eLearning conducted over an LMS is increasingly becoming a mainstay among pharmaceutical companies. There are a host of reasons why and we are covering them.

In 2020, the pharma industry’s worldwide revenue exceeded 1.27 trillion dollars – a significant increase from 2001 where the revenues were valued at 390 billion dollars.

This industry is expected to grow 3X in over the next decade worldwide. Today it is considered one of the most important sectors of the European economy. The significance to the US economy and the world economy will also grow, especially considering the pandemic, with increased focus on healthcare and vaccinations in the next few years.

Significant growth in this industry would also see a rapid growth in manpower addition. Given the growth of remote work, eLearning will play a vital role in this growth as it will help both large, medium, and small pharma companies expand their footprint.

While the pharmaceutical industry continues its exponential growth trajectory, the need to train existing and new personnel along the way is imperative.

eLearning can play a pivotal role as there will be an increased role for the training of new employees, along with their certification across geographies.

There are several use cases for eLearning within the pharmaceutical industry. We’ve listed some here.

Being a highly regulated industry, training everyone from manufacturing, quality, process, testing, to sales teams on compliance-related matters is critical.

Regulations and laws differ across the globe, and eLearning could help provide country-specific training to ensure compliance with that country’s laws. The pharma industry is susceptible to high risk and litigations as it directly impacts people’s lives and safety.

As the pharmaceutical industry expands and grows, hiring and training new employees is critical for growth – including disease states, product training, and process training. The importance can be seen especially during the Covid era wherein a pharma company with presence across countries and continents needs to expand and hire new employees remotely.

A lot of countries restricted the travel between countries. Lockdowns were ranging from days to months which impaired the movement of employees out of their homes and training locations. Training new employees is critical to ensure growth in several geographies simultaneously. eLearning has played a vital role in the ability of a pharmaceutical company to continue to train effectively.

Ensure the staff of a pharmaceutical company is updated in the latest knowledge and skills to keep them abreast of evolving technology and developments in this field.

eLearning modules can ensure that as the company grows, the employees are up to date with pertinent knowledge and certifications. A learning platform can ensure standardization across employees and geographies.

Staff training in the health industry is critical as new development updates are more rapid in this industry than ever before.

As companies have raced to build new products due to innovation, new emerging treatment methods, advances in healthcare technology, along with aging populations across the world, the need for product training is more crucial than ever.

The ability to roll out training in preparation for product approval by US and European regulatory authorities, and the ability to bring/launch a product across various geographies quickly post-approval is important. eLearning has helped pharma companies to launch new product training quickly and distribute it quickly alongside other blended learning options, thus shortening the training cycle.

The pharma industry needs to train its reps who connect with the entire healthcare ecosystem so that they are aware of the salient benefits of the company’s products.

Sales teams can avail the advantages of eLearning which includes on-demand and need-based training modules which can be updated and distributed on time. eLearning and an LMS can provide the mechanism for better reach, speed of delivery, and standardization to maintain uniformity.

Beyond training sales reps and doctors, pharma companies need to train other links in the eco-system including doctors and pharmacists to educate them about the products that they prescribe and distribute.

Leveraging eLearning and digital learning are critical to expanding the reach of a company’s products by enabling the partner network to be well informed about the products and benefits.

The benefits of having a Learning Management System and using eLearning are several including the following:

Flexibility in the mode of training delivery across geographies:

While instructor-led classroom training (ILT) is an important mode of an organization imparting training, knowledge, compliance and regulatory training, eLearning compliments this very well. By offering enhanced flexibility, eLearning modules can be designed by need, time availability, and regulatory compliance, as is not restricted by geographical limitations.

The companies would also offset the cost of engaging multi-lingual instructors for counties where the local language is prominent, and eLearning can facilitate a location-centric content mode.

The platform can help deliver this information across locations, departments through flexible delivery mediums across devices ranging for laptops, tablets as well as smartphones. Flexibility in multi-device delivery of content makes this accessible to all their employees helping pharma companies to stay ahead of the curve.

LMS companies can provide a multi-tenant system so each of the pharma companies can have distinct content, region specific language preferences and branding for different locations, departments and network supplies which makes the training experience more user-specific and relevant.

A central administrator could centrally manage the course content at the organizational level with further decentralization at the regional level allowing for greater control at user control and group management

Cost, Time-Sensitive, and Faster Adoption:

The LMS in the pharma company can reduce training costs by eliminating the need for unnecessary travel and logistical costs involved in-classroom training.

eLearning modules offer flexibility in content from text-based modules to multimedia-rich content in which visual aids and videos enhance the learner’s experience and retention levels.

Updates to content can be made at significantly lower costs.

It gives greater flexibility to undertake the training when they can absorb more in shorter sessions than in a whole day of training in which the attention span may wane throughout the extended session.

Next generation features like gamification and leaderboards can play a pivotal role in holding employee retention and engagement.

Assessments and surveys can help the pharma company get accurate feedback on their training company’s content directly from the users, including crucial inputs that could plug in any gaps.

Generate Reports and Training Analytics:

Analytics is crucial for the industry to understand the data and progress of every employee in their training journey.

An LMS can help the pharma industry generate detailed progress reports in tabular and graphical form which would give the L&D team a holistic view of their team’s training roadmap.

This will help them track at macro and micro levels, at organizational, departmental, and employee levels so a defined learning path can be planned.

Training is an ongoing activity. It is present right from the induction and onboarding of the employees in terms of their knowledge transfer, certification, upskilling, and updating them through their journey in the organization. This plays a crucial role in employee engagement and retention.

eLearning helps build a greater degree of automation and workflow systems in the pharma industry. A custom dashboard can give an overview to a company of its training path, progress, and gaps.

The impact eLearning can have on the pharma industry, on their organization’s training and development plans are tangible. 60% of pharma companies have started leaning towards adopting an LMS for the flexibility and value it provides in their training and communication needs.

eLearning is aligned to the growth path of pharma companies which are growing by leaps and bounds. An LMS will aid pharma companies to keep pace with their rapid growth and development.

The company can disseminate courses and information faster as they can be uploaded faster to a wider reach so the employees could be in sync in a rapidly developing industry.

The organization not only relies on eLearning for training their employees, but it’s also instrumental in delivering training, SOPs to their network partners, supply chain, and medical teams who front the organization.

This platform helps bring uniformity to business processes, enhances profitability, and operational efficiency.

To understand how e-learning can provide a positive impact value to a pharma company, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial of Abara LMS, http://staging.abaralms.com/free-trial/ Abara offers a risk-free trial for 30 days.

We can provide a hands-on perspective and insight into how an LMS can make a substantial difference to the training and communication in your organization.