IQVIA Holdings Inc. (IQV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's live broadcast incentive compensation, novel approaches in a new age of engagement. I'm Julian Upton Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine, and I'll be your moderator for today's event. We're pleased to bring you this webcast presented by pharmaceutical executive and sponsored by IQVIA. I'd just like to share a statement from our sponsor. IQVIA is a leading global provider of advanced analytics technology solutions and clinical research services to the life sciences industry. IQVIA creates intelligent connections to deliver powerful insights with speed and agility, enabling customers to accelerate the clinical development and commercialization of innovative medical treatments and improve health care outcomes of the patients. With approximately 70,000 employees, IQVIA conducts operations in more than 100 countries. You can learn more at iqvia.com. So just on a few point announcements for this webcast begins. The webcast is designed to be interactive, and we encourage you to ask questions during the event. [Operator Instructions] So I'd like to introduce today's speakers. We're pleased today to be joined by Sainath Thyagarajan and Varun Verdhan. Sai Thyagarajan is responsible for building innovative solutions to solve complex sales force effectiveness problems, including IQVIA's Incentive 360 offering. He brings over 20 years of experience in designing, implementing and managing global incentive programs across multiple industries, including pharma companies of all sizes. At IQVIA, he leads a diverse group of SFE experts in bringing thought leadership, delivery excellence and technology innovation to the company's clients. Varun is a consulting professional with diverse experience working with clients in global settings in areas like commercial effectiveness and performance improvement. For over 10 years, he's consulted for pharma clients as well as effectively managed incentive programs at global scale. Varun has helped clients generate value in these programs, leveraging core capabilities, including analytics, technology, innovation and automation. So thank you both for joining us today. And Sai, I'll hand over to you.

