Changes in Outreach and Communications with Stakeholders during the Global COVID-19 Pandemic

Best Practices, LLC conducted this benchmarking research to find out how companies are addressing their limited access to external stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This report uncovers the external engagement approaches and operational tactics that life sciences companies have implemented in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. It examines the creation of global COVID-19 pandemic task forces, external engagement policies, necessary resources, and new metrics used to measure performance during this pandemic.

Study Snapshot

Best Practices, LLC engaged 36 leaders from 35 leading biopharma companies in this research. Seventy-two percent of the research participants serve at the director/ senior director level.

Key topics covered in this report include:

• Implementation of global COVID-19 pandemic task force
• External engagement policies and limitations
• Digital external engagements
• Challenges and issues prevalent due to the global COVID-19 pandemic
• Requisite resources
• Response to constraints in travel and visitation
• Performance tracking during the pandemic

• F2F interactions with physicians are generally transferable to a digital video alternative:
  
  
  • 42% of companies do not currently allow face-to-face external engagements with physicians.
  • 42% of companies have implemented digital remote engagement alternatives to F2F engagements with physicians, indicating these engagements are essentially fully transferable to digital.
    
    
• 2 out of 3 are changing their KPIs and/or other performance measures:
  
  
  • 66% of companies are changing their performance measures to reflect the challenge of transferring external engagements to digital or other means.