Author: Christian Velten

What can be better and give you more energy than combining two passions? In my case, this happened while working on the “CX Inspiration Hub”, which brought together my professional passion for customer experience (CX) and my personal enjoyment of creating digital media. It is also about giving something back. On my personal journey to mastering CX, I benefited greatly from colleagues from my own industry as well as other industries who shared their experiences and learnings, real-life examples that demonstrated proof of concepts, and inspirational ideas and quotes. With the CX Inspiration Hub, I would like to give back…

I joined Roche Pharma in Nov 2019 to build & develop the Medical Customer Experience department in the Global Medical Affairs organisation of the company. The Medical CX department is driven by the ambitions to … Based on truly amazing and excellent people, I have been able to develop a high performing, lean and value-chain-based team of Digital Engagement Leads, CX Leads, CX Insights Leads and Strategic CRM Leads. We jointly deliver on … CLIENT:Roche Pharma PDMA (Global Medical Affairs)(as a Roche employee)PROJECT TIME FRAME: November 2019 – January 2022

Nov 2019 – Jan 2022 / Roche Pharma Inside the global Medical Affairs organization, led the ambition to provide patients & HCPs with an excellent Roche customer experience, spanning brands. • Enabled outside-in driven innovation, resulting in impactful and scalable solutions and content. • Established innovative CX approaches and best-practices customized to pharma needs. Achievements Medical CX paving the way for customer feedback at Roche Pharma Achievements Intelligence Pharma January 16, 2022 Customer Driven Content Authoring … increasing significance of and trust in corporate answers to medical inquiries Achievements Pharma December 4, 2021 Making a pharma company’s TA more patient…

I was leading the digital branch of the integration of Actelion into Janssen/J&J after the acquisition in 2018. This also aligned with the development of a Global Digital Strategy for Actelion, which I had been leading in parallel. This included the identification & prioritization of business-relevant Janssen digital customer engagement assets for potential Actelion business use. With the intention that we could show Actelion benefiting from the new ‘mother’. Until I left the company EO October 2019, I had also been responsible for the bottom-up piloting of three prioritized solutions, each meeting customer needs related to a discrete market challenge, in different…

‘Agility’, is without doubt a key enabler for digital transformation. Most organizations request their teams applying agile approaches to business . You might now that the agility idea originates from a revolution in IT software & tools development, where lean, flexible and iterative project management methods replaced the old way of doing projects with a huge gap of months if not years between specifying requirements and delivering/testing. One key principle of agile approaches is to fail quick, learn, and improve in an iterative way. Repeatedly, in short cycles. Flexibly and step-wise approaching the ideal solution starting from a minimum viable…

Digital Pharma is a hot topic those days. There currently is a virtual Tsunami of articles, blog posts, guidance, opinions, etc. on how to make our business more digital. But with all the things you will read and hear, there is an obvious question. Where to start, which measures to take first? Here I am going to share with your the 5 immediate actions I would take. 1. Push coordination (some call it “governance”) Today, in most life science companies I have seen so far, there seems to be a scattered rag rug of digital customer engagement activities. There will…

💡 Legal and compliance issues often arise late in project development.
💼 Teams in pharma or medtech face delays due to last-minute legal and compliance rejections.
⏰ Timelines and milestones are at risk, causing frustration and pressure on project teams.
🚫 Initial rejection leads to disappointment and anger towards legal and compliance.
🔄 An alternative approach involves early involvement of legal and compliance.
🤝 Engaging them from the start ensures proactive guidance and a collaborative environment.
🌟 Shifting from asking “is this compliant?” to “how can we make this compliant?” empowers legal and compliance as facilitators rather than blockers.
😊 This approach improves cooperation, potentially leading to happier legal and compliance teams and smoother project execution.

Already before the latest data privacy regulations had been released, an effective opt-in has always been key for any customer communication if not engagement campaign. GDPR now forces us to take it even more seriously. Actually, opt-ins are the bottleneck for any multi- or omni-channel campaign. Without having adequate customers’ opt-ins in place your digital or non-digital campaign is born to fail. So, do you know the quantity and quality of your opt-ins? What is your opt-in rate? What exactly did your customers actually opt-in for? Does your opt-ins management comply with GDPR regulations? It might be vital having answers…

As the lead of the strategic initiative, I provided Actelion Pharmaceuticals with a digital customer & patient engagement strategy for commercial & medical functions (digital transformation of business). Together with a specialized agency, provision of a global digital strategy for Actelion business, including an omnichannel 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, the new ‘mother’ of Actelion. CLIENT:Actelion Commercial Excellence(as an Actelion employee)PROJECT TIME FRAME: July 2018 – February 2019

Yes, pharma is behind most other industries in terms of digital transformation, e.g. of customer engagement and solutions. As a permanent repetition of the evident, multiple studies (example), journal articles and blog posts are frequently reporting about pharma’s digital retardation. But that is not a fair comparison. Also being part of the truth, markets for treatments, medical devices and health services are actually no free markets similar to other industries. They are highly regulated. I am not complaining, there are good reasons for having limitations in place. It is just a general circumstance which needs to be considered with the…