Thank you very much, and good morning, good afternoon to everyone who is joined today. Thank you very much for your time. Seems like just by the number of attendees, it is a hot topic, incentive compensation and the new approaches in the new age of engagement. We promised to make this worth your time. It is going to be an interactive session. So please feel free to ask questions. There's going to be polls, as we mentioned earlier, so you have an opportunity to provide input and feedback as we go along. A very quick run-through of our agenda. I'll cover how we are going to set up the webinar today. We'll talk in depth about the evolving commercial landscape. We'll talk about what that means for the field force. And then how then can we structure or drive desired behaviors through emerging incentive comp strategies. And then finally, we'll take a look at the platform considerations. What kind of technologies would you need to enable these strategies to drive these behaviors? We'll get into a Q&A session probably in the last 10 to 15 minutes of our presentation today. So with that, let's get started. So the whole reason we are here is that we want to highlight some of the trends in incentive compensation that are influenced by the changing commercial landscape. So we've structured this presentation today in four different parts. The first part will talk about the evolving landscape, right? The ship to specialty pharmacy, the focus on value versus an outcome sources just simple prescriptions and the expansion of sales channels and digital data. It also -- the evolving landscape has shrunk the time window to establish a brand. The change the promotional approach from an individual reps selling or talking to a doctor to a team-based approach. Of course, COVID has accelerated the access that reps have today to their doctors, to their HCPs. And the demand coming in from the HCPs or your customers about a more personalized approach to engaging with the pharma companies or life sciences companies. right? So we'll talk about the evolving landscape. We'll talk about what that means for the field force expectations, right? What are companies trying to do to manage those expectations? What -- and drive the right behavior? So we'll talk about four key things. We'll talk about real-time guidance. We'll talk about the orchestrated omnichannel promotion. We'll talk about the availability of data that's available today to measure and drive behaviors. And we'll talk about how we can link activity to performance, right? So now it's -- we'll talk a little bit about that as well. Okay. And then we get into what are some of the emerging KPIs or measures that can be augmented along with some of the traditional metrics that you have in the incentive comp [indiscernible]. So we look at -- of course, we have all of our traditional metrics. They're not going away anytime soon, but some of the emerging metrics around patient experience, customer experience, omnichannel effectiveness and so on and so forth. And then finally, we'll talk about what that means for your incentive comp platform or technologies that they are using to drive some of these behaviors, okay? So with that, let's get started. I'll talk first about the evolving landscape and then we'll go from there, all right? So it's strange, but the landscape -- the commercial landscape for life sciences companies has been changing for the past decade or so, right? A lot of that has been due to existing pressures like lack of access to specialists, patients influencing care decisions, digital wearable technology coming into play, of course, self-diagnosis via web tools, right? And then a lot of those existing pressures, companies have been dabbling with trying to change their commercial models to adapt to these existing pressures. And then along comes COVID and that has created a tremendous amount of pressure in the market, right? So you have added COVID case loads. You have patients avoiding or unable to visit for certain care -- certain treatments. They have overloaded facilities prioritized for COVID Care. And then, of course, we're just beginning to see some of the long-haul effects from COVID as well. So a lot of market pressure is here that's resulting in HCPs giving limited time for commercial meetings, resulting in patient engagement that has decreased, adherence to treatment that has decreased, reduced care facility, right, causing patient backlog; increased burden on managed care and some of the payer systems that we have; and explosion of patient engagement channels, especially with direct-to-consumer, direct-to-patient type of channels opening up with some of the