Measuring what matters: how to create the right KPIs for your brand, launch and portfolio

We are now in a world where real-time business data is easier than ever to access and we have a pool of insightful information at our fingertips.

This has allowed companies to more accurately track, analyse and manage customer interactions, in addition to identifying trends, unmet needs and new opportunities.

While this is an exciting time to be a ‘data geek’ analysing data sets and interactions, some organisations fall into the trap of misinterpreting data and focusing on the wrong metrics, sometimes at the expense of measuring what truly matters.

Over the years we have worked with brand teams across a variety of pharma and biotech companies on brand planning and marketing capability projects; one of the most frequently cited ‘challenge areas’ has been measurement, metrics and KPIs.

In the healthcare industry there is a significant disconnect between marketing measurement theory and practice, and at the same time a massive increase in the sources of healthcare measurement information.

The pharmaceutical industry is continuing its ‘disruption phase’ and therefore measurement of patient/physician/payer attitudes, engagement, behaviour as well as other activity, investment and competitive performance measures are more important than ever.

We like to use a four-quadrant balanced scorecard of measures across stakeholder, competitive performance, financial and internal effectiveness as a framework for setting KPIs for a brand, portfolio or business unit.

Measuring the performance of in-market products and pre-launch/launch products is absolutely crucial, so clear focus on what success looks like (via the brand CSFs) and a brand team culture of continuous improvement are critical to success.

By measuring the right things, the cross-functional brand team will be able to help tell the organisation: