Everybody Hates Pharma

Episode 15
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Pharma Sales and Tech Podcast. Join Artem Stefan, Ruly and Chris as we explore the latest trends and developments in the pharmaceutical industry with a focus on sales and technologies from cutting edge innovations. To practical tips and strategies, our expert guests will provide valuable insights to help you stay ahead of the game.

[00:00:30] Tune in to stay informed, inspired and connected with the world of pharma sales.

[00:00:39] Stefan Repin: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Today is another episode of the Sales Pharma and Tech podcast, and I have well, such a great person. Her name is Yvette. We've been working with the company you know where she works, it's called Pharma Matching, but Pharma Matching is a part of a bigger pharma.

[00:00:56] Stefan Repin: Anyway, you know best if, like Yvette will do her own [00:01:00] introduction. Welcome, Yvette.

[00:01:02] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah, thanks Stefan. I'm really happy to like have the chance to sit here and do this podcast, you know, we have been communicating about this for a while now, and I think it's a great idea to get stuff started and get it out into the pharma world. So to give a summary, my person, myself, I'm actually basically a quality manager.

[00:01:20] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: I'm a basic researcher by heart, and I've been working in startup, big pharmaceutical companies all the way up to Roche. And have been doing lots of quality consultancy the past years. And the company I'm working with right now is called Salmon Pharma Support and the product / tool, we use tool, we offer product.

[00:01:39] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: We offer SaaS called Pharmatching, as mentioned. We would love to bring actually the pharmaceutical and life science world together with that. And I think we are here to just kind of give you some feedback. Me with my background, you know, being a big pharma, being in small startups, knowing the needs, the pain, the gains.

[00:01:57] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: So I'm really excited to talk about and [00:02:00] also bringing the sense of sales into the whole quality slash pharma world.

[00:02:05] Stefan Repin: Amazing. Yeah. So sales is a very big, very, very big and very sensitive topics for pharma. Yeah. So I'm, I'm very glad we're gonna dive into that today.

[00:02:12] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:13] Stefan Repin: Okay. So can you tell, tell us more like, what is pharmatching? Right? Who's your customer? Who do you work with?

[00:02:20] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: So pharmatching has been created a while ago. It has been on a market a few years ago, and it was actually pharmaceutical manufacturing mainly. So that meant any pharmaceutical company that is manufacturing, bit of research development it did took off for a bit, but kind of is stagnated really fast.

[00:02:37] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: There wasn't that much effort put into and it totally stagnated and just kind of got lost, lost on track. My company, Zamann Pharma support, took over that product a while ago and kind of redeveloped. I know Zamann Pharma support for a while now, a few years working in different project as quality managers using and renting some of their expertise for projects or companies I worked with.[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: We did sit down together, end of 21, decided starting 22, bringing Pharmatching back to the life, science and pharmaceutical world. So what it does now, it is matching companies. Not only pharmaceutical in the sense of manufacturing, but we'd love to bring the full life cycle from literally, like your startup, you need startup funding.

[00:03:21] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Oh, I need external regulatory support. I need an external research development laboratory all the way up to manufacturing and distribution. Kind of fulfilling the full life cycle because we did understand the need for startups, big pharmaceutical companies, so sales. I know sales is, it's a fun word.

[00:03:39] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Honestly, pharmaceutical world doesn't really need sales. They also don't do that much marketing. Some countries it isn't even allowed. But I would like to replace sales with outsourcing because that's what pharmaceutical companies have to do to sale, is outsourcing, and that is what Pharma Matching does.

[00:03:58] Stefan Repin: Amazing. So if you [00:04:00] guys wanna not sell outsource, then please go to Pharmatching. Okay. So Yvette, being a scientist and now transitioning into marketing and sales, like how did it feel the transition right for you?

[00:04:13] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah, so being a researcher by heart, I love to learn new stuff, so for me, it was easier. But being in a team with different colleagues, different departments, I see that there's big pain because it's change, it's adjustment for myself, of course, I'm learning. I learned a lot. Still learning. I think you always should learn, never stop learning.

[00:04:36] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: It's just a bit of a different way how to address your targets companies, your target user, and I think main important part is as usual in life, is listen, what do they need? What do they want, and what's their pain?

[00:04:53] Stefan Repin: So now you're like, our previous discussions were about the roles you had in Pharmatching and [00:05:00] now the role has changed, so now you're sort of responsible for.

