How to effectively adopt AI through strategic change management and ensure scalable, compliant deployment to unlock its full value.

Technology adoption might best be viewed as an organizational muscle that gets stronger with each use. In the case of current advancements in artificial intelligence, the adoption of AI capabilities is still nascent in the pharmaceutical industry. At the enterprise level, organizations must evaluate AI hype vs. reality, assess addressable use cases, and consider how to deploy solutions in a scalable, efficient manner. 

The challenge for life sciences organizations isn’t the technology, it’s the transformation. Technology, like AI, is a valuable tool, one with tremendous potential for impact across the value chain, from commercial operations to clinical development and research and development. However, this tool requires strategy, adoption, and change management for successful transformation. 

What’s the path to success for life sciences and pharmaceutical organizations looking to leverage this transformative technology? Adopting an agile mindset throughout an organization is a first step.

The Power of AI in Pharma

AI has the potential to bring value to organizations in terms of: 

• synthesizing data from various sources and making it actionable for supporting smart decisions, 
• streamlining processes, and 
• saving significant time and money by eliminating some labor-intensive manual tasks.

As an example, in my area of expertise, the commercial side of pharma, AI has the potential to significantly improve medical, legal, and regulatory affairs (MLR) review by reducing time spent and minimizing and identifying errors upstream in the review process. 

In another example, at the 2025 Pharma USA conference, Beghou Consulting shared a story of success, applying AI to content tagging. Content tagging is the process of organizing and categorizing content tags to enable efficient search and reuse. With AI, the organization was able to tag 60 times more content and saw 94% accuracy. 

Perhaps most impactful of all, emerging agentic AI systems can turn data and pre-defined rules into short-term and long-term decision-making. Agentic systems can enable better planning and engagement, allowing teams to get to action faster, and freeing time for strategic thinking and complex problem-solving.

Frank Defesche, SVP and General Manager, Life Sciences at Salesforce, talked about the potential for “agentic CRM,” enabling life sciences organizations to improve accuracy, take on work, and power automations, paving the way for more high-quality relationships with providers. 

AI’s Success Hinges on Change Management

Effective change management is critical for these initiatives to succeed. Adopting a new technology, especially one that will change behaviors, experiences, and roles, requires: 

• early legal and compliance partners, 
• strong cross-functional development and executive commitment, and 
• a detail-oriented approach to tailoring change management to each organizational function’s needs.    

The biggest obstacle to change management is neither identifying use cases nor purchasing the right technology – it’s getting people to actually adopt the solution. The majority (60-70%) of change initiatives fail, mostly because of people’s natural resistance to change.

People tend to trust those closest to them, so leverage peer influencers:

“Colleagues need to be a part of the [change management] process,” Aditya Kudumala, Partner, Life Sciences Strategy, AI and Innovation Leader at Deloitte shared at Pharma USA. “That’s where you see the most impact.”

One approach is to deputize enthusiasts for the change as “AI ambassadors” who can work formally with peers (via meetings and training sessions, for example), as well as informally through ad hoc conversations and by being available to answer big and small questions people may have.  

Think of Legal and Compliance as Partners, Not Obstacles

Bring your legal and compliance colleagues in early during the process of planning any AI deployment. While some may view compliance as gatekeepers, in the high-regulatory environment of pharma and life science, they are partners we need to help establish guardrails and build capabilities. 

In my experience, legal and compliance colleagues who understand the power of transformative technology become innovation enablers rather than blockers. It’s far better to have these colleagues at the table early on, making recommendations and sharing caveats, long before you roll out any AI-fueled solution.

“Compliance can then serve [proactively] as a tailwind, instead of [reactively] as a headwind,” says Frank Defesche. 

The Change Management Expertise You Need

Change management is always a complex endeavor, involving technology, people, business processes, strategic communication, and much more. Not all organizations are well equipped with the practices and skill-sets they need to succeed, especially for such transformative changes like adopting AI.

Fortunately, you can access and deploy the change management experts you need, when you need them, thanks to partners like Catalant. Catalant has a deeply experienced community of consultants, many of whom are change management experts with expertise driving transformative change in life sciences organizations. 

Catalant’s deep bench of Experts can empower your organization to not only explore the full potential of AI, but to embrace it across your organization so you can realize its full value.