new treatments, right? So companies are reacting like I'm sure you guys are reacting as well to all of these pressures. And they're predominantly reacting in 3 ways, right? They're reacting with creating precision insights into -- trying to understand the patient's treatment and care journey and making sure that the technology and the processes are in place to identify known and predictive patients, the patient journey, identify the high-value HCPs, linked payers, behavioral insights, et cetera, right? So that's the key insights. They're investing a lot of time and money and effort on understanding the patient journey, right? They're trying to orchestrate across the field force, across multiple digital channels, right? So if you think about the traditional way we had the marketing channels, we had the in-person sales channels, right? Now you have multiple channels opening up. You have virtual calls, you have hybrid calls, you have marketing campaigns. You have other channels like conference and speaker bureau, direct-to-consumer, patient support programs, as we talked about, is increasing, right? So multiple channels are opening up and then how to orchestrate across these channels, right? And then finally, I think the third biggest thing that the companies are looking at investing in is patient care. Ultimately, that's their vision, that's their goal is to improve the care for their patients, right? So bringing in a lot of direct patient engagement, patient support programs, community portals, direct-to-consumer messaging, right, to make sure that their patients are getting what they need for their treatments and making sure that those treatments are being adhered to, right? All of this -- and we're going to focus a little bit more on the middle layer here, which is the orchestration and the multichannel engagement, right? All of this is being borne out in data as well. So it's not just -- we are seeing all of this, but how is the data around us? So if you look at just the face-to-face versus remote interactions, across Europe here, right. You can see, obviously, the volume went down significantly during COVID. It's picking back up slowly in most countries. But if you look at the share of remote engagements, that's also picking back up significantly. And I think that's there to stay. I mean if you look at U.K., for example, it picked back up significantly, 58% of details were remote in 2020, and it has increased since then, right? If you look at Spain, again, a significant chunk was remote in 2020, and it has stabilized to about 32%. And we are seeing this not just across Europe, we're seeing this across the globe where we have this data. The remote channels are here to stay. They will stabilize over time. The overall interactions will start to creep up, but they are not where they should be or where they were back in 2019, pre-pandemic. So all of these things are leading to some trends in customer engagement. So what are we observing in the customer engagement landscape, right? So the first focus that our life sciences companies are placing is on value creation. How do I create value? How do we create value for the patient? How do we create value for the stakeholder? By treatment, service and information. The second trend we're seeing is a shift from individual interacting an individual -- with individual doctors and patients interacting with networks, both locally and globally, networks of stakeholders, right? And those networks can be your care networks of your hospitals, your payers, your patients, bringing it all together. The third trend that we're observing is change in customer preferences, right? Customers demand of personalization of push versus pull in terms of how they want to consume information provided by the life science companies, right? Request of high value for face-to-face. Face-to-face engagement, obviously, is the most expensive for life sciences companies as well as most valuable as well. So customers or doctors want to see that value coming in through those face-to-face conversations. A balance for push and pull, right? What information should be pushed to the customers versus what information they pull in directly from other channels, digital channels, like websites and stuff like that, right? And then finally, we are seeing some change in face-to-face roles looking at fewer, but more valuable interactions, hybrid rolls, more internal and external coordination across all of the players in the customer field force ecosystem, right? So a lot of these trends, what we want to do now is just get a pulse check on how these trends are shaping up within your specific match game. Julian?

