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Breaking down silos: How PharmaForceIQ + Aktana finally unifies brand and field

The pharmaceutical industry’s dream of a unified commercial model is finally within reach.

PharmaForceIQ has acquired Aktana, creating the industry’s first “optichannel-in-a-box” solution. This end-to-end engagement system unifies brand strategy and field execution, and, critically, can go live in just 6–8 weeks.

To discuss what this means for brands and the future of commercialization, we sat down with Hemal Somaiya, Chief Executive and Strategy Officer of PharmaForceIQ, and Derek Choy, Head of Product at PFIQ and former Co-Founder of Aktana (Responses have been lightly edited).

Why did PharmaForceIQ decide to acquire Aktana?

HEMAL:

PharmaForceIQ has always aimed to empower pharma teams with the fastest, most meaningful ways to engage customers. We had already given clients a competitive edge by helping field teams understand digital engagement, but we knew we could go deeper.

Aktana is pharma’s premier AI-driven field orchestration platform. Rather than building these capabilities in-house from scratch, we are thrilled to add Aktana’s outstanding capabilities to deepen our existing high-impact, real-time orchestration engine. 

Aktana’s AI architecture and core platform, along with their Knowledge Nexus data set – an intelligence layer built on 12 years of global field orchestration and execution – lets us continue to improve efficiency by giving field teams deeper predictive insights on who to see, where to go, and what to say. 

This makes PharmaForceIQ a truly end-to-end customer engagement platform. From insight to impact, we can now use 200 million plus data points to predict, orchestrate, and measure the most effective and personalized journey for every single customer…

I’ve done pharma commercialization and marketing and launched several different brands, and I’ve done this for the last 17 years. For the first time, we are going to be able to impactfully connect the dots between data, deployment and measurement across any and all channels. 

The data is going to help drive in real time who to reach, when to reach, where to reach, and personalize to ensure that they are engaging. 

This is unheard of.

DEREK:

Our conviction about [the complementary fit] grew as we dug in together. We realized how quickly this could be turned into something concrete, given the strength of both platforms, what we already had, and how ready they were to actually be executed. And we kept coming back to one question. 

We knew how deep we could go on the field side, but what would make orchestration real, not theoretical, on the digital side? And the answer became clear. It was the real time digital activation at that individual HCP level, that vendor level granularity, driven by the signals and affinities that PharmaForceIQ has. And it brought this ecosystem of endemic partners and non-endemic reach.

We knew that Aktana was bringing the field orchestration brain, the next best action decisioning constraints, prioritization in a resource-constrained reality, and that journey logic. 

We’d already proven it through field adoption, and we’d bring that together. Digital stops being a black box activation bucket, and it becomes something you can truly orchestrate at the channel and vendor level with those field actions. 

So instead of a customer data platform feeding an agency and waiting for changes, we can react in real time to HCP signals. It’s a really tight loop between what we learn and what we deploy. 

And we felt really confident moving quickly: both companies already had a real product, real customers, and real scale to build from. And we could bring it together to solve that persistent challenge.

What is PharmaForceIQ’s vision for the future of life sciences customer engagement?

HEMAL:

Our vision is to move the industry from omnichannel (being everywhere, consistently) to optichannel—being precisely where it matters, when it matters.

We already offer a faster, more effective way to engage HCPs and patients across the right channels. The Aktana acquisition enables us to drive efficiency and measurable growth for the field, in addition to our core marketing client base.

This unites two powerful engines and enables customer engagement campaign launch to the right HCPs with personalized one-to-one journeys and precise delivery across 75,000+ channels, websites, and platforms.

This combination will power the industry’s first go-to-market solution that unifies brand and field strategy, drives efficient execution, and critically measures impact on business outcomes like prescription lift. That’s in real time, instead of waiting months to know what’s working and what’s not.

Teams can deploy every dollar where it will yield highest ROI across field, digital, and peer-to-peer channels and see clear metrics to improve fast. 

DEREK: 

The vision is a single optichannel system that plans, orchestrates, and measures journeys together, running in real-time rather than weeks behind schedule.

For years, we've had pieces of omnichannel. What's different now is that we can plan, execute, and measure as one system with real-time digital activation plus proven orchestration. That's what's going to make optichannel practical. It's that actual operating system. And that's what I'm most excited about.

There’s two things here in particular that I want to mention. The first is Optichannel 360-style visibility, or providing that one place where leaders can see both leading and lagging indicators across both field and digital, and where they can actually connect activity to outcomes instead of having to stitch this together across different reports. 

The second is journey planning that actually treats digital as real choices, not just a single bucket. With [our AI-driven journey planner] TacticGenie, we can design HCP level journeys across the field and digital, selecting specific vendors, channels, content and moments. Then we orchestrate them all together based on signals, constraints, and what’s most likely to drive impact for an individual HCP. 

