How pharma companies can keep product launches on track using AI

Insights from Inizio experts: Adam Boucher, Richard Head, Jamie Avallone, Lori Klein 

Launching a new therapy successfully is only the beginning. The real challenge is identifying whether a launch is on track early enough to make meaningful adjustments. By combining AI, commercial intelligence, field insights, and leading indicators like brand equity, pharmaceutical companies can detect problems months before traditional sales metrics reveal them. 

Why pharma product launches lose momentum

There are many reasons why product launches fail, ranging from a lack of clarity around the product itself – a weak proposition, say, or unclear differentiation – to organizational issues like a lack of coordination across functions or ill-prepared field teams. 

“Whatever the reasons, the problems tend to fall into two specific buckets: strategic misalignment or poor execution of strategy,” says Adam Boucher, Head of Innovation & Product Development, Inizio Ignite, STEM, specialist in pharmaceutical benchmarking. “In the first area, we commonly see field teams doing their own thing, campaigns having overly complex messaging, or teams which aren’t just siloed, but also have low confidence. 

“And when it comes to executing strategy, it’s not uncommon to see teams fall into different traps, whether that’s chasing too many different targets, being too focused on what they want to say rather than what the physician needs to know, or settling for easy wins when they could be pushing for more.”  

How AI improves field force performance

The Inizio Ignite, STEM team has worked closely with pharma clients for almost two decades, analyzing their field teams to ensure they’re strategically aligned and executing according to plan.  

Building on STEM’s proven benchmarking methodology, STEM AI transforms real-world HCP interactions into personalized coaching, actionable insights and strategic reporting. 

With consent, field reps record their meeting with an HCP, and STEM AI analyzes the conversation. Within minutes, STEM AI provides personalized coaching for each field team member. It also gives leaders strategic reporting that shows how strategy is being executed, which campaign messages are resonating with HCPs, and where coaching opportunities or strategic adjustments may be needed.  

“Because the whole process is instant, reps can immediately use that feedback to improve their very next meeting,” adds Adam. “Furthermore, leaders can see the bigger picture, spotting trends across their teams to share best practice or close common capability gaps.  

“The first 12 months after a product launch are critical, so having a tool like STEM AI gives you rapid insights that enable you to make improvements right from launch.”  

Brand equity as an early indicator of launch success

Metrics such as prescribing numbers and market share are obviously the ultimate proof of a product’s successes. But they’re also relatively lagging indicators. By the time those metrics are in leaders’ hands, the market may have already shifted, making it much harder to course correct if sales are behind target.  

The big challenge is to identify issues early enough so that companies still have time to act if sales aren’t trending in the right way.  

Another way to identify early indicators of product launch success is by measuring brand equity, which Richard Head, of Inizio Ignite’s Research Partnership team, explains can provide an early view of launch trajectory. 

“It’s useful to think about new launches progressing through four Ps,” he explains. “It starts with perception and what a doctor believes about the company and its product. 

The four Ps: 

• Perception
• Preference 
• Prescribing 
• Performance 

“These perceptions then shape preference, in other words which brand is an HCP leaning towards, which then drives prescribing and leads to the fourth P: performance. So many KPI launch dashboards are built around performance metrics, but we believe that it’s those earlier stages where you can uncover leading indicators of likely success.” 

Perception and preference are driven by brand equity. “When we see brand equity change, which can typically be three to eight months before performance metrics come in, we immediately look at what’s driving that,” says Richard. “For example, have perceptions of the product changed? Is there an efficacy or safety issue? Is it more to do with the company’s credibility or are there barriers to prescribing or reimbursement that are making it hard for HCPs to get the product to their patients? 

“By focusing on the state of brand equity and using it as an early-warning system, we help our clients identify issues and act quickly, whether that means refining the scientific narrative or switching up the channel mix. 

“Teams will, ultimately, be judged on sales and market share. So while brand equity doesn’t seek to replace them, it definitely influences them.”   

Predict commercial performance before launch with Predictev™

Commercial teams make hundreds of critical decisions before and during launch. The challenge is understanding which actions will have the greatest impact before investing time and budget. 

Predictev™ lets you do just that. Built on 35 million hours of real-world data gleaned by tracking the online behavior of 80,000 HCPs worldwide, Predictev™ works in a similar way to popular AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude. Users simply ask questions and Predictev™ provides answers in minutes – results that would take human teams weeks to produce.  

“About 18 months before launch is when teams have lots of decisions to make but they simply don’t have time to interrogate every possibility. Predictev™ gives them that opportunity,” says Jamie Avallone, Chief Data Officer at Inizio Evoke. “For instance, you might ask the best way to target a certain sub-segment of HCPs. What channels do they prefer? What type of content do they consume? Where do they go when they need information about a disease? 

“Predictev™ not only gives you the answers but also gives future-looking guidance, advising on what to do next to drive behavior change, to support reps with conversations, to create KPI targets and to predict the likely results. And users can trust the accuracy of the answers because they’re only based on the data in the system (and their own data if they wish), rather than the wider internet, which as we know can be unreliable.”       

Bring commercial intelligence together with ClarityNav

Every one of these approaches is powered by data. The real value comes from bringing those insights together with other commercial and scientific intelligence to create a complete picture of launch performance. 

What if you could bring together insights from STEM AI, market research, MSL and rep interactions, claims data, advisory board summaries, congress abstracts, and social listening in one place?  

ClarityNav, part of Inizio Ignite’s Navigator AI™ strategic intelligence platform, brings together many disparate data sources and analyzes them, generating a brand’s share of scientific voice, share of digital voice, and key themes and sentiments.   

“ClarityNav not only gives us the ability to see what’s happening in real time – pre, during and post launch – but it also uncovers issues or trends that maybe weren’t even on the client’s radar,” says Lori Klein, Partner and Medical & Scientific Affairs Practice Lead, Inizio Ignite, Putnam. “For example, in a recent launch we analyzed multiple insights data sources on a monthly basis to understand the degree to which we were answering our priority key insights questions and to what extent we were achieving our strategic imperatives. This allowed us to track performance in real time and make adjustments early in launch as needed.”  

“In a market where so many different factors can have an impact on the success of a product launch, having that early read on what’s happening is so important to spot issues, course correct, and achieve your targets.” 

Key takeaways

Successful launches aren’t determined only by strong planning—they depend on how quickly organizations recognize what’s happening in the market and respond. By combining leading indicators like brand equity with AI-powered field insights and integrated commercial data, pharma companies can identify risks months earlier, make smarter decisions, and maximize launch performance. 

Discover how Intelligent Commercialization™ combines AI, commercial intelligence, and integrated data to identify launch risks early and keep pharma launches on track. Contact our experts to see it in action.