The PharmaBrands Podcast
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The PharmaBrands Podcast
Daniel Smedley, VP Innovation, Business Excellence and IT at AstraZeneca on Managing Change, Making the Right Bets and Unlocking the Power of Data.
In our first episode after a late-summer break, our guest Daniel Smedley looks back on key lessons learned through his career and looks forward to where he sees innovation making the biggest impact. Thoughtful and candid, Daniel shares his journey from CFO of AZ to leading a multidisciplinary team tackling some of the biggest challenges the industry has ever faced. Daniel’s perspective and vantage point make him a terrific guest as we discuss AI, new platforms, change management and so much more.
This episode was made possible through the support of Changemakers, find out more at thechangemakers.com
The PharmaBrands podcast is hosted by Neil Follett and Produced by Chess Originals.
My name is Daniel Smedley. I'm the Vice President of Innovation, Business Excellence and IT at AstraZeneca, Canada. Daniel, thank you for joining us this afternoon.
Speaker 2:Thank you, neil. I want to start with a little bit of your background because, as one might scroll through LinkedIn a little bit, your current position VP of Innovation, business Excellence and IT feels a little tiny bit disconnected from some of your other positions, many of which include the word finance. So help me understand how those two things are connected and maybe talk a little bit about what the switch was like, going from a finance role you were the CFO at AZ to the role that you've got now. It seems like a very interesting progression. Yeah, I get that a lot actually, Okay.
Speaker 2:I like to start with the obvious.
Speaker 1:No thanks for having me today, neil, really much appreciated. I'm excited to sit down and talk with you. But yeah, so my entire career up until this role has been in pretty much pure finance roles. So I did my education, had a science background but went in and did my MBA in finance, afterwards got my CPA designation after that and for a good first 15 years or so of my career it was in pure finance roles. I gravitated toward finance because I'm a very kind of analytical person, more of a quantitative lens on things, but I also like strategic thinking and how do we solve business problems together, and I felt finance had a really nice blend of all of that and I loved my finance roles.
Speaker 1:I kind of progressed through the kind of corporate structure in finance.
Speaker 1:My last two roles were kind of head of country, head of finance, cfo roles. The first one was at Baxter, canada, which is a medical device company, and then now here at AstraZeneca as well, and I was in my AstraZeneca Canadian CFO role for about five and a half years and this role came open, this innovation, business excellence and IT role I know it's a mouthful, so IBEX, it for short and it really made me think because it was around 2023, end of the year and this is when generative AI and chat, gpt was really starting to take off. And, having been in my role for five years, I was kind of yearning for a little bit of a new challenge and to kind of broaden my perspectives, broaden my learning, and so I felt like the timing was right because I wanted to kind of continue to grow in my career and this seemed like a really exciting space, and I think I've been quite happy with my decision. Over the last two years it's been a fun ride and it's been a lot of great learning.
Speaker 2:It's been a fun ride and it's been a lot of great learning. It's interesting when folks get more and more senior in a finance role. I feel like the only way you become more and more senior is that you're able to sort of combine, kind of like, the art and science of finance right, and I don't mean that like creative accounting. You know there's a lot of hard and fast rules about finance, but as you get more senior and you're in a CFO kind of role, you're really into business planning, you're into strategy. It's a very different kind of mindset where the rules-based part is the foundation upon which you stand, so that you can look out to the horizon. I imagine that having that sort of horizon level perspective as a CFO was really fantastic perspective to bring into the innovation role, because I think a lot of times folks come up into these innovation roles with a very different perspective. Like you know, they've come from digital or they've come from marketing, but it must give you a unique perspective, having come from where you were sitting.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely Absolutely. I think you know that perspective is really, really important. I felt like it's helped me. It was a big learning curve coming into this role, because there's a lot about technology and commercial excellence and commercial operations that I just didn't quite know much about. But bringing a fresh perspective, bringing a business and financial perspective, I think has definitely helped me. I think you put it well.
