Customer-Centricity: The Pulse of Our Innovation

Author: Micah Sobus

Commercial Leader, Legacy IFF Pharma Solutions

In the complex and evolving world of pharmaceuticals, putting customers first is essential. Companies across the industry are rethinking their strategies to better understand and anticipate the needs of their customers. Understanding the customer journey is crucial to this approach, as it provides a roadmap for how we can support our customers at every stage, from awareness to ongoing business management.

At our organization, we believe that true customer-centricity goes beyond enhancing our product offerings. It is about listening, first and foremost, along with building deep, collaborative relationships that drive innovation and create lasting impact. By mapping out the customer journey, we can ensure that our efforts are aligned with our customers' needs and expectations, creating a seamless and supportive experience.

The Growing Importance of Customer-Centricity in Pharma

With advances in personalized medicine, regulatory compliance, and a shift towards more sustainable and patient-centric healthcare models, pharma companies are realigning their priorities. According to a recent Deloitte survey, nearly 80% of pharmaceutical executives identified customer experience as a critical competitive differentiator, second only to product quality and efficacy. Excipient companies must match this focus. In this environment, being customer-centric is more than fulfilling orders; it means creating value through deep understanding of customers’ aspirations and needs.

At Health & Pharma Solutions, we are uniquely positioned to champion this customer-first approach. We are problem-solvers, helping our clients navigate complexities such as supply reliability, formulation optimization, compliance in a highly structured regulatory environment, and cost efficiency. By proactively collaborating with our customers, we empower them to deliver better outcomes for patients worldwide.

Insights from Industry Trends

Customer-centricity entails anticipating future needs as much as responding to current ones. Let us look broadly at the pharma and biotech universe to anticipate customer needs:

1. The Rise of Customization - Novel Formulations and Personalized Medicine

As the pharmaceutical industry evolves, customization has become a cornerstone of innovation. Traditional manufacturing processes like tablet compression, capsule filling, and wet and dry granulation are being complemented by 3D printing, which offers unmatched flexibility and precision. This technology allows for simple design changes using computer software, making it the ultimate technique for creating customized dosage forms. We leverage 3D printing to develop tailored drug release profiles, including immediate and controlled release formulations.

Other novel areas of oral drug delivery applications that are gaining popularity include oral thin films, topicals, and suspensions. These formats offer enhanced consumer convenience, providing easier administration and improved patient compliance.

Another trend we see is the rise of personalized medicine, which is now at the forefront, with therapies increasingly tailored to individual patient profiles, from genetic data to lifestyle factors. This shift necessitates investment in technologies that enable customized formulations while ensuring scalability and compliance.

2. Digital Transformation Powers a Customer-Centric Approach

As companies streamline operations, digital transformation has emerged as a key enabler of efficiency. From leveraging data analytics for predictive maintenance to using artificial intelligence (AI) for optimized formulation, technology plays a vital role in addressing pharmaceutical manufacturers’ operational needs.

We harness digital tools to provide insights that support better decision-making and improve supply chain processes — all to enhance the customer experience. This includes harnessing large volumes of detailed production data.

Insights from our advanced analyticsallow us to anticipate future requirements and proactively develop solutions that address emerging challenges. Whether it is through predictive demand planning or advanced formulation insights, our use of data empowers customers to make informed decisions that benefit their businesses and patients.

3. Regulatory Compliance as a Value-Add

It is likely that no industry is more highly regulated than drug development and delivery. Compliance in the industry is complex and constantly evolving, placing a responsibility on us and our customers to be well informed.

By staying at the forefront of regulatory trends and offering excipients and ingredients that meet stringent quality standards, we provide our customers with the assurance that their products are compliant and safe. Our focus on regulatory expertise and compliance adds substantial value to our partnerships, as customers rely on us to help them navigate these ever-changing requirements. One example is our robust low nitrite portfolio of microcrystalline cellulose and hypromellose that lowers the risk of nitrosamine formation in finished drug products. These offerings cater to pharmaceutical customers who require excipients that support their nitrosamine risk mitigation plans.


Understanding the Customer Journey

Exploring the four key stages of the customer journey and best practices for each:

  1. Build Awareness: Leverage digital tools like websites and customer experience platforms to provide valuable information. Educate potential customers about offerings and the benefits of a customer-centric approach. Making information easily accessible helps customers understand how solutions can address their specific challenges.
  2. Evaluation Stage: Emphasize collaboration with technical team members. Providing technical support with products and formulations is crucial for helping customers make informed decisions.
  3. Support for Successful Product Trials: Display a direct approach to addressing customer needs and sharing polymer knowledge. Comprehensive support during the scale-up phase helps customers achieve optimal results and build confidence in formulations and processes.
  4. Ongoing Business Management Stage: Support drug product filings with all regulatory and quality requirements through dedicated platforms. Share robust business continuity plans, ensure product availability and reliability through manufacturing excellence, and highlight digital innovations to maintain product consistency.

Building a Customer-Centric Future Together

We remain steadfast in our commitment to customer-centricity. By understanding and anticipating our customers’ needs, we strive to be a trusted partner in their journeys to innovate, grow, and make a positive impact on patients’ lives.

By embracing a customer-first mindset, we can help shape the future of the pharmaceutical industry in ways that benefit not only our customers, but also their clients and patients — and the broader healthcare ecosystem. At our company, customer-centricity obviously is not just a strategy; it is the foundation for everything we do.