CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) LEADER
The future will belong to those enterprises who meet the closest what their customers need and expect. I contribute to this ambition as a senior CX leader, a digital engagement & content innovator, and a passionate customer advocate in the healthcare industry.
My extensive experiences across digital media and omni-channel excellence allow me to facilitate outstanding customer experiences. Build on a broad background in medical affairs tactics & strategy, I am a strong proponent for an enterprise customer approach. Contributing as a bridge-builder between ‘medical/science’ and ‘commercial’, and a mediator between stakeholders, functions, divisions and layers.
As an inspiring, integrative and agile leader, highly experienced in building and managing multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural, high performing teams, I grow and empower /people to go beyond comfort zones and deliver extraordinary results. I am pushing a mindset that real change is achieved by taking action. This includes aligning deliveries to prioritized business needs as well as regulatory requirements, and operating successfully within an international matrix organization.
A short history of my professional life.
Read some voices by former colleagues about me.
Facts, facts, facts ...
CUSTOMER RELATIONS & CX
DIGITAL & OMNICHANNEL
MEDICAL AFFAIRS ROLES
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
DIGITAL PLATFORMS INNOVATION
TRAINING & COACHING
Doctorate/PhD (Dr. rer. nat., Molecular Biology/Genetics), Hanover University, Germany (1997)
Basic oncological research on the genetic regulation of cell growth.
Graduated with university diploma degree in Biology (Diplom-Biologe), Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany (1993)
Areas of expertise: Microbiology, Biochemistry, Genetics, Mycology, Waste Water Treatment
Mediator training (2018)
Novartis Management Academy – Influencing without formal authority (2012)
Conducting Negotiations Successfully (2011)
Novartis Management Academy – M1XP Leading for Results (2011)
Novartis Management Academy – M1 Leading at the Frontline (2010)
numerous company-internal leadership trainings
Certified Computer-Systems-Validation Expert (CSV-GAMP5) (2013)
Good Clinical Practice (GCP) for Investigators and Sub-Investigators (accredited by Swissmedic) (2012)
David Professional WebPublishing (2000)
Qualification “Safety in Gene Technology” (acc. to §15 Abs.2 Satz1 Nr.3 GenTSV, German Law) (1994)
CX Masterclass – Mastering the 6 CX Competencies (2020)
Strategic e-Medical Affairs (2018)
Project Management Methodology and Tools (2017)
Novartis ICE Bronze (IT project management) (2012)
Novartis Sharepoint Site Owner (2012)
Conflict Management (2010)
Japanese Business Culture Training (2009)
Liability Perspectives of Information Services (2007)
numerous trainings on professional information databases and database hosts
SAMS (“Saccade Analysis Made Simple”) is an educational app for clinicians on the identification of specific impairments of eye movements (oculomotor test).
The tablet-based app guides through systematic qualitative measurements of various eye movements done locally by a physician or nurse. Simultaneously, the app records a video of the patient’s eye movements, and the physician subsequently has the opportunity to share selected recordings with a remote expert for his review. The expert’s feedback is supporting the local physician in developing his skills in the recognition of multiple potential neurological disorders known to be behind eye movement manifestations.
As project management lead, I have been responsible for specifying user requirements, application risk management, aligning with legal department for having a compliant set-up, coordinating KOLs involved, the developing agency and caring field force, ensuring continuous improvement, and a scale-up to additional countries.
Lead with the global digital strategy initiative for commercial & medical functions (digital transformation of business).
Together with a specialized agency, provision of a global digital strategy for Actelion business, including an omni-channel strategy for disease-specific promotional and medical communication.
Establishment of a cross-functional and cross-departmental internal network linking internal digital activities, projects and expertises. Alignment with and of global/regional/local layers, IT, R&D, compliance/legal, and digital strategies at Janssen.
In April 2009, a new line management of our team at Novartis asked for a new internal information tool. The specification was something like PubMed … but much better!
(PubMed is a public search engine for bio-medical scientific literature, provided by none other than the US National Institutes of Health)
The whole team met the spontaneous challenge, which came on top of concurrent pressure regarding resources as well as a quite high basic load regarding obligatory standard deliveries.
I am still proud that I had the opportunity to be part of a real success story. After only 7 months for development and implementation we provided “iFind – the Novartis PubMed+” in December 2009. This great achievement was the result of a fantastic and highly motivated multidisciplinary team.
My role with the development of iFind was to initially provide a vision … and subsequently more detailed specifications (URS), which met the needs of business and users. In parallel, I evaluated reasonable literature data sources for iFind. And I also contributed to the innovative usability concept and screen design of the iFind literature search & analysis tool.
iFind highlights:
Lead of the digital pillar of the Actelion Janssen/J&J integration.
Identification of business-relevant Janssen digital customer engagement assets. Bottom-up piloting of three prioritized solutions, each meeting customer needs related to a discrete market challenge, in different regions (EMEA, APAC, US).
Management of the executing agency, Deloitte, and multi-disciplinary alignment with regions and affiliates.
