Next generation commercial capabilities

Delivering Next-Generation
Commercial Capabilities within
the Pharmaceutical Industry

Contents
01 Executive Summary
03 A PARADIGM SHIFT FOR THE
PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
07 A VISION FOR NEXT-GENERATION
COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES
13 THE PATHWAY FOR COMMERCIAL
TRANSFORMATION
14. 1. PLAN
19 2. BUILD
21 3. OPERATE
24 CONCLUSIONS
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Thought Leadership 2
Executive Summary
Innovative, next-generation commercial capabilities are an indispensable asset for a
pharmaceutical industry that must navigate the truly transformational changes taking place
within global healthcare markets. This rapidly evolving environment within which medical
innovators exist is driving the twin pressures of increasing commercial complexity and
associated unsustainable costs. Today, forward-looking companies understand the need
to efficiently interpret the tsunami-like flow of data moving through healthcare systems,
in order to derive rapid insights and to take action from this information, which is fast
becoming the new hallmark of success. The commercial engine at the heart of a
pharmaceutical company must be able to collect, interpret, and further leverage this
information to implement locally relevant customer solutions that maintain global
consistency and deliver strategic advantage.
This senior executive briefing outlines a blueprint for how pharmaceutical companies can
utilize a new collaborative model to effectively build next-generation internal commercial
capabilities by leveraging the analytical, technological, and intellectual expertise of external
partners, allied with a company’s internal assets. In doing so, pharmaceutical companies
can recognize cost-efficiencies and, more importantly, innovate commercial processes to
deliver additional growth as markets continue to evolve.

Delivering Next-Generation Commercial Capabilities within the Pharmaceutical Industry3
A Paradigm Shift for the
Pharmaceutical Industry
The pace at which global healthcare markets are evolving is accelerating. Aging populations,
improved and earlier disease diagnosis combined with an increasing shift towards unhealthy
lifestyles are driving spiraling costs for health systems in nearly every market. In addition, data
and technology are making new insights possible to every stakeholder within healthcare, including
the providers and payers. As a consequence, pressure is being exerted on the pharmaceutical
industry to demonstrate greater value for the medicines it produces. The industry has arguably
become a victim of its own success – the bar has become ever higher (and easier to measure)
for novel treatments and competition is fierce.
In adapting to this new health economy, the pharmaceutical industry is facing challenges on two
fronts, balancing this increasing market complexity and the associated need to innovate its
commercial model against the necessity to manage unsustainable operational costs. While
globalization provides an opportunity to scale solutions to recognize efficiencies, the expertise
needed to deliver these can be cost prohibitive in the short-term.
The key factors underlining this are summarized in Figure 1 and are further described below.
Figure 1
Drivers of commercial change for the pharmaceutical industry
HEALTHCARE DATA
EXPLOSION
TECHNOLOGY
REVOLUTION
GLOBALIZATION
REQUIREMENTS FOR INNOVATIVE
COMMERCIALIZATION

HEALTHCARE DATA EXPLOSION
Driven by the other factors outlined below and the fundamental nature of the digital age in which
we live, an explosion of new data sources is now available with which to make business decisions,
driving additional complexity – and cost, if not harnessed in the right way. Exploiting this new
wealth of information is hindered by the fact that, over the past 10 years, basic IT functions such as
data integration and warehousing have been largely commoditized, created in a piecemeal fashion,
and often outsourced, achieving cost-cutting goals but leaving the company deficient in these
key capabilities. Adding to these challenges is the fact that many information sources, such as
real-world data (RWD), are commercially available to all, making it entirely possible that payers,
providers, and competitors can know more about a company’s products than the company itself. In
effect, this has become a race for data, and the insight locked within it, between a pharmaceutical
manufacturer, its competitors, and the healthcare providers it serves. In consequence, new
approaches are needed that can derive business critical insight at a pace in line with data generation.
TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION
The technology revolution, which underpins this healthcare data explosion, has also dramatically
changed how such data is interpreted and presented to the pharmaceutical industry’s customers.
Cloud-based applications, mobile solutions, and novel data-visualization platforms are driving new
approaches to digital customer engagement, which align with the desire from healthcare providers
to manage the multiple pressures on their time and make every interaction efficient. While
multichannel marketing (MCM) may therefore offer the promise of better customer engagement, it
requires the right segmentation and ongoing understanding of these customers to deliver practical
results. Developing and implementing sales and marketing strategies that consistently demonstrate
return-on-investment at the brand, portfolio, and corporate level can only be achieved through
nimble, real-time analysis and execution platforms that combine internal information with
customer feedback loops.
GLOBALIZATION
Technology, and the connectivity it drives, has also been a driver of globalization across all sectors,
including the pharmaceutical industry. While the specific healthcare system dynamics and priorities
vary on a country-by-country basis, the ability for the pharmaceutical industry to apply some
level of global efficiency is essential to manage the cost of commercial engagement. This requires
systems and processes that facilitate global working through ensuring appropriate local scaling and
skills alignment of the delivery workforce, access to the right talent from anywhere in the world,
standardization of knowledge and common methodologies, and the ability to share best practice
across countries and regions. Never before has the old mantra of ‘think global, act local’ been more
relevant and, with the right commercial capabilities in place, pharmaceutical companies are now
well positioned to deliver against this promise.

