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Majority of pharmaceutical companies are persisting with decade old processes and routines. They have transactional relationships with suppliers, lack of concerted efforts to progress ahead, and no vision to reap productivity rewards. The reasons for continuing with these traditional practices include tax regimes, regulatory hurdles, and stable revenues from customers dependent on existing industry offerings.
Disruption—spurred by technological Innovation, fluctuating customer demand patterns, and more agile and creative competitors—has forced the pharmaceutical sector to think of ways to face these challenges, survive, and thrive. One of the strategic response to this competitive disruption—by leading manufacturers—is to reexamine their manufacturing operations, embracing agile principles, reducing costs, revolutionizing procurement and distribution functions, and striving to achieve Operational Excellence. Above all, they view their supply chain not as a cost center, but as a source of Competitive Advantage.
The increasing influence of generic drugs is another challenge for large multinational pharmaceuticals. In the past, multinational companies (MNCs) dominated the market owing to possessing a number of high-market drugs protected under patents. Patent protection afforded them the leverage to set high prices on each product. The scenario is fast changing. Expiry of high-market drugs patents is creating a huge opening for generic competitors and the space is widening compared to the past.
In the past, pharma manufacturers were able to counter the threat to generic competitors by developing new drugs. However, this is becoming difficult and the new drugs pipeline is shrinking with time. R&D expenditure has continuously gone up, however, drug approval from the authorities has not kept paced with it. It has rather declined, straining the MNCs further.
Other disruptive factors include newer distribution methods, public health plans favoring generic drugs over proprietary ones due to cost effectiveness, the newer internet / mail delivery options displacing traditional pharmacy dispensing options. Pharmacy chains—e.g. Walgreens—have given a leverage to the retailers to negotiate reduction in medicine prices where again generics have an edge over MNCs.
Moreover, the trend of drugs purchased through a formal tender process is increasingly gaining acceptance, adding to the difficulties of large pharma manufacturers. Additionally, strict regulations are minimizing the cost benefits that MNCs traditionally enjoyed in the past.
All these factors have forced the pharma companies to reorganize their Supply Chains in a more flexible manner to manage complexities, bring in efficiency, and contain costs to compete in off-patent segment with generics.
Reorganization of a conventional pharmaceutical Supply Chain into an Agile, flexible, and inexpensive Supply Chain warrants developing Operational Excellence and Cost Reduction competencies. This necessitates 5 strategic steps (phases):
- Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to SCM
- Develop Agile product design and packaging capabilities
- Restructure the Supply Chain footprint
- Establish partnerships with 3rd party suppliers
- Enhance planning capabilities
Let’s discuss these steps in detail.
Step 1 – Avoid a One-size-fits-all Approach to SCM
Large pharma MNCs typically maintain the Supply Chain of all of their drugs with a single strategy of retaining high inventory and service levels. Such a strategy can only work for products having a high profit margin, in a static environment. It is not suitable for low-margin products, contrasting environments, and does not take into account fluctuations in demand patterns. An appropriate approach is to implement a multiple Supply Chains model based on individual products and markets.
Step 2 – Develop Agile Product Design and Packaging Capabilities
The 2nd step in Pharma Supply Chain Reinvention involves quick distribution of different versions of products to markets based on demand. For low-margin products with high demand volatility, the Supply Chain Management Strategy should be to employ Pack-to-Order system. The Pack-to-Order approach involves developing a version of a product that could be timely dispatched to several markets of varying demand across the globe. This approach coupled with Postponement Strategy—where products are packed to order during later stages of production based on regional demand—assists in trimming down the inventory, reducing complicatedness, and enhancing Supply Chain nimbleness to demand volatility.
Interested in learning more about how to reinvent your Pharmaceutical Supply Chain? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Reinvention here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
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You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:
“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”
– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects
“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”
– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting
“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”
– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd
Agile is a robust approach to value creation. More and more organizations are adopting Agile Software Development approach.
Becoming Agile is imperative to meet and exceed customer expectations and emerging business trends. Implementing the Agile approach to Software Development leverages significant benefits, including:
- Rapid design and development of new product and service offerings
- Revolutionizing processes
- Managing talent
- Reforming organizations
However, Agile alone is not enough. Agile Transformation can slip-up as Agile teams can stagger while working together and depending on others. In order to become an effective Digital organization, companies have to steer clear of the obstacles that bog down the rapid progress of Agile software development. These organizational obstacles to Agile include:
- Rigid Technology Architecture
- Poor Talent Management
- Lack of Product Mindset
Overcoming these barriers necessitates sincere harmonization, persistent effort, and commitment from the business and technology leadership. Anticipating and addressing these major organizational obstacles is integral to becoming Agile.