[00:05:04] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:04] Stefan Repin: Sales and marketing, and we were just talking about Alibaba, right, that you're using it for first. Can you talk a bit more about like your, the strategies you're using to expand your, like, you

[00:05:15] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah, yeah. Fair point. So, we are not a big pharmaceutical player in a sense of thousands of staff. Not that resources in a sense of go ahead and do whatever you feel like, but we also would love to be a bit more self-driven in the sense of what's possible without being, dependent on, you know, having this big sales marketing team.

[00:05:38] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: So we've kind of started using number one available free platforms, tools available and Alibaba always popped up in me and my colleagues' path. The past years always like even medical device companies use Alibaba to outsource [00:06:00] resources for medical device supplements, packaging, whatever there is.

[00:06:04] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: And you can actually buy by using Alibaba, filter by different categories and they have a very, very big health. Healthcare supplements anything related to life science categories, which are actually companies that are suitable for our platforms. So we are doing our cold acquisition, for example, using Alibaba, setting our filters for our different target categories, just doing some cold acquisition there.

[00:06:31] Stefan Repin: Awesome. I like the way how you guys. Found a turnaround to like, to, you know, get to get leads, to get the customers. That's great. And are you using any data to, like how do you improve your sales efforts? Like are you worried

[00:06:45] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah. So I was fortunate enough with my current company to have some expert external experts on sales. And they gave us some hints and some ideas to start off. And very important is of course, to [00:07:00] create your sales funnels first. And we did this, we've decided which strategies, where to go to.

[00:07:05] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: I mean, the touchless funnel's always nice, but our called acquisition funnel is one of our main players. And this is where we came up using, for example, LinkedIn and Alibaba.

[00:07:17] Stefan Repin: Yeah, so how can you explain how you're using LinkedIn and Alibaba together?

[00:07:22] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we have different scripts. For example, when we do cold acquisition, we define our categories. We filter. So we look for procurement manager speaking of outsourcing. And then we get our target groups and send different scripts and we'll see what the response is. Speaking of data driven and step by step, we'll go for the scripts, number one that go best.

[00:07:49] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: And then number two, even if a script goes better, but, it gets us less conversion in the sense of less paying customers. We will also adjust and see to use a different script again. [00:08:00] And so this is how we combine data in a sense of we collect the feedback from that with the different scripts we are using.

[00:08:06] Stefan Repin: Mm-hmm. And how do you approach once you, let's say you, you have a, a potential client, right? Like maybe a potential lead. How do you approach like. Account management or customer management.

[00:08:20] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah. Yeah. So we implemented very simple booking link so anybody can book a free consultation call with us. And I think the magic word that comes up here, which, fair, fair point. I was not aware in the past. I'm a quality person. We always qualified our provider, but what we did not do past year is we never qualified our possible customers.

[00:08:44] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: So what we've also changed is qualify, qualify your customer. Yeah. And this is kind of what we've combined and changed a little, and it's a big lesson learned. Even if you have a PO potential customer, if they don't qualify you can try to sell as [00:09:00] much as you want. They're never gonna buy.

[00:09:03] Stefan Repin: Mm-hmm. And how do you do the qualification?

[00:09:06] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah, well, it's actually very simple. We did a whole full week of sync week learning between our departments, marketing what even chief technical officer, us as product owners, we all sit together and literally there's good YouTubes videos out there. There's three available podcasts out there.

[00:09:25] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: And also taking into consideration our external consultants, we just hired and they actually said, well, does a customer have a need? If they do have a need, are they willing to change? If they have a need and they're willing to change, are they willing to spend money and time? If they still want to do that, you also have to make sure that they're the decision maker you talk to.

[00:09:48] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: But last not but not least, it also has to be a personal fit.

[00:09:53] Stefan Repin: Correct. Yeah. So according to any data gathered or any organization, you forester, [00:10:00] for example. Only three or 4% of your market is in buying mode right now, meaning they're considering maybe your solution or any other solution. Everyone else, 97% are not aware or they're not ready to buy now. So that's the moment when, if you had, if for that 3% sales is enough or 97%, you need marketing.

[00:10:21] Stefan Repin: Right? And in particular, that's why. Marketing is important in warming up and basically delivering all these like opportunities to sales. So you sort of have a funnel there. And that's the part which is, as I'm seeing, is being neglected in a lot of pharma companies, they don't use, they use very little content marketing, which is, has proved very efficient, to be honest in, in warming up, educating customers about like their needs.

