Editor's note: Based in the U.K., David Hanlon is group director, Kantar Health.

In the current economic climate, where pharmaceutical company profits are declining, it is essential that new product launches achieve their full potential. Key to achieving launch success is being able to measure and communicate this success both internally and externally. Tracking a new product launch is an iterative process of measuring, managing and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) for the market and both your and your competitors’ brands within it.

Here are 10 key, integrated activities that are important in measuring performance and communicating launch excellence in the pharma industry.

1. Getting your market definition right

In today’s marketplace, communication of launch success drives motivation internally and investor confidence externally. The fate of a company’s share price can rest on the spin put on new product uptake. Therefore, market definitions (i.e., patient types, indications, competitors, etc.) are key.

The pharma marketplace can be split into two segments: the static repeat prescribing segment and the dynamic segment (new initiation, switch, add-in, etc.). In communicating launch success, the most appropriate share figure that describes the competitive set of brands must be quoted.

Consider defining the market using the following parameters:

  • prescribing dynamics – new, add-in, switch and repeat prescriptions, which are particularly important in chronic diseases;
  • indications and patient types;
  • line of therapy;
  • competitive set – brands only or brands and generics;
  • physician specialty.

Therefore, for example, communicating a 25 percent share of the dynamic market (new, switch or add-in) in severe psoriasis patients for dermatologists is much better than a 3 percent share of the total psoriasis market (to include repeat prescriptions and all specialties).

2. Identifying your audience

Increasingly, pharma companies are targeting specific groups of physicians (specific specialties, high prescribers or those with a special interest in a therapy area). This can affect measuring the success of a new product’s uptake and the research approach used (i.e., whether free-found samples or target lists of GPs, specialists or other HCPs) to measure the effectiveness of your launch campaign, so ensuring that you are targeting the appropriate audience is important.

3. Setting your KPIs

Jan Leschly, ex-CEO of SmithKline Beecham and former professional tennis player, once famously said, “If you don’t keep the score, you’re just practicing.” In other words, it is essential to have KPI measures in place that will help you monitor the success of a new product launch. These should closely match your market definitions, form the basis for internal goals and include standard rational ATU measures of prescribing dynamics such as awareness, percentage uptake, growth, new/repeat/switched prescriptions and assessment of product attributes.

However, companies are focusing more on prescribers and their emotional engagement and are including additional measures to capture their affinity toward new brands and the diseases they treat. Getting these right is key in measuring, managing and monitoring a successful launch and for later measurement of brand equity.

4. Finding suitable benchmarks, norms and analogues

 Two important questions to be able to answer are “How will I know if the new product launch is successful?” and “How realistic are our expectations for brand performance?” It is imperative that realistic benchmarks are used so that future launch goals are challenging but not impossible to attain.

One of the caveats regarding use of benchmarks is that they tend to be based on average levels of uptake across a range of products, therapy areas and specialties, which may not be reflective of the marketplace being examined and thus can act as only a rough approximation of what constitutes a measure of success.

Much of the primary benchmark data available are based on different measures and it is important to clarify the market definitions used. Benchmark data can be subject to bias due to market definitions as outlined above and variations in sampling (i.e., free found/random sampling versus target lists versus various recruitment/screening criteria and time scales of the data). Therefore, any internal or external benchmarks must be scrutinized to understand variations in the measurements, depending on the criteria used.

An alternative is finding suitable analogues from sales data by which to compare and measure uptake but there are always objections to looking outside of the product class or using other therapy areas as surrogates. Finding an identical scenario is rare, so companies have to be more open-minded in their comparisons with other product launches. As with benchmark data they are subject to the same caveats in terms of market definitions.

5. Setting launch goals: carrot or stick?

Goal-setting is a highly sensitive and political exercise; left to their own devices, people tend not to set themselves difficult-to-achieve targets. It is imperative to determine realistic ambition levels that agree with local, regional and global headquarters’ goals. Therefore, finding good benchmark data or new product launch analogues to help set these targets is key.

Once the benchmarks are in place, it is necessary to review them in light of performance goals set for the brand and the sales/marketing teams. Some flexibility in performance levels is needed as they will vary widely by country.

There also need to be a change in mind-sets with success levels being set as motivations rather than barriers to be breached. More qualitative terminology when comparing cross-country performance, such as bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels of success or traffic-light systems, are useful rather than focusing too much on just the number/percentage penetration or growth, although ultimately these are important.

Goal-setting over time can be easily constructed by applying different rates of uptake curves to reach a desired endpoint at a specific point in time (i.e., peak share). Again, these can be based on bench-marks/analogues and adapted to measure success across your main KPIs and built into management dashboards to track performance.

6. Deciding when to measure

The timings of measuring the success of a new product launch depend on the primary and secondary data sources, frequency of measuring required, type of product, sales force size and visit frequency.

Many secondary data sources are available, although there can be a lag between measurement and when the data is available. For secondary data sources, detailed breakdown of prescribing tends to be very general as they are built for the syndicated market and hence may not cover all KPIs. More often than not a customized or ad hoc market research approach is used so that company-specific KPIs and questions can be incorporated.

Ideally the following timings are used to monitor launch: one to two months pre-launch and usually one, three, six, nine and 12 months post-launch. Decisions can be made as to when to include a full market analysis or at certain intervals concentrate on monitoring some of the more important KPIs – i.e., a “full brand health” check at major points, with smaller temperature checks in between.

7. Managing timing

In any new product launch upper management is impatient; they will be eager to see progress and from Day 1 will be asking to see data. Measuring primary market research must be fast and accurate. Due to lag periods between the research and results one must be clear in defining time periods when communicating results. Timings must also be clear and realistic to help manage expectations but as fast as possible.

Timelines also must be synchronized with sales rep force sizes, frequency of visits and coverage of audience so that, for example, measures at three months cover 75 percent of the target audience and 95 percent at six months.

8. Communicating success
The market is changing with respect to deliverables. Large tomes of data are no longer acceptable and straightforward, easy-to-read management dashboards or scorecards to help make quick decisions are essential as upper management no longer have the time to wade through acres of information.

These bring into play the benchmarks, goals and performance KPIs so that management can easily see whether the launch campaign is over- or underachieving expectations.

9. Avoiding missed opportunities

Measuring, monitoring and managing a new product launch must be action-oriented. What is the good of producing market feedback if no further action is taken to help understand both negatives and positives that can be addressed or reinforced?

Opportunities are often missed in terms of follow-up. More in-depth qualitative interviews with customers help better understand the issues that arise and what they see as benefits, as there may be a mismatch of messages or messages may not be credible, may not be getting across or may be considered irrelevant.

10. Gauging competitor response

Often, the excitement of a new product launch focuses many of the launch activities internally and tailors communications toward customer needs and reactions. It is all too easy to neglect competitor response in terms of their reaction toward a new product launch regarding their counter-communications of competing benefits, reactions to your campaign and any new areas or change in focus for their product communication.

The 3Ms – measuring, managing and monitoring – are key in communicating the success of a launch campaign and following these 10 key steps will go a long way to ensuring a new product reaches its full launch potential and it will be “All systems go” rather than “Houston, we have a problem.”