REQUIREMENTS FOR
INNOVATIVE
COMMERCIALIZATION
Finally, the pharmaceutical industry is
in the midst of a fundamental shift in its
commercial model, driven by some core
changes in the healthcare landscape. Generic
erosion in primary care markets and the
need to demonstrate cost-effectiveness for
new medicines are shifting the focus toward
smaller, more defined patient populations
and specialist medicines, where unmet need
is greatest. The oncology market is highly
representative of this shift, where genetic
profiling of patients and development of
companion diagnostics are becoming the
hallmarks of success. The data market around
such ‘precision medicine’ is booming, as new
organizations like the personal diagnostics
company 23andMe demonstrate; initially
rebuffed by the FDA but now working
cooperatively with the US regulator.
In addition, the decision-making process
behind medicines usage in nearly all
therapeutic areas is becoming more protracted,
as systems seek to balance personalized
approaches with restrained healthcare budgets.
Individual physicians still make key therapeutic
decisions but they do so within a context
wherein payers (including patients, delivery
networks, accountable care organizations
[ACOs], health technology assessment [HTA]
bodies, and regional / hospital formulary
decision-makers) are exerting more influence.
For the pharmaceutical industry, this dual
challenge of smaller patient populations and
more complex prescribing pathways, involving
physicians and payers, necessitates innovative
approaches to remain commercially viable.
NEW DRIVERS
OF BUSINESS
TRANSFORMATION
To date, the pharmaceutical industry’s response
to this paradigm shift has been to outsource
in-house commercial capability gaps piece
by piece or scale those functions down that
are seen as non-essential. However, this has
fragmented these capabilities and created
information silos across multiple platforms,
providers, and partners. Addressing this
problem and delivering further gains in
commercial effectiveness can only be achieved
by consolidating external partners around the
following objectives, also illustrated in Figure 2:
LOWER OVERALL COSTS
INNOVATION TO
DRIVE NEW MODELS
AND PROFITABILITY
PRESERVATION OF
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
FLEXIBLE
OPERATIONS
FASTER ACCESS TO
INSIGHTS AND THE
RIGHT ACTIONS
CRITICAL SUCCESS
FACTORS UNDERPINNING
NEXT-GENERATION
COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES
Figure 2
Core objectives for next-generation
commercial capabilities

1. LOWER OVERALL COSTS
Reducing costs has been a priority for many pharmaceutical companies, implemented via a
series of tools and levers such as consolidation, standardization, and automation. Procurement
often drives cost containment through preferred provider agreements in tandem with broader
capabilities development but, as mentioned above, careful scrutiny of value is necessary to
ensure cost savings are not to the detriment of business growth.
2. FASTER ACCESS TO INSIGHTS AND THE RIGHT ACTIONS
Despite the explosion of healthcare information, derivation of robust insight from this
‘big data’ is not trivial. Companies must be focused on actually delivering better commercial
outcomes from it and therefore be willing to invest in new data and analytical platforms
to help them collect and derive actionable intelligence more efficiently.
3. PRESERVATION OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
There is a recognized need to retain critical decision-making either in-house or within a few
key long-term partners such that important decisions are not broadly outsourced and true
capability is not lost. While pharmaceutical companies appreciate having a choice in providers,
they are quickly gravitating to a few select partners, limiting risks around loss of intellectual
property while also bringing unique assets and broad learnings from earlier client engagements,
so that processes can be optimized over time. In addition, there is a balance that must be struck
between blending expertise that partners can only gain from working with multiple clients and
appropriate processes and systems that protect intellectual property.
4. FLEXIBLE OPERATIONS
The need to handle variable workloads without financial impact to the company is pronounced
and a core value of any effective commercial model. The best solutions are scalable and easily
accommodate volume impacts, such as new launches, loss of exclusivity, internal budget cycles,
and other operational situations. Such events cannot always be forecast well in advance
(e.g. competitor licensing and acquisition activity), so the need to adapt quickly is critical.
5. INNOVATION TO DRIVE NEW MODELS AND PROFITABILITY
Innovation and continuous improvement are key themes for forward-looking companies, as the
pace of new information and technology is such that commercial functions must be able to adapt as
quickly as the environment in which they operate. To maintain competitive advantage and ensure
ongoing efficiency, innovation processes and policies will need to remain front and center.

A Vision For Next-Generation
Commercial Capabilities
Achieving success requires departing from practices
of the past. New partnership models are being explored
that are addressing deficiencies in historic approaches.
Companies at the cutting edge of next-generation commercial capabilities are now centralizing
control of key aspects while also building durable capabilities that deliver a strategic advantage,
working with the right external partners to align internal commercial and technology functions,
plus enhance internal skills, to deliver the real results possible in an information-driven age.
The result is more seamless working between the central team, its internal clients, and
external partners to drive innovative best-in-class approaches, for which cost efficiencies
are a consequence rather than the overwhelming focus.
To deliver against this vision, as illustrated in Figure 3, the right external partner
must possess three core attributes:
• Healthcare data expertise: Access to, and the ability to understand and interpret, the different
types of information available (not only core clinical data, commercial data, and RWD, but also
information relating to technological interventions, new treatment pathways, and shifting
government and payer policies), including knowledge of their limitations and how to integrate
multiple sources together for the right business insight.
• Leading technology capabilities: Best-in-class predictive applications to enable proactive and
rapid intervention through real-time derivation of insights from information, in addition to an
understanding of how novel cloud-based platforms can be used to efficiently scale technology
solutions across an organization.
• Global presence and skills: The right personnel to deliver deep knowledge of informatics,
different therapeutic areas and healthcare markets, in addition to the ability to rapidly ramp
up such teams on a global basis, as and when required.

