This time I’d like to explore what launch leaders should (ideally) be measuring at different phases of their launch – pre-, peri- and post-launch.

I’d like to challenge a few norms in our industry as we can sometimes become fixated on the wrong type of metrics: what’s the peak year sales figure? What market and class share can we expect? What’s the likely uptake vs previous launches in our company or in the class?

When working with global or local launch leaders, I’ve come across two distinct ‘personas’:

1. The strategic and numerical experts run a tight project management ship, are immersed in the analysis, derive strategy from the numbers they see and will set a fully quantified set of KPIs adapted to different phases of the launch.

Are you one of these people? If so, you are in high demand! But don’t forget the qualitative, intuitive insights that can come from real-life observation, interactions and ‘gut feelings’, based on healthcare and patient-centricity.

2. The number-phobic launch leaders who delegate analytics, forecasting and measurement to finance, business analysis, competitor intelligence and sales force colleagues.

These launch leaders are much more comfortable immersed in the patient experience journey, insight generation, branding, team dynamics and thought leader interactions. Are you one of these people? If so, you’re in high demand too!

Ideally launch leaders should combine these two profiles but often launch leaders come from either a quantitative or a qualitative background, which informs their experience and confidence.

So, the questions that a launch leader needs to consider are: what matters at each key stage of my launch? What information will help me make better strategic and operational decisions as the launch progresses? Which KPIs do my senior management need to see?

Which KPIs are truly important from a patient, prescriber, payer, competitive and internal team perspective? Are we truly engaging and changing the knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of target customers in order to improve patient outcomes?

In my experience, some of the most important KPIs for the pre-launch phase are:

• Tracking to the critical launch path timeline – ie speed to market for regulatory, pricing/ access, supply and commercial operations, and mapped vs the competition
• Probability of success for hitting clinical trial primary endpoints and showing an improvement or differentiating benefit from alternative treatments
• Scientific thought leader engagement with the launch, active input to the clinical programme and strategy, active readiness with media and peer-to-peer activity, indicators of proactivity from thought leaders as ‘extended’ members of the launch team * Pricing, formulary and percentage open access to key territories or patient populations within a geography
• Prescriber understanding of the mechanism of action, published clinical studies and degree of unmet need, along with motivation to act in the future
• Engagement and support of the patient advocacy community and media
• Internal launch team belief in the success of the launch, senior management support for the launch.