Thank you, Sai. Yes, this is the first of a series of poles are going to be doing in this webcast. [Operator Instructions] So the question is which key trends in customer engagement are you observing in your organization? And you can select all of those that apply. Focus on value creation, shift from individual customers to networks, changing customer preferences, digital opportunity or a change in [indiscernible]. [Operator Instructions] Quite a lot of people on the call. So I think it's taking a while to come through. Okay. I've got them through. And interesting, so I'll hand it back to Sai to comment on.

Thank you, Julian. Yes, very interesting to see this trend here. Obviously, a lot of you are experiencing the opportunity with optimizing your channels with digital and also looking at the changing field [indiscernible] perfect -- right changing face-to-face roles, which then means how do we understand and influence behavior for those roles, right? So thank you for this input, and let's keep moving and we'll move on to our next section, which is to understand how expectations are changing within the field force, right? So we'll look at 4 key trends. We'll look at limited -- we'll look at the data and how that data is evolving from limited data to drive and measure behaviors to what the data landscape looks like today. We'll look at the promotional channels that are available and how those channels are being utilized. We'll look at planning tools, right? And then we'll look at how to measure and provide instantaneous feedback and reinforcement. So let's look at each of these aspects and then we'll dig deeper into all of these. Okay. So let's first talk about data, right? If you think about data, life science companies are putting in a lot of investments in connected ecosystem to bring about new and improved data sets. We believe that these data sets can affectively link activity to guidance and drive the right behaviors, right? So if you think about the current state, incentives were predominantly focused on measuring outcomes, typically sales outcomes, right? But with the shift to specialty pharmacy, sales data is being increasingly challenging to track as long delays, especially in connecting outcomes to behaviors, right? So if you think about outcomes, you typically get your sales data with a significant lag. If you think about a real outcome, which is your payout, it is done quarterly, typically, right? But the activity that influenced the sales happened a long time ago, right? So the disconnect between activity and outcome, which is your payout, which is your reward, is getting longer, if you're just looking at sales data as the only measure, right? Activity-based data, not -- was not robust enough in the old world to be considered effective for IC measurements, okay? Because they were predominantly driven off of static plans, right, static call plans, here's your target list, here's what you need to do to call them in this quarter, right? And that activity didn't really link back to effective IC measurements, right? But in today's world, we have robust multidimensional data, right? What that means is companies are investing in data infrastructure that allows collection, cleansing and connecting of various sources of data, which then enable us to power AI ML-driven suggestions to influence behavior. So if you think about next best suggestions, if you think about how those suggestions are produced and provided. It is because of this data infrastructure that's connecting everything together, right? And then real-time activity of tracking of sales reps can now really be linked to these suggestions and guidance. So you can truly link, we push a suggestion and this guidance and then, therefore, the rep did something, right? And you are able to track that adherence to plan or adherence to suggestion more effective, okay? The next aspect of it is the promotional aspect, right? So if you look at the current state, as I said, field force activity was based on upfront planning efforts. It typically excluded all of your historical ongoing or planned digital activity, right? So the digital activity happened separately. All of the sales activities -- face-to-face activity happened separately. And the field force is predominantly focused on individual face-to-face interactions with the customer. What we are seeing now is activity is guided by an orchestrated strategy to maximize customer engagement, optimize promotional investment and improved prescription activity, right? So it's a combination of how you engage with that customer, right? It requires the field to function in concert with other channels. In some cases, even play the orchestration role. So the sales rep, instead of being just a person who goes and sees the doctor, becomes a quarter back, if you will, or an orchestration making sure that all of the internal resources are coordinating and engaging with the customer in an orchestrated manner in an optimized manner, right? So the evolving orchestrated customer engagement strategy is transforming the field role, right, from just from influencing prescriptions to coordinating engagements. The third aspect we're going to look at is the planning tools, right? If you look at traditional or the current state, right, a lot of field forces are provided with static call plans. Here's your call plan for the quarter. Here's a call plan for the semester. Here's a target list. Here's your alignment. And then basically, off you go, make your calls, talk to your doctors, right? There's limited ability to make in-period changes, although you have CRM systems and all those infrastructure that you can track those changes, but those changes hardly make it back to receive incentive credit, right? So static planning tools, we are evolving from those, right? So now we are getting near real-time guidance. You have sophisticated next best algorithms that provide guidance in terms of what the rep should do next, right? You also have increased ability for the field to provide input and feedback on those suggestions, right? So how does -- how do we take some of these new things that are coming into play, the new tools that are coming into play for the field force? And how do you use those to guide and drive the right behaviors from an incentive comp standpoint, okay? So that's something that we're going to look at, right? But this is happening. This is -- the near real-time guidance is being provided increasingly to the field forces, okay? And then finally, if you think about it, right, in the current state, your results are really disconnected from efforts, right? There's significant lag, as we talked about with field force activity and then the results, which is, mostly, predominantly sales. And that, in itself, is not bad, but if you want to influence meaningful change in behaviors in a commercial landscape that is rapidly evolving, it doesn't do enough -- this lag actually doesn't do enough to meaningfully provide that feedback, right? So as we start providing near real-time guidance to the reps, near real-time guidance to the field force, there's also a need for providing instantaneous feedback and reinforcement of the right behaviors without the only mechanism being available, which is waiting to see their rewards in a paycheck, right? So as you provide near real-time guidance, as you track near real-time adherence of those activities, there's an opportunity here to provide instantaneous feedback and reinforcement. So there are some incentive strategies we're going to talk about that can help you do some of those things. So in summary, right, there are 4 factors that will be key to consider in this -- to enable customer-facing teams for success. We talked about the variety and the volume of data employed, leveraging the full range of data sets that are available to you. We talked about a connected ecosystem, bringing in multiple assets in multiple channels for customer engagement. We've talked about intelligence. The next best suggestion is the AI ML-powered suggestions and algorithms that are driving not just the customer insights, but optimizing how you reach your customers, right? And then the final piece of the puzzle is given all of these things, how do we drive the right behavior? What are the incentive -- emerging incentive comp trends that are driving the right behavior? So the key here is flexibility in designing and adapting incentive plans that can drive the right behavior in this new model, okay? So with that, we want to understand a couple of things from here, right? So here's a couple of more polls coming up for us to understand how -- what are some of the trends that you're -- what are some of the expectations that are happening within your organization. Julian, please take it away?

