In Conversation: Sunitha Venkatanarayanan, Practice Lead, Data Science and Insights at Conexus Solutions

Conexus Solutions, Inc. (Conexus), headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, is an end-to-end solutions provider of outsourced sales and marketing operations with deep expertise in CRM implementation, reporting, data analytics, and data management. 

Conexus Data Science and Insights’ comprehensive suite of solutions help small to midsize biotech, pharma, and life sciences companies improve data organization, aggregation, and analysis to generate new insights that can improve sales and marketing performance. The company is a certified “Veeva Services Partner.” Veeva is the premier CRM software for life sciences organizations. 

Conexus, which was founded in 2016, has experienced exciting growth of late; the company has approximately 60 clients, which have been obtained via the company’s strong performance and subsequently strong word-of-mouth sales. With a deep, experienced leadership team, outstanding technology and a stalwart commitment to delivering a great customer experience, Conexus is poised for even more growth in 2023. 

We recently spoke with Sunitha Venkatanarayanan, Conexus’ Practice Lead (Data Science & Insights), about her own career journey, the power of data science, and what the company has to offer small to midsize pharma and life sciences companies. 

Tell me about your career journey leading up to joining Conexus.

It has been an interesting journey to say the least! I have about 25 years of U.S. based experience, starting with a software solutions company where I focused on end-to-end business solutions design and execution.

I then transitioned to a leading clinical trial services partner which meant I went from providing solutions for single organizations to developing the core product for life sciences clinical trials. I started as part of the core architect team and eventually led the data management team. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Microsoft and spearhead a key enterprise initiative and delivered a  business intelligence solutions platform. Eventually, I realized that data was what I enjoyed so I decided to change my career path to focus on business intelligence (BI) solutions.

After that, I joined a Contract Sales Organization and established a high performing team providing innovative BI solutions as the Director of Business Insights and Analytics. We worked with various business units including commercial, patient solutions, medical affairs, and back-office teams like finance, business development and HR. Over seven years, I was involved with approximately 50 implementations. You get an appreciation for the approach to analytics that can scale easily and result in increased adoption to drive strategy in the field.

Ironically, Conexus was one of my vendor partners, so I had a front row seat to the growth they were experiencing. I had many conversations with Akshay Kapadia, Conexus Founder and CEO, about my future plans and what I would be looking for in a new role and he ended up offering me the opportunity to lead our Data Science and Insights division. This was exactly what I wanted to do.

RELATED: In Conversation: Akshay Kapadia, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Conexus Solutions

“Data science” is a term thrown around quite a bit these days, but I’m not sure everyone understands what it is. How would you explain data science to someone unfamiliar with the field?

The segments we serve are small and medium life sciences companies who are typically not yet ready for data science services. Many of the companies we work with might have a specialized commercial product or a handful of products but still need to lay down a data management foundation. Some are siloed and still using Excel, for example. So, for them, the data can only be about what has happened in the past where the field of data science is about using data to better see and predict the future.

Data science involves three disciplines: IT, business operations that intuitively know what is happening on the ground, and the data scientists that can inform business ops what insights the data is surfacing to help the business be more predictive and prescriptive. 

You will not find one company that understands data needs across therapeutic area in the SMB market. What Conexus brings to the table is senior leadership who has the experience to customize the right approach for a specific company. We can help transition small to medium sized life sciences companies away from Excel to having data available at their fingertips.

What differentiates Conexus from other IT-managed services and support companies serving the life sciences space?

Conexus brings strategic oversight, deep domain experience, and the technology to help our clients succeed. I believe what makes us different is the combination of our people, processes and technology offerings. One thing that is unique to us is our Pharma Services division and our partnership with Veeva. We offer a variety of connected services aside from Data Science and Insights, such as Commercial Operations, Implementation and Integrations, End to End Commercial, Marketing, Clinical and Medical Solutions Support and more. We’re confident in our ability to solve any challenge an organization may have.

We’re also looking forward to launching new services in 2023. We are working on a pilot, with our strategic partner Whiz.AI, that will enable decision makers to type in questions in their natural language and the platform will surface the answers quickly. This will help our clients ask their questions and get the chart/insights/alerts in real time when they need it, where they need it and on any device.

Right now, this process could take weeks and by that time their questions have changed. The AI engine is constantly trained on large data sets that are specific to life sciences data sets. 

The pilot is part of Conexus’ efforts to launch an “Analytics in a Box” service with our AI partner. This product will be so valuable for our small and medium sized life sciences companies that have limited resources. They will be able to log into a portal to begin their analytics journey and we’ll take care of everything behind the scenes. 

We want to make the data analysis and insight process as seamless and simple as possible for our customers.

What is the integration process like for Conexus’ customers and how is cyber security managed?

Our clients will be able to pilot the platform with a decent sampling of their own data and experience the power of the AI Platform. All the underlying data integrations, sanity checks and operations will be taken care of seamlessly.

As far as cyber security is concerned, it’s part of our DNA. We received our ISO 27001 certification earlier this year, which was a huge accomplishment for our small but growing team. The core of ISO 27001 is based on information security and management and ensuring we have all the proper security checkpoints in place. We provide security training for our own team, and our customers. 

What are the top three reasons a smaller to midsize life sciences company should partner with Conexus?

What are small and midsize life sciences companies looking for? 

They are looking for better business outcomes, operational efficiencies, and cost savings. They want to increase the top and bottom line with actionable insights, improve ROI on their data assets, and be able to make consistent decisions based on a single source of truth. 

Conexus can confidently deliver all these advantages to our customers.

We bring deep domain expertise, as many of us have done this for decades. We’re able to provide strategic oversight to a company on how to do things right, but we can also help companies by sharing what not to do. That’s where our experience comes in. It might hurt us to say to a client ‘Don’t do this right now’, but we are all committed to doing what’s right for our customers. That’s who we are—“The Team Behind the Team”.