New pharmaceutical product development is a high-risk and costly process and strong cross-functional communication and leadership are critical to ensure that sound decisions are made in an efficient and timely manner.
Over the years the role of the New Product Planning (NPP) group within pharmaceutical organisations has changed. External pressures, combined with the ordinary constraints placed upon NPP have created evolutionary challenges compounded by teams working in silo creating their own models to produce forecasts in their own way, making communication and consolidation of forecasts almost impossible.
Advances in technology have helped to address fundamental forecasting needs but there are still many manual processes which pose challenges to these teams, hindering successful product planning and business development.
A common challenge for new product planning teams is keeping track of opportunities effectively, particularly external assessment of products for acquisition or in-licensing. In our experience the management of these processes involves several key requirements:
- Overview of development pipeline: Senior management want to see all developments in one place, with a clear understanding of the status, commercial potential for each one and the associated risk and opportunity.
- Managing opportunities and access: Given the confidential nature of NPP activity, controlling who has access to each opportunity is critical, plus a system which allows flexible, independent working for ease of opportunity management.
- Centralisation of forecasts: The ability to store all forecasts related to an individual opportunity in one place, manage versioning and clearly distinguish current and approved forecasts.
Time is of the essence in NPP forecasting, particularly when completing business development or in-licensing assessments. Decisions must be made under pressure in a fast-paced environment. There is therefore a need for a process management tool that can be easily accessed by relevant stakeholders and effectively updated and managed in real time. Where new and progressing opportunities can be added and forecast approval decisions applied and automatically communicated across the group.
Teams need the ability to coordinate activities and track individual opportunities on a granular level, potentially with different stakeholders responsible for different opportunities. It’s also beneficial to have tailored sections for senior managers, not responsible for the day-to-day management of opportunities, who want to understand the status and potential size of opportunities. This could be at a total business level, for individual business units or therapy areas, by clinical trial phase or for specific opportunities, where required.
Forecasting has evolved..
FC365 is a forecasting solution which has been specifically designed for new product planning teams to provide this rapid and efficient management of internal and external opportunities in one, centralised environment. Here, stakeholders can quickly understand the true value and risk associated with development assets and optimise investment accordingly with control and accuracy.
Thanks to FC365, new product planning teams gain full control of the opportunity portfolio.
Through specifically designed functionality, FC365 addresses the challenges associated with each of the key requirements outlined above. Then tailored components ensure that the solution is designed and configured to meet individual company needs.
What NPP teams gain with FC365:
- Effective overview of development pipeline: A clear overview of all opportunities and their status against key criteria, such as clinical trial phase or therapy area. See dynamic changes to reflect updates to individual access permissions. A summary section allows users to easily assess value and status associated with individual or groups of opportunities.
- Managing opportunities and controlling access: With admin access, users can easily add new opportunities, complete key pre-configured information and control access to the opportunity. This, in combination with the ability to archive, restore, approve or reject opportunities at the click of a button, gives users complete independence and control when managing their pipeline of opportunities.
- Centralisation of forecasts and supporting information: Each opportunity has a dedicated space to store all the required information and associated models for that specific opportunity. This ensures data is easily located and linked to relevant supporting information. To deliver further efficiencies, standard design elements can be configured to align with each client’s internal processes for a consistent, user-friendly experience.
Discover FC365
Futureproofing the solution.
FC365 is a place where forecasting teams can find synergy, where models, process management and visualisation reports sit together, facilitating all of the solutions in one place for all teams. Manage pipeline products and external opportunity activity through to commercial launch readiness and inline products forecasting.
AUTHOR: ANDREW WARD
Consulting Director at J+D Forecasting. An expert in the pharmaceutical analytics space since 2002 and leading a consultancy team in delivering forecasting solutions including software application development at J+D since 2014.
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