Let’s discuss these obstacles in detail.
Rigid Technology Architecture
Using and expanding the same old codes and plugging gaps with software patches renders the IT Architecture cumbersome and unyielding, at most organizations. Many organizations have outdated systems to manage operations and facilitate their customers. The integration of these outdated systems with modern applications and IT architecture isn’t easy, making them inflexible. Most of these systems and aps are inter-reliant and connected. A small change in a code has serious implications on other connected applications.
IT executives have to consider a number of factors before modernizing their IT architecture. These factors include potential value envisaged from the new architecture, requirement for new functionalities, risk of disruption, complications involved in the process, extent of fragmented data, and costs. Based on thorough evaluation of these factors, executives select one of these 4 common approaches to revolutionize their IT architecture:
- Inaction – The investment in overhauling certain applications is thought to be nonviable as their impact is considered insignificant in the overall architecture.
- Integrate – Uncover the old system’s essential function / elements and connect them with modern systems using interfaces (APIs).
- Overhaul – Modify the design of applications—e.g. dissecting the code into distinct, autonomous sections and eliminating any hard-coded values.
- Replace – Design innovative applications and deploy latest architecture (e.g. micro-services).
Poor Talent Management
Most leaders understand the importance of finding and staffing top talent in becoming Agile. However, outdated HR Management practices at some organizations become a major hurdle in attracting and retaining talented individuals. The issue with IT management at most technology firms in the recent past was their shortcoming in visualizing the problems through a business perspective. This led to the depletion of technical capabilities due to hiring of more and more people with strong business sense, but inadequate technological prowess.
Another factor compounding the talent deficit is entrusting the hiring function to external contractors by scores of IT organizations. This practice, although, assists in staffing talent and gaining new capabilities promptly, but diverts much of the executives’ time in supervising the external contractors. This leaves little time for them to acquire new technical skills and gives the contractors too much control over innovation. Outsourcing the software maintenance to 3rd parties is another factor that leads to poor accountability and Talent Management.
To mitigate these issues, technology companies need to transform, strengthen their technical capabilities, eliminate dependencies on 3rd parties, and clearly define responsibilities.
Interested in learning more about the obstacles to becoming Agile? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 3 Organizational Obstacles to Agile here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Do You Find Value in This Framework?
You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:
“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”
– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects
“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”
– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting
“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”
– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd
Accelerated pace of technological disruption has forced organizations to change. It has triggered leaders to think of the ways they must adopt to survive in these challenging times.
Organizations are confronting this scenario by embracing digital technologies. Traditionally, the focus of the organizations in these Transformation initiatives has remained on speed of change. To get the most out of their initiatives, they are making drastic changes, to include:
- Creating Agile Teams
- Introducing Mobile Apps
- Building Big Data and Analytics capabilities
- Experimenting with creative Digital Business Models.
Digital Transformation programs are launched with huge fanfare, see success early on, but fail to keep the momentum going. The issues that plague the sustainability of these initiatives are typically:
- Aging Technology Infrastructure
- Incompatible Operating Models
- Archaic ways of doing business
- Change-agnostic culture.
Drivers of change for the Digital Leadership have changed significantly over the years. There is an increased focus on building scale when executing Digital Transformation. Leaders have realized that quick Decision Making is not the only element required for successful Transformation. To achieve its full potential, they need to create differentiated offerings and scale the most viable initiatives across the organization to create value.
Traditional organizations have started following the footsteps of digital disrupters like Amazon and Tesla. They are implementing new digital services and adjusting their operations. However, typical hurdles—e.g., old enterprise systems, bureaucratic red tape, delayed decision making, and segregation between IT and business units—make them slip back into the outdated ways of doing things.
Sustainable Digital Transformation involves building not only the technology infrastructure but also revisiting the operating model. Successful Digital Transformations essentially involve embracing 4 key strategies to enable an ecosystem that encourages change to stick as well as scale:
- Create a strong Digital Foundation
- Integrate and consolidate the Digital Ecosystem
- Front-end to back-end approach
- Create a new Business Model
Let’s delve deeper into these strategies.
Create a Strong Digital Foundation
Manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries are the major sectors that employ this strategy. The typical state of affairs in organizations implementing this strategy is such that they are in need of developing new digital capabilities from scratch to tackle nimble rivals who are churning out novel value propositions using digital tech. These companies are burdened by dated tech infrastructure, sluggish decision making, and dated business models. The risk of disruption to these businesses is growing but it hasn’t challenged them to transform drastically.
