Talk to any pharma CMO in India and you’ll hear the same story. Everyone wants to sell them a pilot. A chatbot pilot. An omnichannel pilot. A CRM pilot. After two quarters of experimenting, the results look good on slides, but the moment you try to roll it out to 5,000 reps or 50,000 doctors, the system cracks.
CMOs are tired of this cycle. They don’t need more experiments. They need systems that work across brands, across geographies, and across therapy areas, without collapsing under the weight of real-world complexity. That’s why the conversation has shifted from “innovation pilots” to “execution at scale.”
Why pilots fail
On paper, pilots look harmless. Small budget, low risk, quick proof-of-concept. But here’s the catch: pilots hide the hardest problems.
- Compliance workflows are skipped.
- Integration with legacy CRMs is ignored.
- Multilingual needs are overlooked because the pilot only runs in English.
- Reps in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities aren’t included because it’s easier to test in metros.
So the pilot “works.” Everyone claps. But when you try to scale, the missing pieces come crashing down. Doctors stop engaging. Reps abandon the tool. Compliance flags pile up. Marketing ROI never materializes. What looked like innovation turns into shelfware.
CMOs know this pattern too well. That’s why they’re done with pilots.
The cost of staying in pilot mode
The numbers are stark. A Deloitte report found that nearly 70% of pharma digital pilots never scale beyond the test phase. McKinsey adds that companies spend millions annually on pilots that deliver no enterprise impact. For Indian pharma, where marketing budgets already hover around 8% of revenue, that’s money burnt on projects that never move the prescription needle.
The hidden cost is time. Every pilot delays true transformation by six to twelve months. In a market where competitors are racing to engage doctors digitally, that delay can mean lost share. For CMOs under pressure to prove ROI quarter by quarter, pilot fatigue isn’t just emotional, but financial.
Scale is the only proof that matters
Pharma is not a startup ecosystem. It’s a heavily regulated, high-stakes industry. What matters is whether a system can handle compliance, integrate across divisions, and deliver consistent engagement at scale. Anything else is noise.
That’s why the role of a healthcare digital marketing agency isn’t to churn out pilots. It’s to engineer tech-led marketing systems that scale from day one. Systems that work for 100 reps and for 10,000 reps. Systems that serve one brand’s CRM needs and then expand to cover the entire portfolio. Scale is the only metric that counts.
What systems that scale look like
CMOs don’t need promises. They need proof that technology can handle the messiness of Indian pharma. A system that scales has a few defining characteristics:
- Compliance is automated, not manual. Approvals, audit trails, and medical-legal-regulatory checks are embedded into the workflow. If it depends on human discipline at scale, it will fail.
- Integration is non-negotiable. The system talks to Veeva, Salesforce, email platforms, WhatsApp APIs, and analytics dashboards. Silos don’t scale; networks do.
- Regional diversity is baked in. A solution that works only in English for metro doctors is not scalable in India. Multi-language, mobile-first, offline-ready systems are.
- Data drives iteration. At scale, manual feedback loops collapse. Systems must be designed to learn from data and adjust engagement strategies automatically.
Anything less is just another experiment.
What CMOs are really asking for
Behind the frustration, the ask from CMOs is simple: stop wasting my time with proof-of-concepts. Bring me systems I can roll out to my entire field force without hand-holding. Show me platforms that deliver results in Mumbai and in Nagpur, for oncologists and for general practitioners, today and tomorrow.
This is why pilots are now a red flag. A healthcare digital marketing agency that starts the conversation with “let’s do a pilot” is signaling that they can’t handle scale. CMOs want partners who come in with confidence, and the architecture for full deployment.
The execution gap in Indian pharma
Indian pharma companies are no strangers to ambition. Everyone wants omnichannel engagement, AI-driven personalization, and real-time dashboards. But where most stumble is execution.
Global platforms like Veeva dominate, but they don’t solve local challenges out of the box. Tier 2/3 engagement. Multilingual workflows. Integration with legacy systems. That’s where pilots collapse because the agency never thought beyond the polished demo.
The gap is not vision. The gap is execution at scale. And that’s exactly what CMOs are demanding now.
The shift CMOs are leading
This shift is visible in boardroom conversations. Instead of asking “what’s the next innovation we can test,” CMOs are asking:
- Can this system scale to 10,000 reps?
- Will it stay compliant under UCPMP 2024?
- Can it handle multiple therapy areas without rebuilding from scratch?
- Will doctors actually use it six months in, not just during the launch buzz?
These are not pilot questions. These are enterprise questions. And the agencies that can’t answer them are being shown the door.
The end of pilot theater
For years, pharma has tolerated “pilot theater," a steady rotation of demos and short-term projects that look innovative but never shift the prescription curve. That patience is gone.
The winners in the next phase of pharma marketing won’t be those with the most pilots. They’ll be those with systems that scale reliably, compliantly, and across India’s diverse landscape. For CMOs, anything less is no longer acceptable.
The boardroom takeaway
CMOs in Indian pharma are done with pilots. They want execution at scale. They want systems engineered to handle compliance, integration, and real-world complexity from day one. And they want healthcare digital marketing agencies who understand that scaling isn’t an afterthought: it’s the only thing that matters.
If you’re still stuck running pilots, you’re losing time and market share. Let’s talk about building systems that scale across brands, geographies, and doctors.