Yes, thank you, Sai. [Operator Instructions] What challenges are you experiencing in managing, changing expectations from the field force? I'll go through this because we have to have a few [indiscernible] people submit. Complementing next best suggestions with static planning tools; orchestrating customer engagement, being personal and nonpersonal promotional touch points; bringing together various data sets, measure relevant KPIs across the omnichannel landscape; or linking field force efforts to rewards in the evolving omnichannel ecosystem. So again, give you a little bit of time for everybody to select those, and we'll wait for the results. Okay. One clear leader there. So I'll hand that back to you, Sai.

I think this is a great segue into our next section. So -- you can see that a majority of you are having some challenges, linking field force efforts to rewards in the omnichannel ecosystem. I think the second channel is also very, very relevant, right? How do we bring all of these data sets together to measure the relevant KPIs? So let's jump right into our next section. I'm going to turn this over to Varun, who is going to take us some -- through some of our emerging incentive comp strategies, and will talk about some of these [indiscernible], right? Varun, please take it away.

Sure. Thanks, Sai, and hello, everyone. This is an interesting part of our presentation because we are now going to look at the incentive strategies and how they need to keep pace with the evolving business and field force expectations that Sai just described. We'll keep this section also very engaging. So we'll have polling questions. And of course, feel free to share your questions through the Q&A chat box as well. So the key thing for us to look at is how the strategies our incentive process and our incentive program can be a driver of business and not just an administrative process, especially given the evolving ecosystem. So to start off with, there are broadly 3 questions that we typically ask when we look at devising an incentive comp program. This is going back to the basics, right? And looking at the shifts and the changes that Sai just described and then thinking about in a structured way, how should we adapt and how should we link some of our incentive strategies to the shift and make it compelling for our field enforce, right? So typically, the 3 main questions that we ask ourselves is what behaviors are we really looking to drive? With those behaviors in mind, therefore, what should we measure and track? And then finally, very important, what will motivate my field force, right? So in terms of behaviors, it's very important, right, as we saw in the earlier part of the presentation, much more relevant these days than ever that we drive behaviors and field force, not just things about the sales outcomes, but things from a perspective of developing long-term customer value, right, or driving outcomes for patients, right? Also thinking about collaborative ways in which they can improve the promotional tactics to the customer so that they are satisfied, and then that drives the best business outcomes for the company, right? So therefore, in terms of behaviors, what we need to look at is to ensure, is my field force adhering to some of the activity guidance and the plans that we have laid out, right? How are they adapting and reacting to the coaching and the training that we are providing to them? Have we made investments in any data-driven suggestions, ecosystem that Sai just spoke about? And if you have done that, you would like your field force to consider those triggers and alerts in this new ways of working. So such are the behaviors that we need to think about and align to the rep incentive planning, so that they think not just for the sales number in the short term, but think much more broadly. In terms of measures, we need to ask ourselves, can we rely on some of the traditional sales outcome measures, which generally have been lagged and retrospective? Or should I think broadly in terms of some of the leading indicators, right, and metrics, such as the activities and adherence to the activity plans that we spoke about? And then finally, most important, my field force motivation, right? So do we have the right levels of reward and recognition programs, which are in line with the market standards or even exceed some of the market standards, right? Because if we exceed the expectations of our field force in terms of motivating and engaging them, then they are going to bring us the right results from a business point of view, right? So typically, in this area, we have been looking at providing a quarterly incentive or a trimester incentive, which is typically 1 to 1.5 months lagged. It is -- after the period of assessment and therefore, field force get that incentive after the activities and the hard work has already been put in, right? So therefore, we need to consider in this area these tactics around providing other ways of engagement, which can be more dynamic and real-time with regards to badges or some of the qualifying objectives that we can provide on a monthly basis, which can then dynamically link reward on completion of such activities, right? So this is kind of linking back and thinking beyond the quarterly incentive to short-term engagement mechanisms. And then finally, not losing sight of the long term as well, where we typically talk about annual rewards and recognition. And can we think about in such programs, how we can build in the more complex customer satisfaction KPIs and initiatives that rep do not achieve in the short term, but it's a process that we -- that they take in building a long-term trust, right? So these are some of the key questions that -- going back to the basics that we need to think about. The idea through the presentation is to make sure that we provide a structure and help everybody or the audience of the call to introspect with their incentive programs and what they consider as some of the things that they would like to adapt and bring the change, right? So with this, we are going to switch to our polling question. To keep it engaging, right? Over to you, Julian.

Thank you, Varun. Yes, this one, I'll be quicker to select. Where are you in the journey of assessing your incentive plans for changing field force expectations? [Operator Instructions] Assessment carried out for 2022; expecting to pick this up during our next planning cycle; or it's still early days, haven't given us a lot of thought. [Operator Instructions] Okay. Varun, we have the results.