Figure 3
Business-critical commercial operations trends in the pharmaceutical industry
FROM TO
INEFFICIENT AND
DECENTRALIZED METHODS
PLATFORMS AND
DECISION-MAKING
GEOGRAPHICAL
SCOPE
CENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE
STANDARDS AND PLATFORMS
EXECUTED LOCALLY
HYPER FOCUS ON
COST CUTTING
STRATEGIC
INTENT
DEVELOPING CAPABILITIES AS
A STRATEGIC DIFFERENTIATOR
WITH COST REDUCTIONS
OVER TIME
DECENTRALIZED DECISIONS
RESULTING IN SPAGHETTI
ARCHITECTURE /
STRANDED DATA
TECHNOLOGY
AND
INFORMATION
CENTRALIZED GLOBAL
PLATFORMS FOR DATA
COLLECTION, LEVERAGE
AND INSIGHTS
SUPPORTING A WORLD OF
REPRESENTATIVES IN
A REACH AND
FREQUENCY MODEL
COMMERCIAL
METHODS
CENTRAL ENGINE DRIVING
KEY STAKEHOLDERS INSIGHTS
AND COMMERCIAL INNOVATION
DECENTRALIZED ‘VENDOR’
LED BY COMMERCIAL AND
AFFILIATE STAKEHOLDER
DECISIONS
PARTNER
STRATEGY
STRATEGIC GLOBAL PARTNERS
WORKING TOGETHER ON
NEXT-GENERATION CAPABILITIES
KEY TREND

BUILDING COMMERCIAL CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE
Aligning the core objectives for next-generation commercial capabilities with the essential
attributes of the right external partner necessitates the development of Centers of Excellence
(CoEs) within the commercial functions (Figure 4), which combine the information, technology,
and human capital on both sides (internal and external partner) – developing internal
capabilities and skills while maintaining ownership of essential intellectual property.
The result is commonality across CoEs around analytical and technological process, while
clustering the appropriate subject matter expertise into these defined virtual units.
Figure 4
The building blocks of commercial Centers of Excellence
LEADING TECHNOLOGY
CAPABILITIES
ESSENTIAL COMMERCIAL PARTNER ATTRIBUTES
CORE COMPONENTS FOR NEXT-GENERATION CAPABILITIES
HEALTHCARE DATA
EXPERTISE
GLOBAL PRESENCE
AND SKILLS
SUBJECT MATTER
EXPERTISE
CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE (CoEs)
INTELLIGENT ANALYTICS
PLATFORM
TECHNOLOGY AND
APPLICATIONS
The result is commonality across CoEs around
analytical and technological process, while
clustering the appropriate subject matter
expertise into these defined virtual units.

The specific focus for these CoEs will vary by company, but typically they are
emerging in the following areas:
• Therapeutic areas, at the disease area level (oncology, diabetes, cardiovascular) or
aggregated by approach (specialty, primary care, personalized medicine).
• Advanced analytics and business forecasting, at the brand, portfolio, and operational level.
• Market intelligence, establishing best practice for the integration of primary market
research (PMR) with the ever-increasing volume of secondary data available through
integrated desk research (i-DR).
• Customer engagement, covering areas including MCM, closed-loop marketing,
and salesforce effectiveness.
• Performance management, defining standard reporting mechanisms and key performance
indicators (KPIs) across brands, therapeutic areas and geographies, which also include
internal metrics around customer engagement such as incentive compensation.
• Real-world evidence, encompassing pre- and post-launch value assessment, from early
health economic evidence through to outcomes evaluation.
• Information management, working across the business to project requirements, design,
and deliver strategies to ensure the technological architecture is futureproof.

• Electronic medical records: Comprehensive point-of-care records of how patients are treated reveal
a detailed clinical picture contributing to an overall understanding of a patient’s treatment pathway
and general state of health.
• Clinical technology: A proliferation of mobile devices such as, for example, monitors,
ventilators, pumps, and glucometers provide rich sources of clinical data that can enable early
detection, prevention, and interventions to improve patient care and outcomes.
• Track-and-trace systems: If the FDA succeeds in mandating that pharmaceutical companies
install systems to know where their products are located in real time, important logistical data
becomes available every time a package ‘hits a node’ on the distribution system.
• Social media: Wide-ranging public conversations about diseases and how they are treated
provide rich insights into how patients and prescribers perceive healthcare and treatments.
• Real-world evidence: Privately funded and government-sponsored longitudinal studies are
producing a wealth of information on treatment practices, patient persistence and compliance
and, critically, patient outcomes.
The commercial advantages to be gained by keeping abreast with the sheer volume, velocity,
and variety of healthcare data cannot be overstated and underline the critical importance of
the intelligent analytics platform as the foundation of good commercial practice. Here, partner
expertise across the myriad of data sources, understanding their limitations, and ability to
integrate them is vital.
INTELLIGENT ANALYTICS PLATFORM
The intelligent analytics platform sits at the heart
of the CoE, allowing collation of information and initial
distillation of insights from multiple sources
including, but not limited to:

TECHNOLOGY AND
APPLICATIONS
Building on the intelligent analytics platform,
pharmaceutical companies can then unlock
commercial insight through smart use of
technology and applications. Predictive ability,
accuracy and speed are key attributes here.
The long-term trend is to move away from
retrospective analytics, which provide a picture
of what happened in the recent past, towards
projecting future scenarios. In reality, this is
more achievable in some areas than others,
e.g. MCM, but immediate wins are available
across every aspect of a pharmaceutical
business in more accurate and timely analytics.
To achieve this ideal, companies must combine
their own internal primary and secondary
insights with the informational, technological,
and analytical skills of the external partner.
While cloud-based technology can enable
global access, the functionality of such
applications must deliver value at the local
level. Specifically, that means a constant focus
on integrating and standardizing healthcare
datasets and making robust tools available
to analysts within the affiliates so their
operating systems and brand teams can better
understand the behavior of key customers and
the influence they have on markets. Examples
of two common areas where technology and
applications – combining intelligent analytics
with the right tools to extract insights and
take action – can deliver benefit are in the
use of customer-relationship management
(CRM) systems and MCM. Both are essential
components of good customer engagement, but
need to integrate internal and external datasets
in a way that enables a 360-degree view of the
customer and drives more effective engagement
– essentially, combining traditional ‘push’ sales
and marketing with a more informed ‘pull’
approach based on individual customer needs.
SUBJECT MATTER
EXPERTISE
New operating conditions bring requirements for
new areas of expertise. This is particularly true in
healthcare where expertise spanning therapeutic
areas, individual markets, business functions,
and technology is now critical to delivering the
right commercial answers to questions such as
‘how can my product be delivering better value?’.
But this requirement comes at a time when
many commercial functions are downsizing,
potentially exposing gaps in expertise, which
can be bridged by an external partner with the
right breadth of subject matter expertise.
Such partners can also help retrain incumbent
staff to create, among other things, strategies
for sourcing data, using the cloud for collating
and storing information, identifying the right
applications to extract meaningful insight from
information, and building pillars of excellence
in analytics that can adapt as complexity
mounts. A long-term vision is important
because, while everyone agrees such next-
generation commercial capabilities are still
in development, very few would question
their importance in delivering success for
the business. The right partner will seek to
enhance its client’s knowledge, not replace
it, and in doing so will help accelerate the
process towards achieving this vision.
In summary, such CoEs drive real change in
the way pharmaceutical companies operate,
inspiring new ways of engaging customers,
driving more intelligent business enablement
globally and enhancing internal expertise,
all while protecting intellectual property and
driving cost-efficiencies. These CoEs also deliver
both short- and long-term benefit, through
immediate commercial efficiencies, which
combine internal and external expertise, while
laying down the foundations for innovative
next-generation commercial capabilities.

Armed with an appreciation of the building blocks for
success in developing next-generation commercial
capabilities, along with a clear view of the current and
ideal future situation for the industry, a pathway can be
defined to guide progress towards this ideal endpoint,
aligned to the three key stages of plan, build, and
operate Figure 5.
The Pathway for Commercial
Transformation
Figure 5
Plan, build and operate to achieve next-generation commercial capabilities
IDENTIFY CRITICAL
SUCCESS FACTORS
APPLY LEVERS AND
TOOLS
DEFINE THE INTERNAL
ECONOMY
UNDERSTAND THE
PROCESSES IN PLAY
REDEFINE INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
AGREE A CLEAR
LONG-TERM ROADMAP
DEVELOP THE
OPERATING MODEL
DEVELOP A GLOBAL
DELIVERY STRATEGY
PLAN FOR CHANGE
IMPLEMENT TRANSITION
EXECUTE GOVERNANCE MODEL
ADOPT OPERATING MODEL
PLANNING INNOVATIVE
CAPABILITIES
1. PLAN
BUILDING SOLUTIONS FLEXIBLE DELIVERY
CAPABILITIES
2. BUILD 3. OPERATE

1. PLAN
Planning and agreeing on a core strategy is the first stage,
which includes several smaller steps, outlined below.
IDENTIFY CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
The natural instinct behind any change is to seek cost-efficiencies, but with this comes the very real
risk of limiting the ability to analyze, anticipate, and act on new customer opportunities. The initial
step in planning must therefore be to understand key drivers of change which, within the current
information-driven environment, could include aspects such as agility, responsiveness, speed,
and accuracy.
In this context, the first phase of transformation is about finding a new point of equilibrium that
reflects the balance required for addressing customer, organizational, and operational factors. The
practical implication of all this is that the deployment of new technologies, tools, and resourcing
arrangements must be considered in the context of a well-designed customer strategy, not as
solutions in themselves. To achieve this, the mindset within commercial operations must also
adapt; a process that is initiated by identifying new critical success factors, rather than relying
on old ones. Such factors might include the deployment of new tools and technology, enhancing
a capability that is maintained internally, outsourcing a non-strategic process, or bringing a new
managed service into the organization, which need to be aligned around new KPIs such as lower
costs, faster time to insights, new customer acquisition, greater flexibility, and so forth.

