Tech Talk—Building Software Is a Convergence of Art, Data, and Technology

by Paul Sohal

Developing software for biopharma commercialization takes a deep understanding of both customer challenges and how technology could rise to meet them. Product managers are the bridge connecting Corval customers who use our software with the engineering and technology team that develops it.

Product managers bring together the needs of users, the capabilities of the platform, the vision of stakeholders, and the product’s place in the market. Much of their day-to-day is spent gathering and analyzing feedback from internal and external stakeholders.

When the feedback uncovers underlying issues the software could address, product managers prioritize the problem and craft creative solutions with developers and designers.

After the new ideas are implemented, product managers work with the customer success and marketing teams. They let customers know how the software has been improved to address pain points in the biopharma commercialization process.

The path to commercialization is deeply complex and studded with possible pitfalls. The Corval strategic planning platform enables biopharma teams to quickly create a customized multi-year roadmap with a companion budget and resource plan.

Our product managers have been tasked from the beginning with developing technology to make the commercialization process clear, efficient, and user-friendly.

Making the Commercialization Landscape Easier to Navigate

The essence of agile development – listen, learn, build, and repeat – is especially challenging when the tasks are as complex and nuanced as those in the biopharma commercialization journey.

The more complicated a process is, the greater the risk users will get lost and frustrated. The goal of our product managers is to make the commercialization pathway clear and intuitive while still including its many variables.

“Users need to view complex data and have complex functionality, but it needs to be presented in a straightforward, accessible way,” Product Manager Casey Ryan explained.

 The Corval platform was built on the collective knowledge of industry veterans to ensure it included the many tasks, scenarios, and detours biopharma teams are likely to encounter on their commercialization journey. Product managers and developers deploy their technical skills to make that journey user-friendly and easy to follow.

How Commercialization Software Evolves to Meet Biopharma Team Needs

To keep up with the rapidly evolving biopharma landscape, our product managers are ever-vigilant to customers’ changing needs.

Sometimes, those needs surface through customer feedback. At regular requirement-gathering sessions, the Corval customer success team tells the product team about problems customers have experienced or features they’ve requested.

“Product managers work with the development team to get the feature ready, then come back to us for a demo,” explained Associate Director of Customer and Partner Success Radhika Sabnis. “Feedback goes back and forth, they iterate, and the feature is finalized. Then we can go back to the customer and say, ‘Hey, you asked about this and we created it. Let us know what you think.’”

Other needs reveal themselves more subtly. Casey said a recent change to the interface that helps users plan adding headcount was the result of observing how customers used the feature.

“The platform has so much functionality and flexibility users were creating accidental bottlenecks,” she recalled. “They were defaulting to one option for everything, even when it wasn’t the best choice.”

To help users get the most out of the feature, the team developed an approachable way to surface all the planning options and then point users in the right direction for their specific goal.

“The functionality was already there,” Casey said. “We just had to make it more intuitive.”

Another recent update tackled a quandary unique to biopharma commercialization—planning activities and budgets when timelines are uncertain. Commercialization planning over this uncertain timeframe needs to be strategic and very flexible which is different than the very tactical launch planning phase 12-18 months before market entry.

When FDA approval timelines move faster or slower than expected, accomplishing all the activities required to reach the next milestone on the commercialization roadmap can be tricky, Senior Product Manager Jeff Alexander said. 

“You might get approved early. You might get delayed,” he said. “If the timeline condenses, can you condense activities without disrupting dependent activities downstream? What if you don’t have the budget to start those activities yet? We wanted to develop a tool to help users plan, schedule, and budget.”

Between customer requests, usage data, and the corporate vision for how the platform should serve the market, product managers have no shortage of ideas to develop. Sometimes, the hardest part is deciding which ones get the green light.

How Product Managers Prioritize Which Features to Develop

“The biggest challenge as a product manager is wanting to do everything,” Casey said. “Everyone has really good ideas, and that means sometimes the product manager has to be the ‘no’ person.”

The list of things a platform could do is endless, but time and resources are finite. Product managers have to prioritize the features with the greatest value to the greatest number of people.

A single, root issue could manifest in different ways for different audiences. By listening hard, managers can understand not just the user’s experience but the underlying issue that caused it. When feedback from multiple stakeholders overlaps, it’s a strong signal it’s an issue worth working on.

Projects are prioritized based on their value relative to the resources they require. When weighing value, customer experience is the most important factor. Projects that address customer pain points and make the platform easier to use are the highest priority.

Building a Digital Path for Biopharma Commercialization

A unique challenge for Corval’s product managers is introducing the idea of digital transformation to the biopharma market, particularly when it comes to planning.

Our founder was inspired to build Corval when she saw the time and effort consulting teams put into building plans on Microsoft Office tools – effort that was largely wasted when the plans were not updated as circumstances changed.

“The culture of biopharma is built on human support,” Jeff said. “Companies may not have even dreamed of a digital solution. But the fact is, there is technology that can make your job faster, easier, better, and more efficient.”

The stakes are high, particularly for small companies. They may have just one shot to get their biopharma asset to market. So, it’s critical for Corval to build a platform that removes uncertainty from commercialization’s complex equation.

The platform’s data and decision algorithms were built on the knowledge base of life sciences industry veterans who have spent decades leading biopharma companies of all sizes. The content is not theoretical – it’s based on established, authentic, successful applications.

“In most software platforms, the customer inputs the content. We have a platform preloaded with valuable content,” Jeff explained. “As customers experience the platform and share it with their ecosystem of consultants and stakeholders, they start seeing things they usually do in spreadsheets and project management tools can be done faster in this user-friendly interface.”

As people interact with the platform, their experiences add to the data product managers use to make it better. The managers examine usage trends looking for pain points, bottlenecks, or indicators that an activity is too difficult.

By building on a foundation of deep industry knowledge and iterating with a constant feedback loop, Corval is building an easy-to-use product biopharma companies can trust when they’re taking their shot.

Technology is Transforming Biopharma Commercialization

We are in the midst of a transformational era. The convergence of innovation, technology, and biopharma commercialization is going to change everything for patients.

Biopharma commercialization software is taking the confusion and the heavy lifting out of bringing pharmaceutical assets to market. Planning activities that once took weeks can be accomplished in hours.

By automating outputs like budgets and hiring plans, teams can focus their energy on more impactful tasks like strategy and market analysis.

Behind each feature, function, and bug fix you see in a software platform are product managers looking for new ways to make users’ jobs easier. These skilled interdisciplinary professionals make sure that, amid competing audiences and priorities, the platform’s value to the customer is kept front and center.

See how Corval is transforming the way biopharma companies take their breakthroughs to market.

Questions on your commercialization planning options? Reach out today.