In the early 2000’s, I designed and realized one of the first German online magazines on Life Science business on behalf of GIT Publishing Ltd.. Concept and implementation included a multi-channel publishing approach. That was publishing the same content on a website (eZine), via an email-newsletter, and as WAP edition for PDAs and mobile phones (at those pre-smartphone, pre-Android and pre-iOS times the so-called Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) was the established technology for providing digital content on mobile devices).
Furthermore, I set-up and managed the editorial team, workflow processes and technical infrastructure, and held editor in chief position with responsibility for sub-editors and external content providers.
CLIENT: GIT Publishing Ltd.
TIME FRAME: 2000 – 2003
READ ON: “Moving Online”, article on the history of Inside-Lifescience, originally published in October 2000 by Business Information Searcher
In was lead of global project aiming to identify hidden patients with Niemann-Pick type C, an ultra-rare and severe neuro-metabolic disease (prevalence 1:89’000, ~1’000 patients on treatment worldwide).
The project included 44 countries, mostly in Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North Africa. We used a highly specific and sensitive biomarker, Lyso-SM-509, provided by the Centogene AG lab, who was also performing the analyses.
We were able to identify >200 additional patients, achieving surprisingly high hit rate of 5 in 100, corresponding to 4 patients per month on average. Investment per patient identified was in the range of 5.2% of yearly treatment costs.
Obviously, one of my most exciting projects had been establishing my own business, SCITARI – Dr. Christian Velten Informationsdienste, in 1999. Together with my team I supported life science industries with information research & analysis, digital media and market/competitor intelligence.
Starting from scratch, I successively developed business with major life science market players (Roche, Aventis/Sanofi, BASF, Bayer), reputable patent law firms (e.g. Vossius), mid-sized biotechs, a German specialist publisher, and single clients form other branches of industry (e.g. Honda R&D).
In parallel, I built an operative team of internals and externals (<10) and was responsible for up to 6 associates, caring for all aspects of people management. I designed and implemented a complete set of processes for internal operations, workflows, knowledge sharing by the team and customized services.
As managing director, I held full responsibility for all aspects of business administration and management. This particularly included corporate development, team development and management, financial management and budget maintenance, project management, vendor management, and customer relationship management.
I quit the business end of 2008 after about 10 successful years to join Novartis.
CLIENT: myself
TIME FRAME: September 1998 – March 1999 (start-up)
Development and provision of a medical education programme, supporting the launch of a new product for a rare dermato-oncological disease.
The programme included …
Since the late 1960’s up to the end of 2013, eNova was the Corporate Product Literature Database of Novartis and its ancestors.
But in fact it was much more than that. Over many years of continous improvements, eNova had evolved to the most sophisticated, mature and powerful information source on real-world product behavior. Providing an outstanding high level of “digestion” of source data, eNova was able to answer very specific questions regarding clinical findings and medical evidences on Novartis products 24/7 and within just a few minutes … where alternative methods needed hours to days.
During my time at Novartis, I was responsible for the content of eNova which was systematically and continuously picked out of the scientific literature and conference abstracts and analyzed. I was the owner of the corresponding Novartis-specific guidelines for information classification and analysis, and continuously improved and streamlined the rule sets to assure the expected level of quality. I cared for the quality and stability of corresponding eNova content creatiing and updating processes. In addition, I was in charge for (internal) customer relations, user support, and user training.
In 2010, I initiated and promoted the development and implementation of “eNova QuickAnswers”, a quick and easy access to standard answers asked by marketing and medical information colleagues. “QuickAnswers” was finally realized as search tool within eNova and as website widget which could be implemented on any intranet or Sharepoint site
Last not least the team decided to additionally develop a QuickAnswers iOS app for internal use.
I supported the team with migrating the QuickAnswers concept and functionality to the principles of an app. The result successfully passed user acceptance tests, Novartis risk assessment, and was rolled-out to the internal app store soon before due date.
The eNova QickAnswers iPhone/iPad app was one of the very first Novartis-internal iOS apps, providing unique and mobile insights on real-world product behaviour.
Within two weeks in November 2010, I conceived the “Drug Intelligence Report” concept (One-Stop-Shop for information and insights on a pharmaceutical product) for Novartis Global Medical Affairs.
The mission was to provide senior management with a kind of one-stop-shop solution for all information on Novartis products. Factually, the general situation at Novartis at that time was a high fragmentation of internal information sources and services, so that colleagues quite often had to spend considerable time with gathering information themselves.
The core principle of the Drug Intelligence Report concept was to provide a single intranet location where all other information sources could be integrated as they were.
The team subsequently provided a Sharepoint-implemented prototype successfully showing proof of concept. Concept and principles of the “360° view on a drug” had then been considered with the development of “eNova NG” at Novartis.
Within 5 weeks in Q2/2009, I designed and implemented a new literature support process for periodic safety reports by Novartis Drug Safety.
The service was fully compliant to regulatory requirements and covered all global Novartis drugs (~160) as well as all periodic safety reports to relevant authorities by Novartis Global Drug Safety (PSUR, PBRER, ASR, DSUR). For example in 2012 and 2013, around 1’000 produkt-related literature searches per year were processed by the service (on average 85 per month).