To them, building a digital foundation warrants acquiring novel foundational capabilities. Their approach should be to start implementing and managing small changes one step at a time. For instance, building a smart technology architecture with advanced Big Data, Analytics, and predictive modeling capabilities. This should be followed by testing prototypes of the new model to prove their worth before implementing a full-blown execution.
Integrate and Consolidate the Digital Ecosystem
This strategy has gained traction most in organizations from the Consumer Products industry. These organizations are typically marred by scores of fragmented IT systems running in different parts of the organization. There is a general inability to prioritize the most viable projects and scale them. The need to reform and rapid deployment of Digital Infrastructure is critical for survival.
The approach to Digital Transformation in these organization should be to establish a central management position to manage the initiative and streamline dispersed technology landscape. This entails revising the technology infrastructure and operating model, deploying a unified IT platform for gathering and storing customer data, establishing a common data repository accessible to all units to recognize customers’ needs, and creating a culture that encourages innovation, acts on creative ideas, and refines them through experimentation and advanced tools.
Interested in learning more about the other strategies to enable Digital Transformation? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Sustainable Digital Transformation here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Did You Find Value in This Framework?
You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:
“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.”
– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects
“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”
– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting
“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”
– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd
Businesses are getting increasingly complex and so are customers’ expectations. Digital organizations are digitizing their critical Customer Journeys at scale to outperform competition. These organizations are using Digitization to create streamlined journeys, which result in more agile IT units, quick delivery of new products, and improved Customer Experiences and Engagement.
But before embarking on digitization and streamlining Customer Journeys, organizations need to transform their products, processes, legacy systems and technology, and culture to become truly digital businesses.
Streamlining multiple Customer Journeys concurrently requires integration of existing systems, building new capabilities, and deploying existing competences in a different way. Specifically, it entails embracing the following 5-phase Omni-channel Customer Journey Design approach that is critical for improving Customer Experiences and accomplishing higher Customer Engagement:
- Develop Enterprise Customer Experience Story
- Prioritize Technology Transformation Projects
- Develop a Flexible Ecosystem of Technologies and Platforms
- Adapt Principles of Strong, Agile, and Lean
- Be Adaptive in Performance Management
Now, let’s talk about the first 3 phases of the Omni-channel Customer Journey Design approach.
Phase 1 – Develop Enterprise Customer Experience Story
Creating a Customer Experience Story calls for setting up a Customer Experience team. The Customer Experience team begins by identifying the critical factors and main concerns in their customer relationships. Around these themes, they, then, carefully outline the experiences customers may come across during each and every interaction they have with the company in the form of a story. The Enterprise Customer Experience Story is unique to every company and provides a summary of the strategy, brand, and positioning in workable terms.
Next, the team identifies the journeys that are able to effectively deliver the factors and features critical for the customers utilizing digitization. Each journey should be critically analyzed to assess its significance, cost advantages associated with scaling it, the governance and technical impediments, and the availability of adequate financial and leadership resources to manage it. Thorough analysis of Customer Journeys yields a plan of action that aids in creating prioritized journeys.
Phase 2 – Prioritize Technology Transformation Projects
IT Transformation is typically the most challenging and resource hungry among other change initiatives. For instance, designing a mobile app is simple, however, it’s the linkage of the app to all the channels customers use and its integration with the back-end systems that is complicated.
To undertake Digitization, companies should avoid digitizing each journey separately—as it fosters internal silos—and investing heavily in Internet or mobile-channel IT. A better approach for the organizations is to rather prioritize the IT initiatives to enable smooth transformation of IT architecture with the addition of more customer journeys. Standard IT components are reusable across different journeys.
Phase 3 – Develop a Flexible Ecosystem of Technologies and Platforms
An important consideration for digitizing core journeys and scaling digitization is to link your IT systems with the technologies and platforms working outside the firm. These external systems provide the organization several advantages, including quick access to new customers, data pools, and capabilities.
Next-generation integration architecture should be designed in such a way that it should support open standards, dynamic interaction models, and curtail security threats. Progress in cloud computing and technology infrastructure has made quick and easy access, management, and operations of infrastructure resources possible—including networks, servers, databases, programs, and services. The skills needed to manage these technology ecosystems include DevOps experts to supervise integration of development and operations, enterprise architects, cloud engineers to manage software and cloud-computing, data scientists, and automation engineers.
Interested in learning more about the other key phases of the Customer Journey Design approach? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Omni-channel Customer Journey here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
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