Speaker 1:One thing that I feel like I've been able to bring to the team is our strategy. As a function, we do a lot of cool things with technology and digital and different new capabilities, but what I've tried to do is really ground the team in. What is the impact that it's driving? Because we can focus on a lot of cool things and there's no shortage of cool technology and innovation. But what is the link to the business and how is it going to drive an impact? Either an impact on patients, an impact on the business, impact on the customer and when we want to see that kind of positive return not always financial, but, you know, positive impact on what we're having for the business. So that was one that that's really helped me.
Speaker 1:And, growing up as a kind of a finance professional, you're right, the technical foundations are so important to progress to kind of more senior level roles. But you're right, as you get further in your career in the finance track it's more about being kind of that trusted business partner that can bring a more analytical and quantitative lens to a business and strategic discussion. And I always try to expand my scope a little bit as a finance role to beyond just the numbers and beyond just the finance guy, to be kind of a true business partner to our executive teams and my country presidents and really understand the business and understand the dynamics. I feel like the more you know about that, the more it helps you in your role to be a better finance partner. And that thirst for kind of commercial knowledge and business dynamics kind of got parlayed into this role, because this role has kind of taken me even a step closer to the to the commercial side of the business, which is something that really excited me.
Speaker 2:As you consider what is the impact. Have you been kind of gifted a model from procurement that says this is your evaluation criteria for evaluating impact? Have you developed something yourself? Is it a combination? How do you determine what is impact and what is impact enough to say, yeah, we're going to move this initiative?
Speaker 1:forward? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I'd love to say that there's like a complete and perfect playbook for for all this stuff, but oftentimes there there isn't. So there, there, there is a degree of of judgment.
Speaker 1:For sure, the way I've tried to kind of uh, me and my leadership team have kind of grounded our, our department and function into how we assess it, impact is across a couple different lens. One is, you know, is there a business impact? Is there a financial impact? Is there a patient impact and is there an impact in terms of improved customer experience? And I feel like those are mainly the dimensions that we kind of cut across when we're looking at our initiatives. And if we can, as long as we can, clearly articulate what that impact is, then we can usually get behind the priorities and get behind the initiatives that we're looking at.
Speaker 1:When we can't clearly articulate the link between what we're trying to do across any of those four dimensions, then we really have to stop and say, okay, do we really need to do this? And so we spend a lot of time, especially at the beginning of the year, putting all of our different initiatives and different priorities through that lens. We get a lot of new capabilities that come at us from our global organization, where we're globally headquartered in UK and Sweden and big offices in Europe. So we get a lot of new capabilities and technology that comes from our global team. We get new capabilities and technologies that come at us from the external environment here in Canada, and it would be great to implement everything, but obviously our teams that we support only have capacity to implement so much and we only have capacity to roll so many things out, and so those are some of the tough and hard choices that we make to kind of guide where we spend our time and where we spend our efforts.
Speaker 2:Is there a level of anxiety that is present in this role, in this moment that maybe is different than what was before, and maybe it's. Maybe it's not anxiety, maybe it's pressure, maybe it's. I just and the reason that I ask is that you talk about innovations coming from global, innovations coming from local. We're talking about an environment that, with each release of multiple different platforms, there's new technologies and new capabilities that are unlocked. It is an incredibly dynamic environment and that dynamism has a huge either both positive or negative disruptive quality, and you're kind of in the center of that. It makes me feel like I might have a hard time sleeping. How are you doing with all of that? You're right in the center of it with all of that, like you're right in the, in the, in the center of it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think in a lot of ways we are, and I had an old leader at my previous company that told me that you know, his philosophy was always go in your career where the action is, because usually that's a recipe for good things. And so when I, when I made the transition into this role, there was a little bit of that kind of advice echoing in my head, because I saw the pace of change within pharma in this space, arguably, pharma was relatively a bit of a traditional model for many years and I think COVID kind of disrupted that in terms of how we engage with customers, how we use technology, and I saw the trajectory just continuing to be an increasing one. And then the wave of AI came over the last few years and I said to myself again that advice echoed in my head around. This is where the action is and, yes, it is overwhelming. It can be overwhelming sometimes. It's a delicate balance around bringing new capabilities, new innovation, new ways of thinking, new ways of working, while also bringing the organization along with us.
