How to build a measurement framework to enable digital product success
Between digital therapeutics, HCP portals, and patient support communications, pharma companies are investing a significant portion of their revenues on digital products. To justify spending, project owners must show that these products are delivering results – yet, there are significant issues with measurement.
Assessing the impact and success of digital solutions within the pharma sector remains a significant challenge, with one in five (19%) of those surveyed for our Disconnected Pharma report admitting they have no defined KPIs or metrics set for their digital solutions.
Measuring the impact of digital HCP or patient engagement is more complicated than measuring something like product sales or conference attendance. Due to the complex nature of healthcare interactions, teams can often feel overwhelmed when it comes to setting objectives, with many postponing the task. 54% of pharma leaders admit that KPI setting is happening too late in the process, limiting the opportunity to secure meaningful data and benchmark against progress. Accessing that data can also be a challenge, with 61% agreeing that internal data silos are a barrier.
Why is measurement so important?
The regulatory landscape, complex user interactions, and organisational structures can make measurement seem like an impossible task, but it is critical to overcome those challenges.
Taking the time to set up effective and meaningful measurement frameworks:
- Evaluates project success
- Confirms customer needs are met
- Enables data-driven decision making
- Provides guidance for teams
- Shapes future initiatives
- Helps to secure stakeholder buy-in
- Supports investment decisions
- Promotes continuous improvement
Having the right measures and KPIs in place means that teams are able to deliver products that meet the needs of both their users and the wider business. Without them, it is impossible to accurately track product success and identify areas for improvement – and it will be significantly more challenging to secure further funding for necessary updates or similar products in future.
What is the best way to approach setting objectives?
There are several key considerations that can help to ensure clarity and effectiveness when setting objectives for digital products, services, and strategies:
1. Start with the ‘why’
Currently, 64% of pharma leaders say the metrics are not aligned with wider strategic KPIs, which raises the question of why the digital product is being developed. Taking the time to clearly define the purpose of the project and understanding the overarching goal helps to align objectives more effectively.
2. Engage stakeholders early
Involving all relevant stakeholders from the start ensures measurement frameworks meet critical needs and makes it easier to secure buy-in for additional support. Bringing in a strategic partner at this point to act as a facilitator can help to drive a more structured, collaborative, and informed approach.
3. Consider both user and business needs
Taking a customer-centric approach to building a digital product is essential for engagement, which is more likely to result in commercial success. Measurement frameworks with a dual focus – customer and commercial – enables informed decision-making and supports both user satisfaction and organisational goals.
4. Don’t try to track everything
It can be tempting to measure everything, but this can result in data overload. Nearly half (47%) of pharma leaders agree that there is too much focus on vanity metrics and short-term gains. Stripping these out and focusing on a few key metrics that align with organisational KPIs helps to deliver clear analysis and actionable insights that allow for effective improvements over time.
5. Integrate qualitative and quantitative
Qualitative and quantitative should be used in tandem to measure digital products. Qualitative insights add depth and context to quantitative data, enhancing understanding of user behaviour, while quantitative data validates the qualitative findings and offers statistical evidence of trends and impacts. By leveraging both, organisations can optimise user experiences and drive meaningful outcomes in patient care and engagement.
How does this work in practice?
Measurement frameworks can be vastly different depending on the organisation, project, and systems being operated. Taking a recent example where we worked with a company to create a design system - a library of reusable visual styles, principles, and components that can be applied across digital platforms - the framework encapsulated business, customer, and regulatory requirements, as well as accessibility and UX best practices.
It was important that the company could monitor how well the design system met each of these requirements. In this scenario, we needed to monitor business, user, and product success, so we selected the following:
- Business success: Impact on website launch timelines, cost-saving for site builds and localisations
- User success: User feedback score, qualitative feedback from internal stakeholders, user feedback quotes, and action/journey completion
- Product success: Component usage statistics, number of components delivered, and documentation engagement time
When developing a measurement framework, it is important to collect only what is needed. Streamlining where possible can make the process more efficient, saving time and resources that could be valuable elsewhere. However, it is important to get the balance right, because if you streamline too much you could miss details that the organisation needs to make decisions going forward.
Embracing continuous improvement
Once you have your measurement framework up and running, it is important to consider how it might need to evolve. Users’ needs change frequently, and the product plan may need to adapt to take account of these changes.
Maintaining an interactive process and using insights from measurement to refine strategies will ensure alignment with objectives and ensure that your product strategy reacts to changing user needs. Enabling flexibility in adjusting objectives or adding new metrics allows teams to effectively adapt to changes in the industry over time.
Keeping key stakeholders involved in the process is also critical. Presenting data in an engaging, accessible, and actionable format that tells a compelling story about your process makes it easier to implement changes and secure buy-in for additional funding and ongoing work.
Ultimately, your measurement framework should yield information that helps you and your organisation to make decisions throughout the development process. Without appropriate measurement and KPIs, companies are ‘going in blind’, resulting in less efficient and effective decisions that serve neither the users nor the business.
