Time for major changes in the pharma organization
May/28/2007 10:03 Filed in: Pharma
Business
Unless your the lead dog the view never
changes
Blockbuster products, those with sales over $1 billion, may be hard to come by in the near future. There are too many drugs within the same class competing against each other and the loss of some of the biggest products to generics may be all that is needed for insurers to switch people to lower cost alternatives. Organizational changes need to take place as well in order to implement with speed and reduce costs. Here are some suggestions that are evolving from the current environment:
1. Reduce Brand Team Size: Decentralize the brand team and find ways to openly share information between functional owners. Include separate functional managers for specialty areas like eMarketing and HCP Marketing. Share medical. legal and regulatory personnel with other brand teams.
2. Be Transparent: Share information with your customers and stop trying to hide behind clinical studies.
3. Reduce the Sales Force: Depending on the product it's time to seriously think about what the sales force of the future will look like and start implementing NOW rather than later.
4. PR has to become part of the marketing mix: It's time to invite the media inside your company. Make them aware of the challenges you face, win them over with transparent messages.
5. The CEO has to set an example for others to follow and cut the dead wood. Stop with the "we care" unless you are ready to walk the walk. Get rid of people who make bad decisions and promote those who have patients best interests at heart and are willing to take risks. Tell Wall Street that you have a responsibility to your customers first not investors.
6. Recruit and hire people who can work with, and understand, the FDA. This is extremely important as you don't want to file an NDA only to find out that you have to do more clinical studies.
Pharma needs to think outside the box and look at companies like Google and Apple to see how their organizational structures lead to innovation. Wall Street has a very shortsighted view of companies strategic plans which puts more and more pressure on CEO's to improve bottom line results. Product development is still a science and drugs will continue to be developed that fail in clinical trials. There is no such thing as a "sure winner" anymore.
No wonder it takes pharma months to respond to changes in the market, people are too busy in meetings getting buy in from people who are not stakeholder. Those organizations that make changes NOW are the ones that will better able to compete in the future.
|