[00:10:49] Stefan Repin: What could be the solution in the market and so on. And I'm looking forward to seeing the, I've seen some good science and different events that I've went to and I'm looking forward to [00:11:00] seeing more of those, more of those content marketing strategies being actually deployed in Pharma companies because as I'm seeing, it's real.

[00:11:09] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yep. I totally agree, Stefan, you couldn't highlight it more.

[00:11:13] Stefan Repin: I have a question though. How do you, so like, I guess you are, since you're a platform, you have buyers and suppliers, so I'm thinking what are the most current challenges you guys are facing in the maybe sales process, like why people are not. Like, let's say signing up for your platform, what, you know, what impedes them?

[00:11:33] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yep. So last year we've been to different fairs too, and we did lots of one-on-ones. We did questionnaires, one-on-one on fairs. We did send questionnaires via email. And the feedback was that 95% did like the product, loves the solution and would consider to sign up. So we were really happy end of last year.

[00:11:55] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: So we started our warmup. We started, you know, getting exactly even the [00:12:00] same people, plus additional to sign up and I think less than three percentage. So that was a little step back and we were a little bit. Confused to be, to be fair, because we literally ask these guys is that what you need? Is there anything you're missing the way it is?

[00:12:16] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Would you, would you use it? And 95% said, yes, we're interested. And I think what we did not consider what we're doing now is were they qualified?

[00:12:25] Stefan Repin: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:26] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: So again, I think, I think it's a bit of, as you have also mentioned, is you do have to have a strategy. And it's not just sales, not just outsourcing. It's not just marketing.

[00:12:37] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: It's also the product market fit. And we are trying to combine all of that because we do have a product market fit. But it looks like we did not address the qualified selling portion of our market. So I think whenever somebody faces that, even though you contacted lots of [00:13:00] people and you have 50 plus percent saying, wow, it's awesome, great product great company, great services, whatever you offer is great for me, but they're still not signing up, then you either don't have the product market fit.

[00:13:14] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Or you literally just talk to the wrong people. And we figured that was one issue with us because we did talk to procurement manager. We did talk to the departments that would need the outsourcing and they loved the product, they would need it, but they were not the ones to decide to actually bring this platform into their company.

[00:13:34] Stefan Repin: Which leads to my point the buyer is not the user. So in pharma companies and I think this should be framed. I'm seeing this very often happen in B2B. Your buyer very often is not your user. So you talk to the CFO, you talk to the CEO, you talk to the head of sales excellence, you talk to decision makers, C-level executives or head office, right?

[00:13:58] Stefan Repin: In, let's say[00:14:00] the company you wanna work with is in the Middle East, but they cannot take the decision the Middle East because everything is taken in the head office because they're centralized. Right? So first question is, you need to ask the company that you wanna work with. Okay. Can they make a decision there?

[00:14:15] Stefan Repin: And that actually tells you, like, are they centralized or decentralized? Decentralized is better because you can, the people who are the buyers, most certainly, they'll be also closer to your users as well if they're centralized. Okay. Then the buyers are different from the sellers, but the buyer's story are different from the users.

[00:14:34] Stefan Repin: So you have to address, in this case, the buyers separately. So the buyers, they say, You work with a, try to work with a company in Egypt. They say our EMEA office is in Berlin. So you go to, you start the discussion in Berlin, but at the same time you have to do a lot of demos of your product right here and there.

[00:14:52] Stefan Repin: And the demos are different because the users wanna see, they wanna have a feel of the product. They wanna see a feel, how do I match this person? [00:15:00] How many matches am I gonna have? Can I outsource this part of my work? Right? Can I outsource this process somewhere in China or, so meanwhile, the buyer, I'm talking about, I was talking about use the user.

[00:15:11] Stefan Repin: Meanwhile, the buyer has a different mindset. The buyer wants to the buyer, they need financial data. They need dashboards. They need, like the bigger picture, right? So the level of documentation, level of, you call it like content. Also, you can call it buyer enablement materials is much higher.

[00:15:27] Stefan Repin: It's a higher level for the buyer. And that's why it is very important that every time you talk to a co enterprise, you actually have a sort of a, basically the limitation between these two functions which exist in an organization. Okay. You wanna add something?