APPLY LEVERS AND TOOLS
Achieving the identified critical success will depend on applying
levers (e.g. standardization, centralization, and outsourcing) and tools
(e.g. people, processes, technology and information) in the right way.
The second step in planning should account for how these levers and
tools can be best utilized throughout the change, underpinned by the
recognition that the old fragmented models of the past must embrace
greater centralization and shared synergies to drive the best-in-class
capabilities now required, as illustrated in Figure 6.
Figure 6
Levers and tools being deployed to transform commercial capabilities
IMS HEALTH ASSETS
LEVERS
TOOLS
• Fragmented business
capabilities
• Not considering RWE and
other novel sources
• Decentralized, unknown,
outsourced, and vendor
transactions
• Organically developed
environment held together
with incremental additions
• No single view of truth
• Lots of information and data
• Signiﬁcant time delay to
business insight
• Technology
• Processes
• People
• Standardization
• Centralization
• Innovation
• Outsourcing
CURRENT STATE FUTURE STATE
• Consolidated capabilities
• Ready access to RWE, social,
and other novel sources
• Delivery centers, co-ownership,
co-investment broader
partnership, global deals
• Single view of truth
• Consolidated enrichment and
linkage platform
• Insights organized for retrieval
• Advanced analytics well used
• Innovation in early stages
• Insights embedded into
commercial operations
• On time, on demand services

DEFINE THE INTERNAL
ECONOMY
The type of internal economy (the way a
company functions internally) supported
by management will impact the overall
success of the commercial transformation.
Interestingly, it is rarely the choice of
economy that is critical as much as the
degree of governance, communication,
and alignment that is implemented across
the business. Nevertheless, it is worth
highlighting the four broad types of
economies that exist, characterized
as follows:
• Closed economy: A strong edict from
management, supported by the affiliates,
directing all applicable work to a
shared service group. Outside help is
commissioned only when there is a
backlog or to fill a clear capability gap.
• Open economy: A free market system
that allows business leaders to contract
internally or externally as required.
• Hybrid economy: A mix of the open and
closed economy models that can take
multiple formats. Some processes may be
considered strategic and therefore directed
to either an internal resource or a single
partner of choice to ensure quality and
consistency. Others may flow through a
single company to ensure certain volumes,
and therefore, discounts, are achieved.
• Investment economy: The formation of
a joint venture or other co-funded efforts
to start or expand capability building.
UNDERSTAND THE
PROCESSES IN PLAY
As companies strive to enhance their core
commercial capabilities, conversations with
top tier and mid-sized life science companies
to discern where their efforts are focused
reveal the processes in play that must
be understood ahead of transformation.
The results show attention is most
commonly addressed on capabilities
in the following areas:
• Operations, usually around a technical
system underpinning a core industry
process, such as incentive compensation
administration, marketing systems and
sales operations.
• Analytics, usually related to commercial
processes such as segmentation and
targeting, promotional response modeling
and performance management
and reporting.
• Strategy, relating to ongoing assessment of
strategic direction, driven by environmental
or acquisition opportunities.
• Research, usually on situation assessments,
share analyses, patient journeys and
stakeholder profiles.
• Technical, as related to the support
and maintenance of systems such as
the Help Desk, tiered support services,
the administration of core commercial
systems and information management.
• Medical, to support medical-related needs
such as manuscript development, literature
reviews, abstracts and poster development.

REDEFINE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
The need for alignment between business and technology strategies within
change management has never been so acute. A number of models are available
for consideration including Software as a Service (SaaS), Data as a Service
(DaaS), and, more recently, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) that enable a
company to use a partner’s data, hardware, processes, people, as well as softer
capabilities such as expertise and connections. Whatever platform strategy
is deployed, however, companies must first lay down a tailored information
management strategy that aligns their business goals with the technology
required to attain them over three core phases, as illustrated in Figure 7.
Figure 7
Alignment of business and technology strategies
BUSINESS VALUE
DELIVERY
INFORMATION
ORGANIZATION
DIAGNOSTIC
• Identify business opportunities
that exist for current and
future decision-making.
• Understand and develop
hypotheses on how these can
be better supported through
key areas (e.g. organization,
technology, governance)
and associated maturity
levels required.
DEVELOP
ROADMAP
• Develop an actionable
structure/plan for delivering
the capabilities that will meet
business objectives and
drive impactful decisions.
• Define key associated
initiatives and projects,
along with respective
resource and timing
required to deliver
the strategy.
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT STRATEGY APPROACH
ECONOMICS
STRATEGY
AND TARGET
PRIORITIES
• Define and prioritize the
capabilities required to deliver
the information needed and
understand to what extent
these can be shared.
• Develop the target state
enabling areas (e.g. organization,
governance process and
solution architecture).
• Quantify associated costs
and benefits.
PHASE 1 PHASE 3PHASE 2

