External collaboration models at biopharmaceutical companies run the gamut, ranging from maintaining all operations within a nearly complete vertical structure, to being just about completely virtual. Outsourcing yields a range of perceived outcomes; in many instances the vendor’s performance does not completely satisfy their client’s expectations.
Through my own experiences I’ve observed numerous examples that lead me to believe that these negative experiences are not exclusively the product of vendor execution, but rather result from an insufficiently defined or perhaps incompletely understood scope of work. This disconnect often occurs not at the contracting stage, but much further down the path of an engagement. For example, I’ve often seen contracts get signed by the appropriate stakeholders, and then never revisited again to ensure that the parties have upheld the original intent of the contract. I’ve also witnessed scope changes that occur as the agreed-upon work becomes better understood. These changes, although discussed and informally agreed upon, are often captured either in meeting notes destined to collect virtual dust on someone’s hard drive, or worse yet not captured at all and entrusted to the already crowded memories of the collaborators.
Active alliance management is a critical component of a successful collaboration in the biopharmaceutical industry. One way to thwart pitfalls is to re-evaluate the relationship on a regular basis, where the partnership objectives and strategy are reviewed, progress is mapped against agreed upon performance-based metrics, and issues are raised. Flexibility should be built in to accommodate changing needs, however all alterations to the scope should be agreed upon and captured in a shared, living document. What tools and approaches have you leveraged to ensure successful relationships?
Andrew Putney
Tags: Alliance Management
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Andrew – Couldn’t agree more with your assessment and seemingly have shared some of your experiences. As our organization has increased in utilizing the outsourcing model, we have focused on improving our relationship management skills! We hope to improve our overall corporate performance by providing key individuals, whom routinely manage or interface with partners, specific training on effective relationship management. Our efforts include workshops that provide such individuals with ‘tools’ to better assess and select the right partner as well as improve post-contract management, diagnose existing relationships, and develop 360 degree metrics. We believe these ‘tools’ will help ‘alliance’ managers to better align the strengths of each organization, allow them to address weaknesses, and promote open and effective communication between parties. We set a baseline prior to our efforts via supplier/partner surveys and expect to assess our efforts via another survey early this year.