One of the first things which happened after I had started heading the Medical Customer Experience department at Roche Pharma (global) … was COVID-19. Almost overnight, we all had been pushed into the world of virtual teamwork and collaboration. And all our sales reps and medical liaison in the field had been pushed from visiting customers at their places to … well, yes, actually being mostly disconnected. Vice versa, customers and patients were also substantially disconnected from us.
As a reaction to this situation, my team and I went into the lead with ad-hoc initiating and setting-up a corporate ‘COVID-19 Situation Room’ in March 2020, shortly after the first lock-down had been declared. With the objective to cross-functionally & cross-departmentally align activities around how we can better serve the questions and information needs of our customers and patients in the COVID-19 crisis situation. The Situation Room had been closely linked to the COVID-19 Task Force as well as other related activities across Roche.
Over time, business moved into a new normal, there was less and less need for a crisis management format. As a consequence, the situation room was closed EO June 2020, and what we had learned was transferred into day-to-day business.
The Roche Pharma ‘COVID-19 Situation Room’ had been a true best practice example of short-term and highly effective cross-functional collaboration with regards to crisis management. Kudos go to a bunch of smart and highly committed people who jointly contributed and made it happen.