Speaker 1:With us, because, as I mentioned before, there's only a finite amount of capacity, I feel, within an organization to handle change and things that are new. But I'm quite lucky here. We've got a fantastic team that's been doing these types of things for a long time. They're really really good at change management and bringing people along the journey and in a lot of cases, you know, we kind of compare ourselves here locally with other affiliates and within AstraZeneca and around the world. You know the Canadian organization well before I got here is one that's been, you know, one that's been really one to embrace innovation, to embrace new capabilities, and so it's been really exciting. But you're right, it is a balance on how much do we take on versus how much, you know, can the organization accept, and where do we place our bets, where do we prioritize. But it's been really cool. You call it pressure, which there is definitely part of that as well, but for me I find it quite exciting to be on the edge of all of these new technological changes that are coming at us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We had an event in London, england, last year or this year, I guess Farmer Brands did. Someone on the stage said something that, from a change management standpoint, just really had me shift my thinking, because I always think about change management as these sort of really big lifts and, yeah, there's some resistance, but most people kind of see where you're trying to go and I think there's a lot of people who want to do more efficient, more effective work. And this individual described a conversation they had with somebody who basically said look, I appreciate that this thing that you're doing is going to make my kind of admin work way more efficient and actually almost reduce it, but I really like my admin work.
Speaker 2:My admin work is the moment where I get to just kind of turn my brain off and spend a couple of hours and, you know whatever, update my spreadsheet or update my timesheets or whatever that was, and I kind of don't want you to take that away from me Like that's my downtime. You know the person was like like I'm sorry we're going to be looking for efficiencies here, but it flipped a switch in me in terms of just the almost unknowable varieties of individual resistance there is to some of this change. So that's a really long way of just asking my question of how are you bringing the organization along? Do you have partners on the L&D side? Are you piloting things? How do things hit and get introduced to the sort of larger Canadian AZ organization?
Speaker 1:And you're right, it is a large spectrum. I think, with any change at any organization, you're going to have a spectrum of adopters, right, You're going to have early adopters. You're going to have people in the middle and maybe people that are a little more unsure and maybe a little bit more resistant to what's coming at them. I think, as humans right, we're just wired to inherently be a little bit unsure about change. I think it's just in our DNA, right, so we're aware of all of that change. I think it's just in our DNA, right, so we're aware of all of that. We see it day in and day out. I think you brought up some good examples.
Speaker 1:Yes, once we do that kind of prioritization exercise, we do it internally. We oftentimes then take that to our executive team and our leadership team to make sure that we're bought in at an executive level on the different initiatives and priorities that we're driving. And then we try and take as planful as an approach as possible to think a lot like okay, how is this going to land? What are potential issues, what are concerns? We try to involve the key stakeholders early on in the process. We do for most of the things and capabilities and new technologies that we're rolling out. We tend to pilot first within a smaller group before we scale across the entire organization. One pivot we've made with our pilots is oftentimes with our pilots.
Speaker 1:We tend to go to folks that are very receptive to new technologies Fish for the fish are right yeah yeah, and that's helpful because you know you really entrench your kind of champions in these new areas. But we found it can also be a bit of a hindrance too, because when you're just going to the same folks or same teams that are oftentimes very receptive to new change and adopting new ways, you don't really see what the potential issues could be for a broader spectrum of users. So I'd say over the last couple of years we've tried to intentionally set up our pilots in a way where we get a good cross-section across the organization of the different perceptions, attitudes and beliefs so that we have a better understanding of what roadblocks we're going to hit when we start to scale across the broader organization. We also have a kind of a sub-function within my team capability development. It's a training function.
Speaker 1:We do lean heavily on them to help us manage the change and when we hire for roles within the team where we're rolling out new ways of working, new capabilities, new technologies, we do look for people that can have that change management mindset to them, because it's one thing to train people on something new and do it in a very technical way, but it's another thing to connect with both the minds as well as the emotions of people, and why should you care? Why should you be excited about this? What's it going to do for you? How is it going to make your life better? Why do you need to feel strongly about something? And so we really try and keep in mind both the mind and the hearts when we're talking to folks and implementing new things too, because I think we found if you only have one of those, usually the hearts often trumps the mind, and so it's critical to come at it from both sides.