Sure. Okay. Yes, it's really great to see some of the responses come in. It's good to see that some of you have already carried out your assessments for 2022 year, keeping the changing field force expectations in mind and 30% say that it's still early days and haven't given a lot of thought, while another 30% roughly say that they want to pick it up during the next planning cycle. So that's good to see where we are in our planning and thought process to build some of this into our incentive schemes. Perfect. So with this, I'll double-click into some of the areas that we just touched upon. We looked at the 3 key questions. Let's double-click a little bit into the metrics and the measures, right? So beyond the sales-based metrics, right, we can look at a variety of additional KPIs depending on the roles and the desired behaviors that we want to achieve as part of our incentive planning, right? These measures can be qualitative or quantitative depending on the robustness of the data that we have. And the way we have structured it out is not just thinking about the outcomes and traditionally the sales outcomes, but looking at the leading indicators that we were just thinking about and discussing. So starting with activities and then collaboration within a team-based structure and then looking at outcomes not just from a near-term perspective, but a longer term in terms of customers and patients so that we bring out outcomes and we have this folded into our incentive planning, right? So in terms of activities, activities are real time, right? And they could be leading indicators of success. They can also help reps in adapting and/or adoption of the right behaviors and the new tactics that are being suggested by the organization. Example of such measures could be as simple as a number of calls to certain customer segments, the coverage of your customer segments, adherence to call plans. However, we all know that only quantity will not suffice. We would also need to supplement this with quality measure, right? So for example, how well did the customer respond to an activity, right? If it is a digital activity, you can track customer feedback, right, directly through the application or platforms that you are using for conducting, for example, a remote call, right? So that could ensure quality and not just quantity of number of calls and the behaviors that you want your reps to take on a monthly or a quarterly basis. The other way to look at this could be through enabling a threshold or a qualifying criteria. So for example, a minimum number of the remote or digital tactics or activities that you want your reps to perform, right, and adherence criteria. So for example, if you have invested in data-driven suggestions or insights, you would like your reps to adhere to take some action on some of those suggestions, which are based not just out of theory, but from real-world evidence and through the insights that are produced by real data, leveraging any machine learning or data-driven business rule-based engines, right? So these measures with an appropriate and more dynamic reward and recognition tactic can really provide a very healthy engagement for field force. And beyond individual activities, then we'll talk about team-based engagement, right? So today, in the ecosystem that Sai just described, it's not just about a field force of infield rep taking an isolated action with the customer, right? A lot of coordination is needed in the sales process. It could be between the sales rep and the medical teams. It could also be the infield teams or remote or a digital team, which is sitting in the back office and providing promotional tactics in coordination with the field rep. So having measures to track such collaborative activities such as, for example, meetings where rep took a medical educator or a nurse educator to address doctor queries, and doctor really gave a very positive feedback, right? So such kind of activities, collaborative actions can lead to exceptional business outcomes. Similarly, measures, which look at not just in individual and territory-based performance, but a broader team-based performance, right? We see today a lot of our customers we work with reorganizing their field force in such a way that customer is [indiscernible] strategy, right? And there is a lot of collaborative teams who are having to focus on the same customer base. So in such kind of situations developing measures so that you can reward coordination and collaboration between field force is also going to be a great way to look at how you can adapt your incentive plans. And then finally, outcomes. So activities and collaboration will lead to outcomes. These -- beyond the sales outcomes should also focus at customer and patient centricity. With such measures, reps can be rewarded not just for simply moving the volume in the short term, but for more complex behaviors that build relationships with the providers and that drive long-term portfolio success. The examples of such metrics could be things like new patient starts, refill rates, which talk about how customers and patients are sticking to the therapies, persistence or adherence type of KPIs, depending on the data availability, and of course, qualitative metrics, which are related to customer satisfaction and product satisfaction, right, which are going to be very important to measure long-term value outcomes from your products. So some of the challenges that we see with these kind of measures is, of course, data and granularity, what is available and how to drag that. Companies need to really think about digital infrastructure and connected ecosystems that Sai spoke about to help track and measure such KPIs because these will drive top-line benefits and make your incentive program, not just an administrative process like we spoke about, but a contributor to your top line. Okay. So in summary, giving our structure to give a thought process for everyone to look at where they are and how they can adapt to some of these new KPIs. So we will move forward to -- and we'll turn it back to you to look at what are some of the KPIs that you are already incorporating in your incentive schemes? And what could be a few of them, which you would like to consider. So Julian, back to you.

Yes. Thank you. I've got a couple of polls in a row now. So I'll just read out this question for you. [Operator Instructions] Beyond sales measures, what type of metrics are you currently using for your sales incentive management? Activity-based metrics; customer-centric qualitative metrics; customer-centric quantitative metrics, patient-based qualitative metrics, patient-based quantitative metrics, team-based collaboration metrics or none. So what kind of metrics are you currently using your sales incentive management? I will just give you a few seconds to think on those. Okay. Varun, if you want to comment on that before we move on to the next poll?

Yes. Okay. Perfect. So we do see a lot of activity based metrics that teams are using in their incentive planning that it's really good to see. And then there are other ways as well where companies have looked at incorporating such KPIs into the incentives management. That's great. I think activity, of course, looks like the most important one as we see the adoption of new ways in the incentive plan. Perfect. Let's move to the next one.

Yes. So we have the same selection of answers again for [indiscernible], what type of metrics are you most likely to consider as additional metrics for your next planning cycle? [Operator Instructions] It's activity-based metrics; customer-centric qualitative; customer-centric quantitative; patient-based quantitive and qualitative and time-based collaboration metrics or other. What type of metrics are you most likely to consider as additional metrics for your next planning cycle? Okay. Hand back to you, Varun, on this.

