layer of complexity that you're referring to. Yeah. And I think in the traditional pharma companies, there was no natural space for a chief digital officer, right?
[00:08:47] You had a very functional organization that is on the one hand of the business focusing on researching medicines and developing them. And then on the other hand of the business, commercializing these medicines in the market, right? And they were very separate functions almost. So a chief digital officer didn't really have a place in that play of giants, if you want.
[00:09:11] And now with COVID, as we discussed, coming in, there's a strong need for more of digital. And the functions themselves cannot carry that weight. So the CDO has a significant job to do. And I look at it on different horizons almost for the CDO, right? I think the first horizon is that of a supporter. He's supporting these business functions and driving a digital agenda.
[00:09:36] And then there's that of an orchestrator who is diving deeper and orchestrating digital initiatives around data, for example, around technology that all functions are using. But it doesn't stop there, right? I think CDOs will deepen their involvement and they will start building things for the business. Think of completely new digital businesses that may also generate revenue in the end. So a new digital business.
[00:10:06] And ultimately also operate parts of the business. So not only a supporting orchestrating role, but also one that runs parts of the business. Because it makes sense to centralize things in the responsibilities of the CDO, such as the data infrastructure of the company. So I see a CDO with expanding horizons and expanding responsibilities.
[00:10:31] And there's also an increasing focus right now on the ROI and the value add of tech projects and technology. But I would say there's less of a focus on the actual role itself and what that can deliver. So in your experience working with Viva Systems, are there any standout examples of how effective digital leadership has reshaped the farmer sector, particularly for commercial teams? Because it's something that I don't think we shine a light on enough. Coming out of COVID, right?
[00:11:02] The biggest objective of pharmaceutical companies is to shorten the timeframe from when they start working and discovering, researching a certain drug, to getting it into the hands of a patient who can hopefully cure or at least better his disease state. So it's about this overall timeframe.
[00:11:24] And technology can help significantly to compress that on the research and development part. And I've heard some of your podcasts actually going into that direction, which is very interesting. And then on the commercial end, which you mean, it is about helping to explain those new treatments better.
[00:11:45] So doctors who ultimately take the treatment decision can make a more informed and hopefully also quicker decision to get that medicine into the patient's hands. You have to understand that the treatment landscape out there is becoming ever more complex. We get a lot of new treatments every single year for known and sometimes not targeted or targeted diseases. That means the choice that is out there becomes ever bigger.
[00:12:12] And a doctor who treats you and me, he needs to have the best information readily available when he needs it, in the right form and shape, how he needs it. Does he want it through, I don't know, a chat and interface? Does he want to consume it over the web through a video? So I think this is where we can make significant differences to how medicines come to patients.
[00:12:38] And before you join me on the podcast today, I was reading that the pharma industry is predicted to spend $4.5 billion on digital transformation by 2030. So from your viewpoint here, what is separating the digital leaders from the laggards in achieving that strong return on investment that we're talking about here? The answer to that lies again in bringing the medicines to market, right? Ultimately, this is where the investment of pharma companies is focused.
[00:13:08] And digital is one tool to actually facilitate that investment further. Now, I also checked a couple of numbers and the number of drugs that are currently in development has doubled in the last 10 to 12 years, right? From about 3,000 to more than 6,000 drugs that are under development right now.
[00:13:30] Now, in the same timeframe, the money that is needed to actually develop these drugs has almost grown by 50%. What we also see is that not more drugs are coming to market. The same number of drugs are coming, which means they're spending more money to bring about the same number of drugs to market, right?
[00:13:49] So leaders in the industry who use digital tools effectively, technology, data, and the surrounding ecosystem, they are able to deliver more drugs with the same investment and in the same or shorter time. And this is what you can see huge differences also between companies, right? And that's distinguishing and separating the leaders from the laggers.
[00:14:14] Digital and data and technology and data are two of the single biggest levers to achieve that. And I'm curious, how does having this new senior digital leadership role like the CDO, how's that helping pharma companies prioritize digital initiatives and ultimately enhance customer experiences? Especially when balancing innovation with resource constraints, because it feels like an incredibly challenging balance.
[00:14:43] So I'm coming back to the horizons of a chief digital officer, right? The chief digital officer can support, he can orchestrate, he can build, and he can operate. Now, before you had these four dispersed throughout the entire organization, right? And I think the main value of the CDO lies by bundling them together and being able to provide a single view on what the company is doing in terms of digital initiatives.
[00:15:09] He can set a strategic vision, he can drive funding and responsibilities in that, and he can lead to cross-functional teams, which nobody really owned before, right? So I think the chief digital officer can effectively deploy the resources that are needed to actually achieve the business objectives we were just discussing in getting the medicines to market quicker and in a better, more successful way.