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Speaker 2:Learn more at thechangemakerscom. Appreciating that you're probably not at liberty to just walk me through everything that you guys have implemented. There's lots of things that are proprietary in there. When you've talked about impact and winning the hearts and minds, can you talk to me about a few things that you've done that you feel have been particularly impactful and have won the hearts and minds of folks? Some of those might not be transformative on a business level. They could be quite small but really clicked. Can you give me a few examples?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can give a couple examples for sure, maybe two big ones that come to mind. I kind of alluded to it before, but customer engagement and how we engage and interact with our customers, I think was ripe for a little disruption over the last five or six or seven years and there's been a lot of change within Canadian Farm on how we interact with our customers and I feel like the team here in Canada has really embraced thinking differently on how we can drive an impact when it comes to customer engagement beyond just traditional face-to-face channels. When you look at different metrics, we tend to be kind of high adopters and high engagers across the world when it comes to within AZ anyway, around how we're leveraging our digital and non-traditional channels to amplify our messages and amplify our impacts with customers. And some of this was before my time in the role, because this has been a journey over the last five, six years. But we had some good hires within the team to bring in different perspectives, fresh perspectives, and we kind of tapped into the emotional part as well.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of our field folks had some initial trepidations with new ways of working because I think some of the fears was around is this going to replace roles? Is this going to diminish my roles? What role do I have in the future? You can make your message more impactful, how you can amplify your message, how you can, you know, drive more relevance and impact with your customers. There's much more. There's been much more of an embrace around these different ways to engage with customers. You know, whether it be email, web. You know paid media, all the different channels that we have with us now, and new AI ways of working with content recommendations and next, best customer recommendations and next, best action recommendations generated by AI.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of this is becoming more and more common within the industry, even though some of this is still in the early days. But I think it comes back to again connecting with the folks that this is going to and showing them the way, as to how this will be beneficial for them. The other one it's a much more recent one is the AI wave, and I've been really, really inspired around the excitement and the energy around embracing AI and I felt like this was a little bit of an easier one for us because there's such a big societal push around adopting these new technologies. But again, I think sometimes it's just showing people what's possible and opening perspectives and opening mindsets and showing, wow, you know, this can be done much more efficiently or much more impactfully. And just being able to show the possibilities is sometimes enough to get people on board. And so if I were to kind of reflect those, those would be two big ones is kind of customer engagement, and then you know how we're leveraging AI in the business as well.
Speaker 2:So I imagine, like there's you know I talked to lots of folks and you know there's this spectrum sort of between, like we're going to have like super lockdown. You can, you know, sort of maybe a little bit, use AI and like way, on the other end, it's like just go and like use AI to don't upload our business plan, kind of thing. Just go and like use AI and just don't upload our business plan, kind of thing. Like from pretty tight to like pretty loose, where do you land and how are you managing what is the likely reality that at least some people in the building are, you know, using chat, gpt, maybe on their personal phone, and then you know copy and pasting. Like how are you, how are you managing the complexity of the fact that these tools are often the sort of publicly available tools, are often more powerful than the kind of walled garden ones that some of the companies are implementing? Like how are you guys navigating just this ever evolving world of AI?
Speaker 1:tools? No, it's a fantastic question. That's a really relevant topic right now. I have to say, though, being at AstraZeneca, I think the company is known for its innovative way of thinking and working in a scientific approach. Across the globe has leaned into these new and disruptive technologies quite well, and I haven't felt like we've been behind the eight ball on what's been, uh, what we've been able to access from a tools and technology perspective. Uh, the list continues to grow every month and every week around what platforms are available to us.
Speaker 1:Um, but you're right, I think you know, and and we can educate people. All we want and that's a key part of it too to make sure people understand the risks of not using company-vetted and approved platforms. Are you able to completely eliminate that risk to zero? No, but we try and educate and give people the right tools and the right knowledge to use it in the safe and compliant way, but I think if we don't move with a little bit of urgency and take a little bit of risks, you also end up the risk of being left behind as well, and so we're trying to be really strategic and intentional about where we implement AI within the business. We're trying to leverage it in the right use cases. So the use case, the business use cases is driving the technology we choose and not the other way around.