AGREE A CLEAR LONG-TERM PLAN ROADMAP
The creation of a comprehensive cross-functional plan with clear milestones for
attaining new or enhanced capabilities is essential for securing organizational
alignment. Ideally, it should:
• Identify all new and enhanced capabilities required for transformation across relevant
functions both within the commercial organization as well as in clinical / technical
and corporate or shared-service disciplines.
• Show the priority and timing of building each capability in a sequential plan that is
globally aligned to the business drivers of affiliates and regions.
• Specify key milestones in the building of these capabilities so the organization can
clearly assess progress, capability maturation and the timing of investment.
• Include a best-practice communications plan to share progress, report early wins
and maintain focus on the real benefits of the transformation effort.
• Be built to enable selected quick wins that are tied to specific business issues
that drive transformation.
The devil, as is usually the case, resides in the detail, which is why
attention to these five dimensions is so critical:
• Business value: Creating strategic advantage in information management might involve
looking at decision-making cycles, information-centric capabilities, and market trend
impacts such as patient-centricity and the changing reimbursement landscape.
• Delivery: Turning data into actionable information and insight, including architecture plans
and a host of rationalization solutions such as lifecycle management tools and processes,
cloud technology, mobile device management, security requirements, among others.
• Information: Identifying the capabilities needed to support commercial analytics and
decision-making might incur further analysis in topics such as data quality, business
intelligence and predictive analytics, reporting, integration, collaborative opportunities,
lifecycle management, among others.
• Organization: Sample topics for consideration include roles and responsibilities,
governance, data stewardship, cross-functional interactions and external support.
• Economics: Sample topics in this space include incremental investment, prioritization,
dependencies, timings, metric selection, among others.

2. BUILD
Once the strategy has been defined, the organization can be built to
deliver against this strategy, as outlined in the steps below. This
encompasses both the internal operating model and the delivery
strategy, both combining internal skills with external partner support.
PLAN THE OPERATING MODEL
In developing and building the operating model the following processes should be considered:
• Executive sponsorship, steerage and governance programs: Formal steering teams, supported
by a senior executive, as well as steering agendas and clear governance criteria are critical
to ensure the effort moves in the right direction.
• Funding and chargeback: Detailed mechanisms to fund the central effort, either by the
affiliates or the corporate business, must be put in place.
• Ongoing performance management and service levels: Constant monitoring of KPIs is important
to ensure the solution is on the right track and to highlight where modifications are needed.
• Talent management: New talent requirements will include subject matter expertise as well as
skilled bespoke workers. In most cases, this will involve transitioning local resources and the
acquisition of offshore resources in low-cost hubs either directly or with partners.
• Customer satisfaction: Creating necessary synergies in usage across methods and geographies
will require a constant focus on value creation and the communication of to all stakeholders.
DEVELOP A GLOBAL DELIVERY STRATEGY
Global delivery is the ability to manage resourcing to ensure access to a large pool of relevant
experts round the world at a competitive cost. Companies must therefore have in place:
• Outsourcing competencies: Understanding of the end-to-end outsourcing process,
tools and techniques to utilize them effectively.
• Strategic alignment: Ability to create a strategy and alignment around that strategy.
• Sourcing capabilities: Ability to source help and determine the optimum provider.
• Process expertise: Understanding of the process metrics and drivers involved.
• Governance style: Ability to manage and work with a service vendor.
• Relationship management skills: Ability to sustain good relations with a service vendor.

PLAN FOR CHANGE
Creating an effective roadmap for change must have clear milestones. Typically, these are
charted over both short and long timelines, are approved across the functional leadership team
and funded appropriately. An example that is pertinent to many pharmaceutical companies
might be to bolster the critical capability of ‘driving new insights from disconnected data
assets’. Figure 8 shows five milestones associated with this goal, each with a measurement
approach that can lead companies smoothly along the path to excellence.
Figure 8
Milestones towards excellence in driving insights with disconnected data assets
1
2
3
4
5
EXCELLENCE
TYPES OF DATA
INTEGRATED/ANALYZED
PARTNERS ENGAGED
COMPLETED SESSIONS
ACTUAL INITIATIVES
LEADERSHIP TEAM REVIEW
When teams integrate and analyze data to identify patient journey
interventions and partnerships in the globalexternal therapy
ecosystem relating to improving or disrupting diagnosis rates,
treatments and outcomes.
When teams invite and engage innovative third parties to share their
unique contributions to the ecosystems and regularly exchange ideas.
When teams conduct ideation sessions to identify ecosystem partnerships
that could advance patient carein the disease area and prioritize which
ones should be investigated ( e.g. consumer technologies).
When teams conduct due diligence of partnerships to decide which
type of initiatives and / or partnerships should be carried forward
to their strategic brand and functional plans.
When teams exchange their external ecosystems work to identify
cross-brand opportunities.
When teams explore and interpret their respective external therapy ecosystems for strategic partnership and health
initiatives that have potential to improve diagnosis rates, therapy adherence, or other aspects of care which lead to
improved patient outcomes.
APPROACHMILESTONES DELIVERABLES

TRANSITION
Even with the aforementioned planning in place, managing the transition to the new
operational vision is a particularly sensitive stage of the transformation pathway.
To manage it effectively the transition model must have four key aspects at its core:
• The transition team: A dedicated transition team must be put in place composed
of multi-tiered personnel all partners working with key individuals from within the
pharmaceutical company’s commercial and technology teams, who can devote the
time required to effectively manage the process end-to-end.
• Consistent communication: Regular communication, not only between the external
partners and internal personnel involved in the transition but also with additional key
internal stakeholders who are impacted, is essential, involving both regular (daily and
weekly) catch ups and more comprehensive monthly / quarterly service review meetings.
• Shared planning: The planning process around transition must be co-owned between
external partner and internal stakeholders, to best facilitate assessment of areas for
improvement and identify areas where additional skills support is needed.
• Program management: Centralized program management ensures that there is
coordination across the multiple streams of the transition, monitors quality and
timing standards and keeps joint executive boards apprised of the current transition
status and risks.
3. OPERATE
With the strategy and organization in place, delivering the change
is a process that necessitates a carefully coordinated transition
phase, followed by clear governance and operating models,
as explained below.