Sure. Okay. So again, it looks like activities and team-based collaboration metrics lead the way here. So many of you said you have incorporated them. And then in the question where you are most likely to consider. Again, I think activity and team-based are the ones which people are considering and thinking about for the next planning cycle. That's great, good to see the response, hopefully, is the way to engage and everybody learn from the group how we are considering some of these. So I will continue to move forward. I think these are really interesting responses. With these responses, kind of, going towards how we look at balancing this, right? Because a lot of this is not just science but also an art in terms of balancing it out when it comes to the measures the right level of reward and frequency, right? And that is what kind of comprises a good success criteria in a multidimensional view today. So we spoke about activity versus outcomes like what to measure and how to balance that out. The other aspect to consider is that at what level, whether you would like to continue to focus on individual performance or keep a blended approach, right, where you have individual as well as team performance kind of coming together across the manager span or a geographical span. And then finally, how often, right? So it's a balance of keeping all of these 3 levers in mind and then balancing it out in a way that works best for you. And thinking about, of course, the change that you want to bring about and philosophy and the culture that your organization adopts, right? So for example, if you have been a company which has been heavily focused on individual performance and sales target-based approach, and recently, you have put in some new initiatives around digital, onboarded new roles. You have invested in data and suggestion-based ecosystem, you might want to consider adding a planned component, right, which tracks activity measures, which looks at more frequently monthly engagements, right? It may not be an incentive, but it could also be a way to, like we discussed, right, provide a batch or give a qualifying criteria to say, okay, certain types of activities have been completed. Certain adherence levels have been achieved by certain reps. And could act as qualifiers for your incentive planning, right? The other aspects which we have not touched upon are the following, right? So again, very important factors. Firstly, the pay mix, right? So although in an omnichannel ecosystem and in a collaborative world, it might be very hard to isolate performance when a group or an omnichannel ecosystem is driving a promotional activity. It's still important that we keep incentive levels to a market standard or even sometimes think about exceeding because that helps you retain the best talent and also to bring about the retention that you desire from your field force. And companies have tried to -- and have seen the risks of reducing or moving away from incentives, right? And that's where the balance needs to be struck in terms of the industry standards and allowing for the performance and behaviors that you want to reward. Second is the guidelines and governance framework, right? And this is something that supported through headquarters, right, can help align your incentive planning with the organization's strategic objectives, portfolio success as well as product life cycle management across multiple affiliates, right? So these can also enable standardization, right? However, it is important that such guidelines allow for flexibility, for any localization in the country or the culture and the market dynamics in the country, right? So that is something that needs to be balanced out. And then finally, all of the strategy is of only certain use unless you can execute it and take it to fruition. Therefore, supporting data and technology is very, very important. Making sure that you are able to create an ecosystem that can drive this forward to the expectations that you have from your incentive plans, right? With this, we are going to segue into IC platform considerations, right? So how does the technology need to look like, what does good look like in terms of technology in today's world? And what are some of the considerations that we need to think about? Four key aspects that we generally suggest, which we need to think about for our next-generation capability, right? Firstly, the ability to integrate, right? So we looked at it throughout the presentation. It's so very important to have a robust data management capability, capability to bring in different data sources, not just sales, but also from your CRMs, so we can track activities, ad hoc files, data sets that you have locally that needs to be brought in on a dynamic basis, right? So that's very important. The ability to configure, right? So this is -- you need a capability in your next-generation platform, which can be agile and can adapt to business shifts, right? In the last 2 years, we have seen -- and all of you must have gone through this, how we have to navigate through uncertain situations, right? Looking at challenges that we had to quickly adapt our incentive process so that we have the right levels of motivation and engagement going on with the fleet. So platform needs to have that agile capability to configure also in a self-service architecture, right, because you want to keep your cost low and be able to dynamically and quickly adapt to the shifts in these uncertain situations. The third is the ability to visualize, right? So field force today on the move and with the closeness with technology, would love to have mobile-friendly KPI interface, right? Not just a mobile-friendly interface, but also the ability to drill down so that they can see how their incentives are calculated, underlying KPIs from outcomes that can show linking it back to activities and things like that. And then finally, the ability to motivate, to have interactive tools and planning processes to do that. So these are the 4 key aspects of a platform that are essential as well. Going back to your incentive platform, right? Quick poly question, what are the aspects that your platform is able to satisfy today and quick response would be appreciated.

Yes. Thanks, Varun. [Operator Instructions] I won't read through all those. I'll just let you take a look at them. And hopefully, they will get the results pretty quickly. Okay. Back to you, Varun, to have a look at that.

Sure. So we see that some -- of course, there are areas that platforms can -- are currently catering to, but a couple of areas which have been rated low, the ability to manage data sources and the ability to provide interactive tools to the field force, which can power and expert suggestion. So those are definitely opportunities, which need to be considered for future planning and long-term success. Perfect. So I hope this was engaging and provided some structure and thought process. I'll hand it over to Sai for concluding remarks and Q&A.