[00:15:45] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah, I totally agree to all you've said. I actually did exactly that once we talked to the user. The department heads, procurement managers, the development, business development managers, and they were all like, oh, that's [00:16:00] amazing. We separately talked to CEOs, they said, well, that's a great idea, but it was never possible to get them to one just into one room, physically speaking even if it's digital to get this decision.

[00:16:13] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: And one lesson we have also learned, as he's also mentioned, one person just wants to see how fast is it? How fast we get result. That's the user and the CEO, the decision maker actually, they're just like, well, what's in for me? What does it cost? And the visualization, as you mentioned.

[00:16:30] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Speaking of content it's a very big lesson we have learned and we are implementing right now in our profile. So you can add as many user in your company profile as you want. And we are now implementing, upgrading our departments within the company profile. We are creating dashboards, so you can filter by Department Z, department Y and see what's their activities in the dashboard.

[00:16:57] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: And I think this will help also. For, [00:17:00] for us to have a product that's more usable, not only to the user, but only to also to the decision maker. And I think this is one big topic that pharma does have. The, the ways from the user/person who does need it within the company all the way up to the decision maker, the waste are way too long.

[00:17:24] Stefan Repin: Yes, it is. The sales, so it's called sales cycle. Yeah. How does long does it take to, to sell? It's like a, you know, that's a sales cycle is totally a marketing job. And the role of marketing in pharma, but any, anywhere is to decrease the sales cycle, right? So to give, that's why you have these details such as the buyer is not the seller.

[00:17:46] Stefan Repin: You know, you have examples of materials or content, content marketing that help to decrease the sales cycle, like make it shorter, right? Help people take a decision.

[00:17:56] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm.

[00:17:57] Stefan Repin: Now,

[00:17:57] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah.

[00:17:58] Stefan Repin: For example, in our [00:18:00] case with Platforce we are on a plan to create a set of documents benchmarks in the industry because, you know, like our competitors are the great Veeva and IQVIA, and we wanna compare ourselves to them from a more flexibility standpoint.

[00:18:13] Stefan Repin: And for a second we wanna create some buyer enablement materials such as, for example we wanna create a business case of switching from. Let's say Veeva to platform switching from IQVIA platform, what would be the benefit? What would be the potential timelines, and how would each stakeholder in the company benefit from that?

[00:18:33] Stefan Repin: Like let's say,

[00:18:35] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:35] Stefan Repin: This, how would the CFO benefit from us moving their solution, let's say from their solution which they have in a, a certain point to Platforce. Now just to wrap this up, I'm gonna say that a lot of the deals in pharma, as I'm seeing are sold are not deals that you lose because you lose to a competitor.

[00:18:57] Stefan Repin: But these are deals that are [00:19:00] like, okay, we're gonna say we're gonna stay in the same situation that we're at now. The solution we're using is bad, but you know, your arguments weren't good enough, so have to, in a lot of cases your enemy is not actually like, in my case, IQVIA or you know, like Veeva or like, but it's more like it's more like no action at all.

[00:19:21] Stefan Repin: So people just want just stay wherever they stay, they don't change. And that's what we wanna tackle with a buyer, like enablement buyer sales enablement. Is that also the case for you? Like when you talk to like your supplier buyer sellers? Like, do you lose a lot of deals also because like people just don't wanna do anything.

[00:19:42] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yes. It's one of the biggest challenges wherever I've been. Doesn't matter how big or small the company is. The second you wanna change something you always get into resistance. There's this really nice valet of tears example where you have [00:20:00] status quo and you wanna get there and you have to change, but you have to dip down first.

[00:20:04] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: It's the valet of tears until everybody gets up and gets to the change. It's actually one of the biggest challenges wherever, whenever, and being in a regulated setting. Like pharmaceuticals or life science, medical device, any of them is always the hurdle. So as you mentioned, you would love to do like business case where you explain what's the business plus upsides from switching to where they're adds to yours.

[00:20:32] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: It's actually great idea. My recommendation is here actually just pack it as a change request. Pharmaceuticals, they have to do a change request whenever they change anything. And if you do this change request, literally just use the word change request and then anyone in the pharmaceutical will like know what you're talking about.

[00:20:52] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: What you do is a gap analysis. So what do you have? Yeah, what do you have? What do we have? [00:21:00] What's the gap? How do we fix it? And what's needed to do so, and then also very important highlight risks. Like what is the risk? Is there technical risks? Is there compliance risks, G D P R risks? Do you need to have quality agreements with all of your third party vendors?

