THALES
AI Investment Optimization for Commercial-Stage Pharma and Biotech
Stop funding AI theater. Fund the few bets that will change the business.
THALES helps commercial-stage specialty pharma and biotech companies decide which AI investments to kill, fix, scale, watch, or fund next across commercial strategy, field force effectiveness, analytics, marketing operations, and customer engagement.
30 minutes. No pitch. The goal is to simply understand your situation.
Frontier AI thinking for biopharma commercial problems
THE SITUATION
You're investing in AI, but the return is unclear and you're not sure where to bet next
Over the last 18-24 months, your company has committed budget to AI tools, pilots, and vendors. Leadership needs to know the ROI, but you don't have crisp answers.
Meanwhile, parts of the business are requesting AI capabilities faster than your analytics team can evaluate. There are pilots without clear success criteria and tools are either underused or you're hearing about things like “AI brain fry” from improper AI use.
On top of this, every week brings a new vendor claiming their platform or service will transform your commercial operations.
The problem is that no one inside your company is responsible for figuring out which AI capabilities and use cases are worth pursuing, how much they're returning, and what should be killed, scaled, or built next given your overall strategy and goals.
Multiple business units with overlapping or competing AI requests and no central framework for deciding which to fund
Renewal conversations, expansion proposals, and new platform pitches with no independent benchmark to evaluate them against
Budget has been spent but when leadership asks what it's producing, the estimate takes weeks to assemble
Before you commit another six or seven figures to vendors, platforms, pilots, or migrations, get an independent read
THE ENGAGEMENT
The AI Investment Optimization Audit
A 4-6 -week audit producing an executive decision on every commercial AI investment
THALES conducts a structured audit of your entire commercial AI portfolio. Every active initiative, vendor relationship, and pilot is inventoried, scored against a consistent framework, and assessed for risk.
Everything is translated into a specific, executive-ready decision: kill, fix, scale, watch, or fund next.
AI Value Map
Every active initiative scored on five axes: business value, AI solution fit, process readiness, adoption friction, and execution risk, with net new opportunity recommendations. These are translated into clear “kill / fix / scale / watch / fund next” decisions.
Vendor Scorecard with ROI Logic
Vendor-defined metrics (engagement rates, model accuracy, suggestion acceptance) translated into business-outcomes you care about: incremental patient starts, reduced abandonment, increased team capacity, shorter MLR cycle time, etc.
Commercial Data and Workflow Readiness Assessment
Which proposed AI use cases are blocked by data quality gaps, specialty pharmacy or hub feed integration issues, or content taxonomy problems, before you commit to building them.
Governance Gap Inventory
What's missing from your use-case ownership, vendor accountability, human-in-loop workflows, and ROI measurement SOPs.
90-Day Decision Roadmap
Sequenced priorities with explicit kill criteria for any initiative recommended for continuation — and 3-5 new high-leverage opportunities the company hasn't yet pursued.
Every engagement also includes with a 1-2 page Executive Decision Memo
DELIVERABLES
WHY THALES
The only senior AI advisor in this space with no downstream economics on the recommendation
Operational AI experience
AI discernment as a discipline
Expert in running AI opportunity assessment and value quantification inside a Fortune 50 health insurer. Every framework brought to a client engagement is from the real world. This is not theoretical AI consulting.
A meaningful percentage of AI use cases aren’t AI use cases.Often, the underlying problem is rules-based, the process needs to be fixed first, or there isn’t enough value. THALES will tell it to you straight.
A decade of commercial pharma
Vendor-agnostic by design
Ten years at ZS leading commercial strategy, sales force sizing, incentive compensation, field force effectiveness, patient services, customer engagement, and data science for biopharma clients. Predictive modeling programs grew brand revenues 4-6% across multiple large biopharmas. This means evaluations of your initiatives draws upon a decade of deep domain fluency, not generalist AI knowledge applied to pharma.
THALES has no implementation contract, platform partnership, or vendor commission arrangement with any company whatsoever. Anyone else you work with has skin in the game for implementation or other vendor services. When THALES recommends killing a pilot, no THALES revenue is at risk. That structural independence is the foundation of every recommendation.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Built specifically for commercial-stage specialty pharma and biotech
THALES works with companies that have already committed to AI and are navigating the hard questions: what's working, what should be killed or avoided, and what should come next.
You're a fit if:
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You're a commercial-stage specialty pharma or biotech company with $250M-$900M in revenue
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You have a lean analytics or commercial operations team but no dedicated Head of AI or Chief Data Officer
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You've purchased or piloted at least one commercial AI tool and/or are considering AI/ML vendor pitches without a robust way of evaluating them relative to your business strategy
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Your CFO, CSO, or board has started asking what the AI spend is producing
You're not a fit if:
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You have established internal AI infrastructure
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You have a recently hired Head of AI or VP of AI Strategy
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Your core problem is data engineering rather than AI portfolio strategy
The right engagement starts with an honest conversation about fit. If we're not the right match, I'll tell you — and refer you to someone who is.
ABOUT
Shawn Steggink, Founder
I spent a decade at ZS leading commercial strategy and data science work for biopharma clients across sales force sizing, incentive compensation, field force effectiveness, resource planning and deployment, custom targeting, patient services, and launch analytics. During that time I worked on programs that grew brand revenues 4-6% across multiple companies.
I then ran AI opportunity assessments and value quantification inside a Fortune 50 health insurer, where I evaluated AI investment decisions at scale every week. The frameworks I bring to THALES clients come from the real world.
THALES exists because I kept seeing companies make expensive AI investments mostly from "fear of missing out" without a clear link to business strategy or goals. Additionally, the consultants and vendors positioned to help them all had downstream economics on what got built. I don't.
Aside from this, I'm the founder of METIS Total Fitness, an online personal practice targeted at people with demanding careers. This work taught me to always identify and solve for the most limiting factor which, with AI, is typically a) data and b) behavior change: if people don’t use the AI tools you’re buying, or use them in an unhelpful way, then they won't produce value and could even create harm.
I build these insights into every THALES engagement.
Ready for an independent read on your AI portfolio?
The discovery call is 30 minutes. No slides, no pitch. We’ll just dive into your business goals and struggles. If it’s a good fit, I’ll outline the next steps.
Or reach me directly: shawn@thalesstrategy.com