Speaker 1:So that that's been a key piece of it. We don't want to just drop AI tools everywhere within the business. It's like what is the use case that you need? What are you looking to solve? And then we figure out what is the right AI solution if it, if AI is the right solution at all to meet that need, and so that's a big piece of it.
Speaker 1:But we're also giving ourselves a little bit of latitude and a little bit of flexibility to be nimble in this time of quite rapid change, and giving ourselves some flexibility to kind of test and learn and see what works and what doesn't. Flexibility to kind of test and learn and see what works and what doesn't. I think it's a fascinating time that we're on here where it's like you know, the more you try and put rigorous structures around it, the more it, the harder it is to do because things are changing so quickly. So so I think it's a balance of being very intentional and strategic about where we're using AI and let the use case drive it, but also leaving ourselves some adaptability to to test and learn all the new things that are coming at us as well.
Speaker 2:There are really good reasons why pharma in general moves at a pace that might be a little bit different than other industries, right Like I think sometimes sort of pharma gets a bad rap for not adopting and not moving and not it's like we're not, we're not dealing with with the same things. As you know, the gap, right Like, uh, if the gap is even still in business by the time we have this conversation. Um, and so there is. Maybe it's a bit too much sometimes, but there's a requirement for discipline. But in an environment where things are going a thousand miles an hour, finding somewhere between, you know, zero miles an hour and a thousand miles an hour, finding somewhere between zero miles an hour and a thousand miles an hour, can be a difficult thing to do because there is that sense, like you said, of being left behind. But you can't just adopt wildly and expect that the organization to be able to absorb all of that at once, especially when the organization doesn't necessarily have and I don't mean AZ in general, but just some of these companies don't have a lot of muscle memory around really rapid generational change.
Speaker 2:It's a really interesting place to be. So I'm going to do a looking back, looking forward. Question, the first part. Looking back, when you came into this role, you probably had some preconceptions or some thoughts of like oh hey, we'll probably be able to do X, y and Z, or these are the areas that we're going to make the biggest impact, et cetera, et cetera. Where did you feel you were right and where did you feel you were a little bit wrong? What have you learned? That's been maybe surprising to you over the last couple of years, because I have to imagine like those have been big years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, I think back to some of the initiatives that I just mentioned on things that we're proud of, but equally, those have had challenges and continue to have challenges as well. You know, I think about when I came into the role AI. This was towards the end of 2023. Chatgpt was still a little bit early in its life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like 11 months in by that point, right, and so the hype cycle was at an all-time high with some of this, and so, in some ways, I thought that we'd be able to make a lot more progress just with the hype cycle that I was hearing from all this. But I think the potential is still there. But I think we need to, and we have unlocked value in certain areas of the business. But it also has brought to light that, yeah, it's not going to be the be all and end all of everything. We need to make sure that we're approaching business problems with the right types of solutions and that there's not one type of solution that's going to solve everything ie AI. But I think it's also been a great learning for us to say what works, what doesn't work, where do we see the pockets where it works very, very well and where do we double down on that? And in the areas where it maybe hasn't worked so well yet, I'm still encouraged because I still see, for the areas where it's been a little bit less apparent, what the value proposition is going to be apparent, what the value proposition is going to be. I see trending in the right direction and I think it's just going to continue to take off over the next few years on how much more we can unlock in terms of value. So that's been a bit of an eye-opener for me as well.
Speaker 1:I think the other area as well is in my previous background. So data and analytics is part of my team and I had some exposure to that, obviously from a finance standpoint, because we kind of worked closely with that team in my previous role. But there was a couple areas of the business that I just did not, of my new function that I just did not have really much exposure to at all uh, of my new function that I just did not have really much exposure to at all, and those were the ones where I was a little bit scared of to going in because I just didn't know what I didn't know. Yeah, quite honestly, those were the ones, the areas where I found the most um, exciting now looking back after the last couple of years.