[00:21:20] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Again, if you use your system, all of this, you can already take an advantage and put into a gap analysis, into a risk assessment and just put all of this together because here comes the neat part. It's funny that you just mentioned that. You will take away that big chunk of work for the company, even if all of them are convinced about it.

[00:21:40] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Last but not least, if they don't get the change agreed to, they will not be able to implement. So if you already implement the full change request with all of the steps, gap assessment, risk analysis, and literally at the very end you show you save time, you save money, you will receive. [00:22:00] 20% more possible customers.

[00:22:02] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Then you made the quality manager happy, you made the change manager happy, you made the decision maker happy, and most likely, your user already knows what's the good of the product anyways.

[00:22:14] Stefan Repin: I am literally writing right now to I had in mind of, we, we run exercises with our sales, like on buyer enablement, but actually I was planning to do a SWAT analysis together with them.

[00:22:25] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:25] Stefan Repin: For the, for the buyer on the buyer side. But gap analysis is even maybe better. Thanks for the idea. You know, we're learning on this podcast, so I think that that one be, it's gonna be

[00:22:35] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: same here. Same

[00:22:37] Stefan Repin: Well, like a question, what do you do? So now it's summer, you know, like, and to be honest, like our sales numbers are not great during the summer. Do you guys do anything special during the summer that you know, will increase sales numbers or you just like sort of give up?

[00:22:51] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: No, we never give up. This is why I'm loving to be part of this company. I'm with consistency. Consistency, [00:23:00] consistency. There's no rejection. It's a yes or no. There's no, maybe you follow up, you keep asking, you keep sending, you keep coming back to people till they say no. And our no rate right now is low, lower than 5%. Yes, we have less than 3% currently who do actually sign up and do stuff. But that means you have 90 ish percent who are potential buyer because the no comes fast. And as long as you don't have a no, you just keep going. And also, very important lesson I learned myself, you might get a little frustrated, so you reach out to the next group, but you have the same statistics again, so it's not gonna change anything.

[00:23:40] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: But if you go back to the 90, 80% from the first round, and then at 70% you go back and at 60% you go back, you did the warmup already. So actually it's more efficient to be consistent. Go back, go back, go back, follow up, follow up, do a goodwill, follow up, whatever you'd like to call it. Actually, [00:24:00] that's the most important part.

[00:24:01] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: And I think this is something one can take advantage right now in a time of low. So there's not that much coming from outbound. Yeah. From, sorry. Coming in inbound. So the best thing we, we do right now is perfect time for follow up. You're busy in active sales cycles. Slow times like these are very perfect to actually go back to your old contacts.

[00:24:27] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: They are already warmed up a little, so actually it's easier with them. Yeah. To get the warm to the hot than the cold to the hot, right. So,

[00:24:36] Stefan Repin: Yeah . Awesome. So it's time, the perfect time. Dear listeners, please listen. As Yvette is saying, it's the perfect time for follow up. So that's what you guys do. In December, probably January, you know, and during summer when your sales numbers are low.

[00:24:51] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Correctly.

[00:24:52] Stefan Repin: Okay. Question.

[00:24:53] Stefan Repin: How do you do, is there anything you guys do to stay or you personally do to stay up to date with the [00:25:00] latest sales technologies, tools you know techniques,

[00:25:04] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah, so I think with my niche, with my segment I'm working in, I'm very fortunate that platforms like LinkedIn do most of the work already. So I think for me it's an easier game to put it, the least wording. There's so great tools, there's so great postings, there's so great groups to just follow Stefan by just getting on, you know, getting in touch.

[00:25:30] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Last year I just kind of hopped on you. I followed you. I'm following your links, I'm following your likes, I'm following your tagging. And I grew my LinkedIn group. From, I think it was 700 and now I'm at 1,400. So actually it's not that much work or money that one needs to invest. Again, it's consistency and just, you know, follow the, in this case, which I normally don't like, but follow the flow.

[00:25:56] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: You know, go with everybody else as long as they [00:26:00] go in the direction you like.

[00:26:02] Stefan Repin: Yeah. Correct. So consistency, beats everything, you know,

[00:26:06] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Yeah,

[00:26:07] Stefan Repin: Yeah, there was a I think there is this movie about the founder of McDonald's, Ray Crock, and he used to listen to this CD where, or it was actually like this, you know, a CD I think they had CD already at that time.

