The New Rules of Life Sciences Business

Today’s guest post is from Karen Bell, Product Marketing Manager at Revitas. In the article below, Karen outlines automation’s value to bio/pharma companies that want to improve contracting, pricing, and compliance.

Please contact Karen Bell (kbell@revitasinc.com) with any questions about the article. And don’t forget to join me at the Revitas Industry Summit: Life Sciences, which will be held at the Four Seasons Hotel in beautiful Philadelphia, PA, on November 5-6, 2013.

The new rules of Life Sciences business require breaking through to faster, better and easier…now.
By Karen S. Bell, Product Marketing Manager, Revitas

Shifting industry dynamics are bringing more complex challenges into play for life sciences companies as they adapt to increasing pressures from channel partners, government, and patients to provide optimal products at the lowest cost. Meeting financial performance goals are further impacted by the “patent cliff,” where patents on branded drugs expire, losing market exclusivity and delivering a hard hit to revenues. The continued emergence of personalized medicine refocuses product development on condition-specific diagnoses with smaller patient populations. Yet, even with high development costs and low volumes, these specialized offerings can help create new, differentiated pipelines.

With new business opportunities, there are always new caveats. In order to be successful, drug manufacturers must shift from the current “blockbuster product” mindset. The new marketplace requires a different set of business capabilities that stratifies product development, into targeted markets globally, and gains incremental performance efficiencies to support the unique demand scenarios for each offering.

Bottom line: life sciences companies must adopt new business models, reinforce related infrastructures and align global operations to gain new efficiencies across their global operations.

What can life sciences companies do to gain and maintain competitive advantages? It is imperative for organizations to devise strategies that balance the delivery of innovative products with cost-efficient operations to create added value for their stakeholders. They must uncover opportunities to enhance operational performance with newly-aligned strategies, systems, and workflows that generate incremental savings, eliminate waste, retain more revenue and position their organizations for an even more dynamic marketplace.

Consequently, life sciences companies are exploring new, automated solutions to improve productivity and mitigate risk across their enterprise-wide book of business. The promise of enterprise solutions is to better align and share resources across functions, remove silos, and break through IT barriers to standardize ‘how the business works.’

Breaking through to faster, better and easier

The role of technology not only addresses the need to ‘do it faster,’ it also supports initiatives to ‘do it better’. Consider the impact of mobile devices in our business and personal lifestyles. We expect access to information ‘on-the-go’ so we can take action in real-time. Now, consider how new solution delivery methods, such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud-enabled technology can help streamline processes and reduce costs.

With SaaS and cloud-enabled solutions, organizations – especially small- to mid-size emerging growth companies – are able to take advantage of trusted enterprise software applications, often at a lower-cost entry point. With these technologies, companies can off-load the routine maintenance of applications, bypassing infrastructure and capital limitations. With the service provider taking on the daily IT lift, organizations can redirect high-skilled resources to more business-critical initiatives. Moreover, as service providers deliver “adopt-as-you-grow’ capabilities, organizations can gain fast, easy access to latest features/functionality, becoming more agile and driving better business operations without major capital investments in additional support systems.

Against this evolving scenario, a quick reality check presents a universal challenge: how do you keep productive while evaluating strategic approaches for the long-term? Keeping an eye on the prize of delivering new value, life sciences companies are designing solution roadmaps to apply and leverage these and other technologies within their existing systems to construct systematic and repeatable approaches to running their businesses. Within such an environment, organizations are then in a better position to address customers’ current demands, respond fast to emerging market needs, and innovate for market leadership.

Life sciences executive leaders and front-line directors will meet at the upcoming Revitas Industry Summit to learn and exchange perspectives on enabling agile, efficient operations now and for the long-term. Taking place November 5 – 6, 2013 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, the event brings together industry thought leaders, including keynote speaker, Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., to consider best-practice approaches on:

• Developing strategies in the evolving pharma landscape
• Navigating the compliance landscape
• Assessing the revenue landscape
• Applying practical tactics to automate operations.

Developing a successful approach to contracts, pricing and compliance

Understanding the importance of gaining expert industry views from the field, the conference will feature Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., Founder and President of Pembroke Consulting, Inc., and author of the Drug Channels blog, to discuss “Optimizing Pharmaceutical Businesses for the Emerging Specialty Marketplace”. Attendees will learn about trending issues in pharmaceutical economics and best practices for channel strategies.

With more than 20 unique educational sessions, plus industry-level presentations, the conference is suited for emerging growth companies and established life science organizations. Besides the educational benefits, the conference affords a chance to meet and network with some of the top innovators in the field. Highlights include:

• Customer success stories and panel discussions on best practices
• Sessions focused on enabling “the cloud” -- using software as a service (SaaS) solutions as part of growth strategies
• An examination of building a successful government pricing strategy

Developing and building leadership skills

What makes a great leader? Guest speaker Vince Papale, former NFL star for the Philadelphia Eagles and the inspiration for the 2006 movie “Invincible,” will explore attributes of great leaders. Papale, who famously went from an Eagles season ticket holder to captain of the team, will run through the “Papale Playbook,” a combination of personal stories and life lessons that teach the art of leadership and encourage listeners to tackle opportunities.

The Revitas Industry Summit: Life Sciences packages education sessions, industry foresight, and networking forums to help life sciences executives and functional leaders tackle today’s complex business issues, understand how to leverage latest technologies for continuous improvement, and learn how to prepare for the next level of performance.

Register today to take advantage of the Revitas Industry Summit’s expert curriculum for life sciences professionals. For more information, visit the Revitas Summit site: http://summit.revitasinc.com/