[00:15:36] And if I was to ask you to look into my virtual crystal ball and look a little bit further ahead, how do you see the CDO role evolving as pharma companies continue on this digital transformation path? And what are the challenges, and most importantly, what opportunities do you foresee on the horizon for digital leaders in this space? So I would expect more chief digital officers to go beyond the pure orchestration of digital within their organizations.
[00:16:03] I expect them to start building and operating parts of the business in entirety. A very good example of that is the data ecosystem that pharmaceutical companies run and have deployed. Over many years, and not different to other industries, I would imagine, companies have experimented with different setups in terms of the data ecosystem, deploying data lakes, CDPs, all of these different things.
[00:16:32] But with very mixed results. The opportunity a CDO now has is to actually shape the data ecosystem, the data architecture of the company, own it, build it, orchestrate it, and operate it in an efficient way.
[00:16:47] And as we were discussing before, data is really at the foundation of what pharmaceutical companies are doing, which means this is probably one of the good places to start for a CDO to actually dive deeper and beyond the pure orchestration of initiatives. And on a personal level, there's a real pressure on everyone to be in a state of continuous learning. I feel it. I'm sure you do. And everybody listening will as well.
[00:17:14] But I'd love to find out more about how you self-educate. Any tips you could share that help people listening there? How do you keep up to speed? Because the pace of technological change just keeps moving faster and faster. So what do you do? I agree. There's so much out there to learn. And I certainly do that too little and would love to do more. One thing I really enjoy is MOOCs, so Massive Open Online Courses. I find it, first of all, an amazing concept.
[00:17:43] It's providing access to world-class education to basically anyone who has a computer or a tablet. And I find the concept already absolutely striking. And so what I try to do is I try to do those or a few courses as often as I can just to give you a selection. Some are professionally relevant, such as a course on artificial intelligence, just to make sure I keep up with the pace and the understanding of what's going on in that space.
[00:18:12] But there's also completely different things which I'd like to discover. I did a course, for example, on the history of classical music, which was very random for me. I'm not a classical music expert or anything. But there was this amazing professor from Yale, world renown, and he had a free course up on one of these platforms. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did another course on volcanoes.
[00:18:36] So I've learned so much inside my professional remit and outside that I find it a great opportunity to learn and draw on your horizon.
[00:19:14] I love that. It's just a question of discovering and stumbling upon it. And sometimes you need to, you know, let your curiosity lead the way. And for anybody listening that wants to let their curiosity lead the way and find out more information about Viva Systems and anything we talked about today or connect with you or your team, where would you like to point everyone listening? Well, if you're in the life science pharmaceutical industry, I hope you know Viva.
[00:19:44] And I would invite you to join one of our summits, which we're doing in the US and in Europe once a year. And if you want to learn more, there's obviously a website. But I'm also doing a podcast myself, Neil. So it's called What Pharma Needs Next, where I'm speaking with leaders of the industry about topics digital in pharma and would invite you to listen to What Pharma Needs Next. It's on Apple and Spotify. So if you get a chance, listen in.
[00:20:14] Fantastic. I will get a link added to everything you mentioned there, including your podcast too. How many episodes are you in? Are you enjoying it? I'm enjoying it very much. I am only getting, we only got started last year. So I think I have up to six episodes now. So we're not doing them as frequently as you do. I'm not in the three thousands count yet, Neil. So I'm definitely learning from professionals like yourself. Well, but I'm enjoying the conversations a lot and I've had great guests so far.
[00:20:44] I think I was reading a stat last year that the average number of episodes before people give up is three, four or even five. So you're ahead of those guys. Oh, so you'd be beyond that breaking point then. Okay. Okay. That's great to hear. Well, keep doing what you're doing. I love chatting with you today. We've learned so much around why pharma needs a digital leader, managing that data delusion, and differentiating digital leaders from laggards in the industry.
[00:21:09] We could carry on talking about this, but more than anything, just thank you for starting this conversation today. Thank you for having me, Neil. Again, huge thank you to my guest today for unpacking why the chief digital officer is becoming a defining role in pharma's evolution. From navigating the overwhelming volume of clinical data to leveraging digital tools for more efficient drug launches. I think it's clear that digital leadership isn't just about technology.
[00:21:38] It's about transforming the way that pharma operates at every level. And as we look ahead at that big figure, $4.5 billion being spent on digital transformation by 2030. The big question is, are traditional pharma companies adapting fast enough to keep pace with digital first biotechs? Or will the industry's historical reliance on legacy systems slow them down, make them more sluggish? But I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
[00:22:07] Is the CDO role the missing link in pharma's transformation? Or is there still much more work to be done? Please email me, techblogwriteroutlook.com, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, just at Neil C. Hughes. And remember, stay curious, keep exploring how technology is reshaping industries in unexpected ways. And more importantly of all, join me again tomorrow for another conversation.
[00:22:34] I'll be here inside your podcast feed, begging you to listen. Speak with you all then. Bye for now.