These aspects then preside over the multiple dimensions (technology, process,
program, geographical, deployment options and business continuity) that must be
included within transition and follow the rigorous process outlined below:
1. Transition readiness: The collaborative transition team conducts a detailed study to understand
existing systems, reports and processes, with all documentation (SOPs, process maps, report
specifications etc.) being shared openly, which allows training enablers to be put in place
and the process of on-boarding for the external partner to commence.
2. Knowledge transfer: New processes are established, dry-run testing conducted, and appropriate
training conducted, followed by testing to ensure knowledge transfer has
been successfully conducted.
3. Secondary support: Primary production is conducted by the current teams and any existing
service providers, while being shadowed by the new capability, which allows for further testing
and process improvements / recommendations.
4. Primary support: At this stage of the process, the model now flips with the new capability taking
on the role for primary production, shadowed by the current teams and any existing service
providers, as a final phase before handover.
5. Steady state: The new capabilities and processes can now be fully implemented, post any changes
from testing, with any partner and internal teams working collaboratively in a
steady state mode.
While the above process represents an overarching template that can be applied across the business,
in reality it should be applied individually to each CoE, as the inherent processes, stakeholders and
skills requirements will vary across them.
GOVERNANCE MODEL
The governance model includes the following five processes, aligned to the evaluation
measures outlined in Figure 9.
• Assessment: Monthly meetings in the first year, thereafter every quarter, with the strategic,
management and operational boards to review ongoing progress.
• Innovation: Ensuring incentives are provided for innovation within the process through
a gate-based process involving a dedicated steering team delivering quarterly and ad-hoc inno-
vation events / meetings.
• Capacity management: Implementation of a dynamic staffing model, driven by a dedicated re-
source management office and weekly management meetings / reporting to key
stakeholders aligned around the CoEs.
• Quality (service level agreement [SLA]) management: Measurement of SLAs across the
CoEs and individual offerings, including quarterly key stakeholder reviews.
• Constant improvement: Implementation of Kaizen methodology across all key processes,
including after-action reviews (AARs) to deliver process improvement.

OPERATING MODEL
EVENT
MANAGEMENT
INCIDENT
MANAGEMENT
PROBLEM
MANAGEMENT
CHANGE /
REQUEST
MANAGEMENT
FINANCIAL
MANAGEMENT
• Meeting and attendance
• Time to follow up or closure of business
issues
• Number of submitted business cases
• Business case movement through
gate processes
• Impact of implemented innovation
(revenues or expense)
• Level of utilization annually
and seasonality of deliverables
• Level of resource leverage across CoEs
• Headcount levels and management
+ time to fill open heads
• KPIs _ service level agreements
across services and geographies
• Standard ITIL 3 service measurements
• Clients satisfaction results
• Number of Kaizen and AAR
processes completed
• Input from governance
• programs reviews
GOVERNANCE
MEASURE / KPI PROCESS MEASURE / KPI
• Number of events detected and
resolved pro-actively
• On time delivery / quality
• Number of Incidents (by category,
priority impact and urgency)
• Average/mean time to issue resolution
• Number of problems identified and
work around / fixes implemented
• Reduction in number of incidents over time
• Number of major changes / requests
• Time for change review, approval
and implementation
• Change acceptance rate
• Budget versus expenditure
ASSESSMENT
INNOVATION
CAPACITY
MANAGEMENT
QUALITY (SLA)
MANAGEMENT
CONSTANT
IMPROVEMENT
PROCESS
Figure 9
Success measures / KPIs relating to each process within the governance and
operating models for next-generation commercial capabilities
OPERATING MODEL
In coordination with the governance model, the operating model takes the overarching processes
outlined above to a more granular level, structured around the following management processes
and aligned to the KPIs outlined in Figure 9.
• Event management: Processes for monitoring and identifying events, such as scheduled
deliverables, data load, network and application availability etc.
• Incident management: Processes for logging, prioritizing and resolving incidents in order
to restore normal infrastructure / analytical service in the most time-efficient manner.
• Problem management: Processes for proactively identifying the underlying cause of
incidents, as outlined above – effectively heading off problems before they occur.
• Change / request management: Processes for efficiently handling all changes / innovation requests.
• Financial management: Processes for optimizing the costs associated with
infrastructure and analytical services delivery.

