The 10 Influential Marketing Leaders to watch in 2019

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Be curious and passionate about
learning. It inevitably leads to success.
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me today, all the disruptive new
business models we see in the market,
from Tesla, Uber, AirBnB, start from a
different understanding of true market
needs. No organization can afford
today to not be deeply rooted in data –
or the risk of disruption is massive.
How do you diversify your
organization’s offerings to appeal to
the target audience?
My current business context is in
custom development and
manufacturing for pharma and biotech
companies. We are producing on behalf
of our customers, active ingredients or
the final medicine. There is a high pace
of innovation in our customers’ R&D
and we follow that innovation very
closely. In our industry, marketers have
a unique advantage compared to other
industries. We can see the innovation
pipeline of our customers early on, as
regulatory requirements lead our
customers’ to publish what they are
working on. We constantly monitor
which new manufacturing
requirements these medicines might
have and then invest into technology
that allows producing them. So we are
prepared to help our customers launch
their medicines. In addition to
questions around feasibility, we also
work in understanding what the
business risks and opportunities are for
our customers on their path to market.
We focus on the challenges that
bottleneck the process at the customer
side and then innovate our business
models to address them.
What were the past experiences,
achievements or lessons that have
shaped your journey?
For a couple of years now, customer
centricity is a term used frequently,
also in business-to-business
organizations. To be successful in
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putting the customer at the center, the
conceptual term should be broken
down to tangible actions. We wanted to
know what we as an organization truly
knew about our customers. So first, we
consolidated all data sources in the
organization that had customer
information in them. This reduced data
silos and combined information, that
was not broadly accessible before
spanning marketing, sales, finance and
production – all under one roof. We
started to build agile data systems and
infrastructure and moved a significant
proportion of IT under the leadership
of marketing. Data are integrated at the
individual customer level, so customer
preferences and behaviors can be
observed across the entire customer
journey. The insights we generate are
disseminated across different functions
through Apps and web entries,
accessibility of customer information
improved dramatically. We leveraged a
lot of technology from big data to new
visualization platforms to bring
available information to decision
makers. For the first time, we now
have a more holistic picture about our
customers, their needs and challenges.
Next, we plan to use this knowledge to
support our field force, where we will
use our learnings to hold proactive
conversations based on our insights
about the customer, away from the old
way of responding to enquiries.
The move to customer centricity is
data-driven and can create discomfort
in an organization. It is a disruptive
change and many functions are
required to change their way of
working. Supporting such
transformation with the best possible
change management and taking all
stakeholders along, ensures success.
This is my biggest learning. Investing
early on into explaining the roadmap
and then co-create a roadmap across
different functions, is the best way of
taking everyone onboard.
Where do you see yourself in the
near future and what are your future
goals?
I would like to continue my learning
journey in digital technology, using the
rich data sources out there, leveraging
developments from AI, machine
learning, cognitive behavioral research
and other areas are areas. There are
still plenty opportunities to improve
the interplay between market insights
and manufacturing innovation in our
business. This is a topic that I want to
drive.
Longer-term, I hope to be able to build
more broad technology expertise and
then apply that in health related data. I
would like to move closer to digital
medical health and see, how we can
best use digital means to improve
public health.
What is your advice for budding and
emerging marketing leaders?
Advice is always hard to give. Here is
what worked for me. I was looking
beyond marketing, as a function and
starting to ask questions about what
really drives a business and what
creates impact with your customers.
Marketing is a team sport and not a
function in a business. Through these
questions, networks of engagement are
created and we learned as teams. Don’t
be discouraged, when you have to
manage through change or when you
are facing resistance. Change is a
learning road for all that embark on it,
but the road isn’t straight. Make the
journey as comfortable as you can and
be empathetic and then you will create
followers.
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