I used to think that for pharma digital transformation, the real skill was building the system, arranging the functions neatly, making the interface beautiful, and putting it cleanly on the business team's desk.
Recently, for the 20th anniversary of My Own Swordsman, I rewatched the show and suddenly understood the difference between Scholar Lu and Tong Xiangyu, which gave me some new thoughts.
1. Scholar Lu's bookish logic: information-system thinking
Scholar Lu is full of learning and can talk Ji Wuming into defeat with words alone. But what happened when he ran the inn?
The accounts were calculated clearly and informatization was done very well, but when bullies came to cause trouble, nobody listened to his grand reasoning. He had no way to respond and Xiangyu had to step in to smooth things over.
This thinking also exists in pharma. Headquarters provides a set of "as the classics once said" standards. The digital team copies the model and seems to build a very good and complete system, but the business cannot use it at all.
The fundamental problem is that Digital sees itself as the scholar keeping accounts. They do not know that what the business wants is not the ledger, but the operating method that makes customers willing to come back.
2. Tong Xiangyu's operating philosophy: from technology to business
How did Xiangyu turn Tongfu Inn into the biggest inn within fifty miles? She understood people. She understood employees and customers. At critical moments, she could drink and talk with Old Xing, or sit with the staff on the roof for heart-to-heart conversations, making everyone feel that the inn belonged to all of them.
For pharma digital implementation, Digital teams need deep empathy for frontline reps, respect their time, and respect the way they communicate. Only when reps feel you are on their side will you hear the truth and optimize the system in a better direction.
3. Digital's dilemma: the scholar does not know how accounting knowledge helps sell goods
Scholar Lu can make the ledger system look beautiful, but how do you bargain for vegetables? How do account data become customer-facing wording? The scholar does not know. Or he assumes that with such a good ledger, everyone should naturally know how to use it.
This is the problem many pharma digital teams face when doing digital transformation.
Everyone builds an HCP360 system and physician relationship network analysis. Everyone feels it should be useful, but nobody knows how to use it. Until one day, a rep said: "I had a customer whose attitude had not improved and whose relationship was average. In HCP360, I found that he and another customer with a very positive attitude were from the same mentor circle. I organized a meeting, and his attitude improved very quickly afterward."
It sounds like a very simple use case, but Digital teams sitting in the accounting room could never imagine it from nothing.
So, digital friends, remember this: you must sit beside the business like Xiangyu running the inn to truly land digital intelligence inside the team.
- Technical capability is only the foundation: making the ledger, or HCP360 system, meticulous;
- Business wisdom is the key: turning system numbers into real inn operations and making the system truly used.