Thank you, Varun. And then just as a quick conclusion, right. So what are some of the key takeaways here. We talked about some opportunities for us to look at emerging incentive comp trends, but also some considerations, right? So if you think about opportunities, the opportunities are with changing field force roles. So what are -- it may require in the valuation of your program. Additional metrics that can be augmented the connected data ecosystem. Can we take advantage of that, right? And then frequently, enforcement, can we make the -- can we help the field force stay engaged, motivated and agile? At the same time, right? Is this right for you? Your specific commercial transformation journey will influence this kind of disruption, right? What kind of organizational culture you want to bring in and influence? Culture takes time to change. So you need to consider that. The technology upgrade, of course, right? We talked about some of the needs from a technology standpoint. And then some of the basics, right? They don't go away. It's not -- we're not recommending or suggesting that we completely turn the tables on sales base metrics. The focus on quality, the focus on timeliness, the focus on governance compliance. These things do not change. So it's important to build on those basics, right? So I hope you had a good informative experience today. We will open the floor now for a couple of questions. We have a couple more minutes before we close this. So Julia or Julian, please go ahead.

Thank you. Thanks very much, Sai. Thank you both as well for the informative presentation today. Now we are very short on time, so I'm going to jump into the first question, if that's okay. And so that is, have you seen any data points linking next best suggestions to sales performance? How can we build an incentive plan component around this?

Yes, let me maybe try to answer this one. So yes, we have -- obviously, next best action is a new thing that has been evolving over the last years. And linking actions to sales performance over the last year has been difficult because of corona because that was just overshadowing everything. But we have been and some clients able to link a proof impact on sales performance up to 2% or in some cases, even 4%. And what we also are seeing once the incentive plans -- sorry, once [indiscernible] becomes more stable, like it's rolled out, it's accepted that it becomes part of the incentive plan. And actually, one of our clients in the U.S. this year, they're building this -- they've already built this into their incentive plan and how this can be done. I mean the most direct measures are, of course, kind of acceptance of suggestions or action, have the reps action on the suggestions. And then if you want to go further, it could be seeing like how does it improve customer satisfaction, et cetera. But I mean, what they're doing. What we've seen, the company is doing is more like around those immediate actions around acceptance rate and action rate.

And just had this last one, can you share any ideas for customer-centric KPIs that you see with your clients? And how do you incorporate them into incentive compensations?

If you don't mind, I'll take this one. So I'm very happy that this one came in, and we had a few polled questions and we see also -- but even if you think about the outside pharma, we are very much outcomes-oriented even though if we put kind of customers and treated at the very top of our agenda. And we have seen in the poll around 1/3 or 30% of people who provided pole answers are actually using currently, and it seems to be kind of growing to around 40-ish percent, if I remember the numbers correctly. So this is reflected in the schemes at the moment. So these customer-centric KPIs I realized they are still quite underrepresented. And if you think about what kind of KPIs, how to gather the data around them? It's -- even if you look at kind of the everyday situations, if you have any contact with any customer, whether it's a bank, whether it's airlines, any industry, you get directly serviced afterwards? And can they ask you to stay on the line? Or if you have the IT, you get an e-mail directly afterwards asking how they served you and so on. So long story short, the customer metrics are typically lower weight compared to the typical outcome KPIs. And as I mentioned, the customer service are one of the options how to gather the data. Next to that, you have the fully fledged PMRs, which have sections on customer satisfaction then also you have some kind of syndicated studies as, for example, IQVIA channel dynamics data, which offers the information on promotional efforts and perception or you have even data proxies if you think about more quantitative rather than kind of doing a market research, but doing kind of database analysis, you have kind of data proxies, which would be, let's say, prescriber breadth or depth to mimic these customer-centric KPIs. And the metrics at the end of the day are typical customer satisfaction metrics or adoption letter, net promoter scores or derivatives thereof.

Okay. As you know, we're at the edge of the time now. So I just want to thank the audience for attending and participating certainly in today's event. I'd like to thank all the sponsor IQVIA for making today's webcast possible. [Operator Instructions] Also, any questions that weren't covered today, speakers will try and get to and respond to after the event. So you'll receive an e-mail alerting you to when this webcast will be available for replay, and we invite you to forward that announcement to your colleagues who may have missed today's live event. It just remains to say thanks to everyone for joining. Thanks for the speakers, and we'll see you all next time. Thank you.