Conclusions
Large-scale transformation programs are incredibly demanding, especially when the focus is
as central to the pharmaceutical business as commercial capabilities. They require a thorough
understanding of the need for change, its impact and the expected benefits. Such transformation
is made harder still because the changes to which pharmaceutical companies are responding are
prompted by fundamentally new conditions in the operating environment, which mean there are
no clear benchmarks from which to measure performance gains.
But the need for commercial transformation is clear – to maintain growth pharmaceutical companies
must be able to efficiently derive insights from information, across every aspect of the business, or risk
being left behind by competitors and the very healthcare systems in which they operate. Furthermore,
they must understand their evolving role in a healthcare ecosystem that is fast-evolving far beyond
traditional pharmacological interventions, embracing technology to deliver new solutions. Delivering
the next-generation commercial capabilities this demands requires partnership with the right external
providers, but in a manner that is distinct from previous outsourcing models. Instead, cost-efficiencies
must go hand-in-hand with innovation to develop unique CoEs, which integrate central teams, internal
clients, and external partners to harness each stakeholder’s capabilities to maximum benefit, while
specifically driving internal skills development and maintaining intellectual property.
This senior executive briefing has outlined the key success factors in driving this change, described
the building blocks of this next-generation commercial structure, and outlined a pathway to
attaining it. Most critical to all of this is the need to ensure external partners can
add real value, through combining:
• Extensive understanding of global healthcare data sources, covering both ‘traditional’ medicine
and novel interventions, and how to integrate them.
• Best-in-class technological capabilities for rapid analysis
• Deep healthcare expertise across therapeutic areas, markets and functions, which is available
on-demand globally
Ultimately, the rewards will go to those management teams that can clearly map out the major
eventualities, inspire unity and cohesion among the workforce, and think not in terms of what has
gone before but on finding innovative pathways by working with the right external partners who
share a similar passion and vision.
Where information was once the currency of success, actionable intelligence is now the key
advantage. For next-generation commercial capabilities in the pharmaceutical industry, reducing
costs remains important, but reducing the time taken to derive accurate insight, in every aspect
of the business, has become vital.

About the Authors
Andrew Gunn is an Enterprise Solutions
executive in Technology and Applications
at IMS Health and is based out of the US.
Andrew has over 18+ years of experience in
developing solutions that address a range
of issues affecting the Life Sciences and
Health Care industries. Andrew has a strong
understanding of business processes and
experience within commercial areas of
pharmaceutical sales, marketing, and managed
markets; with specialization in developing
managed services, information management,
customer relationship management and
business intelligence solutions.
Andrew Gunn
Vishal Khanna heads the commercial
outsourcing services business globally for
IMS. Vishal has extensive experience in
developing and managing brand performance
and has over 2 decades of experience in
large-scale services delivery transitioning
work to offshore centers. Vishal has been in
the services business for over 22+ years. He
has worked in a range of industry segments
allowing him to bring the best of all worlds
to his clients. Vishal has an MBA from TIAS
business school, Tilburg, Netherlands, and a
Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from
the University of Pune, India. He is a Certified
Outsourcing Professional (COP) from the
International Association of Outsourcing
professionals (www.iaop.org) and a certified
COP for Governance and business development.
Vishal Khanna

Gary Minarich, VP and Global Center of
Excellence Lead in Analytics for IMS Health,
has been advising Life Sciences companies for
almost 20 years, providing advice to clients in
their go to market strategy encompassing new
product launch strategy, sales force planning
and optimization, ROI analyses, new and inline
product forecasting, multi-channel marketing
optimization, and more. Earlier at IMS, Gary
was responsible for the global rollout of the
Nexxus Marketing software as a service (SaaS)
solution, a turn-key solution that allows
companies to integrate and optimize their
personal and non-personal promotional
efforts. Earlier in his career, Gary worked at
NASA, the US Space Agency, in the Research
and Technology group. Gary holds an MBA
from Indiana University, a BS in Astrophysics
from Michigan State University and has also
conducted doctoral studies in Astrophysics
at Arizona State University.
Gary Minarich
Chris Nickum is responsible for the
company’s commercialization of Global
Services and solutions.
Since joining IMS Health in 2001, Chris has
served in key leadership roles in which he
developed commercial strategies for clients,
sized and designed sales and marketing
organizations, devised new commercial
capabilities, and implemented measurement
and management strategies. Most recently,
he has focused on developing and deploying an
alternative strategic framework for industry
commercial models, identifying $15 billion
in commercial effectiveness and efficiency
improvement opportunities.
Prior to IMS Health, Chris held senior
management roles at McKesson, NDC Health
and PCS Health. While at these companies,
his responsibilities included leading efforts
to develop and commercialize innovative
data warehousing and management assets,
and driving the initial use of anonymized
patient-level data.
With more than two decades of industry
experience, Chris’s perspectives on
pharmaceutical commercial opportunities
and transformation have been published in
numerous periodicals worldwide, and he
is a frequent presenter at industry events,
academic conferences and university forums.
Chris Nickum

©2015 IMS Health Incorporated and its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Trademarks are registered in the United States and in various other countries.
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Tel: +44 (0)20 3075 5888
IMS Health
Creating Connected Solutions for Better Healthcare Performance
IMS Health is a leading global information and technology services company providing clients in the healthcare
industry with end-to-end solutions to measure and improve their performance. Our 7,500 services experts
connect configurable SaaS applications to 10+ petabytes of complex healthcare data in the IMS One™ cloud platform,
delivering unique insights into diseases, treatments, costs and outcomes. The company’s 15,000 employees blend
global consistency and local market knowledge across 100 countries to help clients run their operations more
efficiently. Customers include pharmaceutical, consumer health and medical device manufacturers and distributors,
providers, payers, government agencies, policymakers, researchers and the financial community.
As a global leader in protecting individual patient privacy, IMS Health uses anonymous healthcare data to deliver
critical, real-world disease and treatment insights. These insights help biotech and pharmaceutical companies,
medical researchers, government agencies, payers and other healthcare stakeholders to identify unmet treatment
needs and understand the effectiveness and value of pharmaceutical products in improving overall health outcomes.
Additional information is available at www.imshealth.com.
For all office locations, visit: www.imshealth.com/locations

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