Speaker 1:So areas like digital customer engagement, areas like capability development and commercial excellence these are areas where I had very little exposure to in the past, but as I got deeper into it I was coming back to your question I was surprised on the amount of untapped opportunity that was in there that we could still move the needle and make an impact, and I feel like in some of those areas is where I've spent most of my time and been most engaged, uh and and maybe it's just my kind of my, my curious, uh mindset and and uh and asking a lot of questions, but, um, that that that's been a surprise as well, because some of the areas of the impact of the business where, um, I thought I'd have less of an impact are actually ones that I've embraced more and been able to drive a lot of progress to with a great team along the ride with me.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting, and you gave me the perfect segue because you dropped in the word trending. So what do you see trending Like?
Speaker 1:as we turn the gaze a little bit forward and I appreciate pulling out the crystal ball can be a little bit tough where do you see things going? What are you thinking about when you think about the future in the next couple of months, as we head into a new year and looking at our vision for our function? And one trend that I'm feeling and seeing is the trend towards hyper personalization in customer engagement. Uh, we've done a really good job in pharma over the last many, many years of segmenting our customers and broad segments, uh, and trying to uh, you know, deliver the right messages to the right segments of customers, but those segments can be massive, right With with hundreds or thousands of of uh customers in one segment. But now, with the level of data that we have available to us, uh, across a variety of different ways, um, we have the ability, us across a variety of different ways. We have the ability to hyper-personalize, and I see a trend of segments of HCPs going from segments of hundreds or thousands to a segment of one. And what is Dr Neil Follett going to want to see and hear about on this day, on September 19th 2025, around this type of topic? What is the content they're going to want to engage with. What are they carrying, so really making it very, very personalized to have more and more relevance. I think the more we genericize our messages, the less impactful they could be, so that's a big trend that I see as well. I think the more we genericize our messages, the less impactful they could be, so that's a big trend that I see as well.
Speaker 1:From a technology standpoint, obviously AI is going to continue. I think we're going to transition into the kind of test and learn phase which I think most of us are in now, with being able to tangibly measure and show value and financial returns and other business impact associated with AI. I think a big driver behind some of that is what some of the advancements we're seeing around agentic AI and being able to create agents that can play specific roles within the business that improve productivity, improve efficiency. There's already many tools available that people with a non-technical background can start creating agents. So agents at the individual level, agents at the organizational level. So I think the agentic AI wave is going to be a big one for the industry and across all industries really on having a tangible impact on business results.
Speaker 1:And I think the other piece too, and I know we've been saying it for a long time, but I'm hopeful, with a lot of these technological advancements that we're seeing is we obviously have great data within the pharmaceutical industry, data that most other industries would be, you know, that are very jealous about.
Speaker 1:But a lot of our data is around what are people doing with their products, what are they prescribing?
Speaker 1:But the big missing link has oftentimes been you know, what are the outcomes?
Speaker 1:What kind of impact is it having on a population, on a subset of a population, within an institution, within a doctor's practice?
Speaker 1:And I feel like the more we can start to democratize that data using the different tools that will be available to us over the next several years, I think the more it's going to be a win-win for the healthcare system and a win-win for pharma as well, because I think that data exists, but it's just very, very siloed, it's very, very fragmented and lots of people have been trying to crack this nut for a long time. It's like how do we get to a more outcomes-based healthcare system, both from a government standpoint standpoint as well as an industry standpoint, and I'm hopeful that, as we have more sophisticated ways to look and manage this data, that we can move into that and we can start thinking as a pharmaceutical company. Are we seeing the right outcomes and impact from a health system standpoint? The right outcomes and impact from a health health system standpoint? And so that's. I think that one's probably still a little bit far off, but I'm more hopeful now than I've ever been that we're that we will see that shift.
Speaker 2:And I think we're seeing the shift where things that felt like they might be a bit further off actually are surprisingly closer than we think. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being candid and open about the whole journey and I really appreciate your view as to where you think we're going. Daniel, thanks for your time today.
Speaker 1:Really appreciate it. Neil, Thank you so much for having me today. It's been a lot of fun.