Originally this process had been intended to be an interim solution. But due to its stability, reliability and scalability, it was subsequently expanded to Sandoz (generics) and Novartis Vaccines products, and continued at least until I left Novartis in 2014.
Between 2000 and 2008, I investigated prior art, freedom-to-operate, infringement evidences and patent portfolios for reputable patent attorneys and life science industry clients, like Roche and BASF.
In 2004, I joined a BASF due diligence team preparing a company buy-in as an external expert for analyzing the biosequences portfolio of the target company.
I locally evaluated the IP relevance of the protein and DNA sequences offered, e.g. by checking for uniqueness and redundancies. I applied in-depth computer-based sequence analysis using algorithms like BLASTx, TBLASTx, FASTA, FASTM, Smith-Waterman, and ClustalW2.
Following a customized market analysis, I provided Sanofi Pasteur with an online platform for continuous market monitoring.
Originally Sanofi representatives asked for regular print updates of the successfully provided market analysis. I took the initiative offering a permanently updated, password-protected online portal directly giving access to all data as well as latest findings. Together with my team, I successfully set-up the platform and completed content migration within 3 weeks after approval given by the customer.
Between 2009 and 2013, I responsibly cared for the internal customer relationship management on behalf of the Novartis Knowledge Management business unit. My objectives had been to proactively manage customer relations, to align our deliveries with our clients’ business needs, to design efficient customer service processes ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction, and to coordinate the customer support team.
In this role, I responsibly conducted an internal customer survey by doing series of interviews with middle and senior management stakeholders. I published the results in April 2009 as internal report “Current situation of the Novartis Pharma internal information supply – An analysis of needs and bottlenecks”.
In the following years, I had the opportunity to complement the business analysis by an additional round of customer interviews on end-user level (2010) as well as an in-depth internal analysis on the impact of efficient literature research on the productivity at Novartis (2013).
In late 2011 an additional organizational transformation within our Novartis division was announced more or less surprisingly. I had the lead with implementing consequential changes of structures, processes, services and deliveries. During day-to-day operation, I reshaped information research & analysis processes and moved corresponding tasks and assigned FTEs to the Novartis Hyderabad (India) subsidiary. In addition, I coordinated and supervised vendors and external contributors.
Despite limited resources as well as the short-term nature of the requested changes, I reached a successful and save handover as well as the continuity of our regulatory deliveries ensuring services without interruptions or complaints.
F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG
On enterprise level, strategically enabling Roche in creating an outstanding, enjoyable, consistent and impactful customer experience (CX) across touchpoints and initiatives. • Linking activities across Roche to an end-to-end CX Management & Execution Framework, delivering to customers' expectations and affiliates' requirements. • Provide strategic guidance to senior management, cross-functional executives, digital launch strategies and other enterprise initiatives based on a holistic customer journey perspective.
F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG
Leading the ambition to provide HCPs & patients with an excellent Roche customer experience spanning brands. • Facilitating the evolution of customer & patient engagement and content in the digital space, also allowing a connected experience across all channels. • Enabling outside-in driven innovation, resulting in impactful and scalable solutions and content. • Establish innovative CX approaches and best-practices customized to pharma customer needs.
Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd. / Janssen Pulmonary Hypertension
Led the global digital customer engagement strategy initiative for commercial & medical functions (digital transformation of business). • Established a cross-functional and cross-departmental internal network linking internal digital activities, expertise and passion. • Aligned global/regional/local layers, IT, R&D, compliance/legal, and digital strategies at Janssen (J&J).
Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Responsible for developing an ultra-rare neurodegenerative disease area by managing innovative clinical projects (IISs), providing impactful scientific communication, delivering scientific education media, driving key scientific publications, and coordinating global activities.
Novartis Pharma AG
Identified strategic and operational needs, translated those into effective solutions and support processes, providing Novartis with superior strategic information and medical evidence for a knowledge-driven competitive advantage. • Coordinated and supervised globally distributed teams (Basel, India, UK) delivering high quality and compliant in-house product intelligence. • Advanced internal information processes in GxP environment (especially drug safety related).
SCITARI - Dr. Christian Velten Informationsdienste
Together with my team, I provided life science industries with digital media, editorial content, multi-channel publishing, web-based information platforms, information research, and intelligence. • Developed & implemented a multi-channel online magazine on Life Science business for GIT Publishing Ltd. • Held editor in chief position for 3 years with responsibility for sub-editors and external content providers.
LION Bioscience AG
Developed and maintained a new version of the corporate website for the IPO.
Hanover Medical School
Scientific associate at the Hanover Medical School, Institute for Molecular Biology. Scientific guest at the Vienna Biocenter. Basic oncological research on the genetic regulation of cell growth.
Hanover University
Dr. rer. nat., molecular biology/genetics; scholarship for DFG Graduate Student Course "Molecular Pathophysiology of the Cell Growth", Hanover Medical School, Institute of Molecular Biology
Wetzlar
4. Panzergrenadierbataillon 132
Giessen, Hessia, Germany