[00:26:21] Stefan Repin: And where the speaker was talking about, he was like saying the talent. There are a lot of people who have talent that have wasted it. There are a lot of very strong people who are not flexible enough. But, you know, consistency, consistency is the key to becoming successful.

[00:26:36] Stefan Repin: So I believe I believe consistency works in pharma too. Right. And it works for you, right. Growing your group. Okay. I have maybe maximum two more questions for you. So, You know, there is a lot of like, talk about AI in pharma, tragedy, yada, yada, yada. Like where, where do you guys, where do you stand?

[00:26:55] Stefan Repin: Where does the company stand on on that?

[00:26:57] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:27:00] So our management has sent out notifications, teams chats At least once a week where they actually emphasize for us to sign up. They have created department ChatGPT4 accounts, and they're like, here's your account for your department. Here's your ChatGPT4 paid version for your department, for you take an hour, week at least.

[00:27:24] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Play around, try it, see what you can do. And a second magic word for sales is automation. So anybody who's not using automation in a sense of AI, well, I think we all will see in a few years that this train left the station. If you are still there at the station, you know why is it gonna replace everything?

[00:27:48] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Of course it's not, but it's gonna replace it's gonna replace things that we did not think of. And it's of course supporting stuff that it already does. [00:28:00] Speaking of content, it is very useful. I mean, we also recognize it gets a bit dumber. Fair point. I mean, it's all been all over the news that it seems to get a bit more dumbed down, but I think that's not the system, that's the user fair, fair play.

[00:28:15] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: But the second thing is don't believe everything. I think that's the big difference between pharma. And non-regulated. You can't just take the word for granted. You have to validate. So one thing that we are doing right now is excessively using AI, speaking of ChatGPT, but we are automating, we are having test systems and we are validating.

[00:28:38] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: We have a big department that supports computer system validations, and this is what we do. Don't just take it all for granted. Don't take the word as it is. Validate, re-question. And I think this is something that people might underestimate if they wanna bring something to pharma. As mentioned of the change request gap assessment, [00:29:00] risk analysis, this is all like part of the ISO 9001.

[00:29:05] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: You have to have this management system and you have to have risk management. And if you don't tackle the risk of AI, not even having a single risk assessment you'll never get a foot into. But if somebody presents content generated by AI, Which we validated. We considered GDPR. We considered validating the sources.

[00:29:29] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: If you bring these wordings and this summary into any communication, outsourcing with pharma, it will always have an open ear.

[00:29:38] Stefan Repin: I agree. Yeah, there are people who are looking at how the world is changing and there are people who are changing the world, right? So I think pharma has to adapt to AI for good or for the bad. Okay, cool. I have my last question for you. So what would be the advice for pharma companies, like if it was about business?

[00:29:58] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Mm-hmm.[00:30:00] Well, I mean, there's lots of advice, lots of different business if I would say business development in a sense of sales / outsourcing. The ways have to change. Pharmatching got a nice boost when there was covid, let's be honest, because they had to outsource really fast.

[00:30:21] Stefan Repin: Yeah.

[00:30:21] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Like physical lines were cut, countries were shut down, they had to find another provider.

[00:30:29] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: It did work. It did work very nicely, and I'm honestly scared that everybody stood, stood back. They even went back. It feels like one step further back towards outsourcing. It was way better. Covid was good for that. It forced them to change. And I hope that, you know, just the little fluctuation, we are all just humans.

[00:30:53] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Emotions always go in a rollercoaster. Speaking of the valet of tears, I hope that next year latest. [00:31:00] Also pharma will recognize that outsourcing, agility, digital outsourcing, being more open to changing the way of how you outsource that this will just bring a boost, flexibilities and it will just broaden up lots of horizons.

[00:31:17] Dr. Yvette Schollmeier: Again, this is why Pharmatching would be very supportive, but I myself, as a person independent of independently of Pharmatching. I'm also a customer. I'm also patient. I also wish for the future and for pharmaceutical companies, life science companies, medical device companies, the more they are agile.

[00:31:38] Stefan Repin: Gotcha. Of course, the more modern they are, the more transparent they are, the better. For everyone. Cool. Thank you Yvette for the podcast. It was a great opportunity to listen to you. We, I really wanna do the podcast with you maybe half a year from now. And maybe there is gonna be like, new learnings.

[00:31:56] Stefan Repin: I'm sure there's gonna be new learnings, but for now I'd like to thank you very [00:32:00] much,

[00:32:00] Stefan Repin: Bye. Thanks.

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