That’s how we’re going to move from next best action to this next best journey, where that combined platform really changes what teams can do in the future.

How does this combined optichannel system address challenges in pharma right now?

 

DEREK:

There have been years of talk and pilots, but most pharma teams still run digital and field as two separate operating systems. And so in reality, omnichannel marketing is still planning in slides, executing in silos, and reporting after the fact. 

The combined offering gives leaders one platform where they can plan, orchestrate and measure journeys across field and digital together, not as separate programs.

On the digital side, PharmaForceIQ can deploy across endemic and non-endemic channels using affinity data and then activate within 24 hours of the trigger. And on the orchestration side, Aktana brings that proven next best action decisioning and a decade of experience. And we also have TacticGenie that personalizes content journeys for every HCP, while still respecting the rules and the guidance that brand teams have.

So instead of digital firing, spray and pray through an agency workflow, and then field doing its own thing in parallel, we can finally run that single HCP journey. That next best action might be a rep touch, an email, an endemic placement, or a point of care moment, and it’s measured end to end.

HEMAL:

[Now] unified field and digital dashboards show leading delivery metrics (all your leading indicators in terms of frequency and clicks, impressions, rep calls, and so on), but also lagging indicators on HCP engagement, verified patient reach, and strategy adherence by the field.

Most importantly, these two give rapid clarity and confidence on ROI by showing individual HCP level as well as aggregate impact on revenue and verifiable script lift.

The combined unit definitely has a big and bold vision ahead of it. We feel confident in our ability to deliver and truly solve meaningful problems as it relates to customer engagement and deployment within the pharma and life sciences industry.

How can optichannel strategy benefit a pharma brand team or a commercial organization more broadly?

HEMAL:

We are very focused on moving beyond vanity metrics to real economic impact. 

The benefits of optichannel to date across commercial organizations have been as high as: 

  • 3X increase in prescription lift
  • 22% increase in brand strategy adherence
  • 80% increase in HCP engagement rates 
  • 20 to 30% reduction in media budgets by cutting waste 

Concurrently, it shows all the positive ROI from the impact perspective that we just discussed. 

So there’s definitely a lot of excitement, and this advanced solution is going to help create even additional impact for our existing clients. And we look forward to demonstrating and showing strong impact for all new clients as well.

What would this optichannel tool look like in practice?

DEREK:

Let’s walk through an example of a brand launching in a mutation-driven indication with a niche patient population.

  1. The trigger, a real-world signal like diagnosis or a positive mutation test result, is detected.
  2. Activation happens quickly. Within 48 hours, the PharmaForceIQ platform automatically deploys personalized content to that specific HCP across 75,000+ potential websites and platforms on those where we know they spend time. This is based on affinity intelligence to ensure the content lands with a high probability of engagement.
  3. If that HCP values field engagement (no use sending them to a no-see HCP), the sales rep for that territory receives a “Next Best Action” recommendation directly in their workflow. They get the full context of the digital journey the HCP has just experienced, along with a suggestion on what to say.
  4. As the rep logs the interaction, that data feeds back into the system immediately as a feedback loop, adjusting the next digital touchpoint in real-time.

The entire journey is optimized and updated in real time as engagement or non-engagement data comes in. This creates a frictionless surround-sound effect for the HCP that feels helpful, not intrusive. 

What elements of the combined platforms are clients most excited about?

DEREK:

Initially there was curiosity. Once clients saw the product and realized this is something we can do today, not tomorrow, that curiosity turned into genuine excitement.

For clients who were primarily focused on field orchestration, they are excited to see ‘true orchestration’ that extends to digital pull channels, rather than just push emails. They love that we are moving from long turnaround times to responsive activation.

For our digital-focused clients, there is immediate interest in adding journey intelligence. They want their triggered recommendations to actually get adopted by the field rather than ignored because they don’t fit real-world constraints. 

HEMAL:

Clients are super excited about this new end-to-end, unique optichannel solution that we are able to bring in for the first time for pharma commercialization. Optichannel offers the opportunity to be precisely where it matters, when it matters, and transform how the life sciences industry connects with HCPs and patients. 

Instead of buying media on every single channel, optichannel now allows clients to invest in the optimal media mix that makes the most sense for their audience based on performance data and real-time preferences and behaviors of each individual customer. 

But it doesn’t stop there. It leverages personalized HCP affinity data as well as optimizes field engagement with intelligence on which HCPs prefer sales engagements. It gives every single rep deeper insights into where to spend their time to ensure that they go through their day generating maximum ROI by reaching the right customer at that right time and having those right conversations.

How can you deploy optichannel orchestration?

PharmaForceIQ can deploy this “optichannel-in-a-box” solution for your brand in as little as 6 weeks.

Meet with us to find out how we can give you an unfair advantage across every channel and finally unite your brand and field teams.