Managing an IT ecosystem is often deemed as a challenge only for large pharmaceuticals and biotech organizations. But, our experience in working with life-sciences organizations over the years indicates that IT challenges start at a nascent stage itself. In fact, young pharmaceuticals face unique IT challenges as they move through a rapid growth cycle. In our view these organizations are akin to pediatric patients, where their bodies have the complexity of a mature adult, but with greater sensitivity. Thus, the right foundation sets the baseline for growth in the future. 6 Challenges faced by young life-sciences organizations As a CIO, you are likely to encounter six unique challenges while setting-up a foundation in place for your organization. Even at a smaller scale, the number of touch-points with scientific, manufacturing and supply chain vendors is large. For example, the Research & Development department must manage a network of scientists and epidemiologists either internally or externally (or sometimes both), interface with a network of contract research organizations, manage the data and evidence that is flowing in from various internal and external sources, and then ensure an appropriate support system for developing materials for submission to the regulators. In parallel, a process needs to evolve to ensure launch readiness for the product in terms of launch planning, sales force readiness, customer relationship management systems, etc. Key elements to ensure fundamental readiness at a small scale At an early stage, we have seen that life-sciences organizations are limited by budgets that can be allocated towards IT initiatives, as well as bandwidth in terms of getting involved in designing architecture and processes. However, even with constraints, it is critical for IT to ensure fundamental readiness of the company for eventual rapid growth: Information Management Data, evidence and insights are the biggest assets and need to be managed in a careful manner so that it can be used overtime. Traceability Systems need to be traceable from a regulatory as well as management standpoint. Scalability & Replicability While initial data and other IT requirements are less intensive, Life Sciences organizations need to scale very quickly after approvals; hence requiring scalability & replicability. Collaboration Ability to share information internally across stakeholders, as well as externally with vendors and collaborators will define agility and speed of how a company scales. Security While all above principles help differentiation, security is of paramount importance at each stage. Organizations need to transform and adapt in order to survive and manage eventual rapid growth. They need the right expertise to become future-ready by leveraging technology and innovation. Read about our capabilities across the life-sciences and healthcare value chain. IT requirements evolve through a maturity curve Our research into life-sciences organizations journey has revealed that IT requirements evolve through a maturity curve as the organization grows rapidly. Usually Baseline IT including communication (e.g., email), collaboration (e.g., SharePoint) and data management as the foundational components in starting the journey. Process Management amongst internal stakeholders as well as with external stakeholders and Evidence Management become the next-in-line important areas. While this can be true for any industry in general, regulatory and security constraints of Life-sciences industry make these areas a bit more complex. Once these components are set to allow running business as usual, investments in Digital Engagement with physicians and patients and other Innovation areas form the basis of differentiation in terms of setting up a business model. Organization need to transform and adapt in order to survive and manage eventual rapid growth. They need the right expertise to become future-ready by leveraging technology and innovation. Read about our capabilities across the life-sciences and healthcare value chain. Start with a dependable IT roadmap It is important to start with an end reference architecture in mind in order to build a dependable IT roadmap. We have identified a detailed roadmap that spans across Research & Development, Launch & Commercialization areas with activities that are foundational, advanced and potential differentiators. To read more about these, please download our detailed “CIO Playbook for Managing Exponential Growth”, and engage with us in a conversation regarding the challenges that you are facing as an organization from an IT perspective. While developing this roadmap, it is important to balance immediate requirements and at the same time long-term vision of the organization. Our interactions with CIOs and IT leadership across various life sciences organizations have helped us identify key questions that need to be answered during implementation of an IT roadmap in the growth phase across all three areas: I. Research & Development While the foundational components of today are developed in an opportunistic fashion today, will we be able to use them in a repeatable manner in future? What will be the communication and coordination requirements of the organization, based on the broader business strategy? What competitor intelligence and predictive analytics will be required to support future pipeline decisions? II. Launch What are the launch planning, tracking and execution systems that are required to support the channels appropriate for the products? Which data and information needs have to be harvested today in order to support pricing and forecasting decisions in the future? What are the assets that are being developed during launch stage that can be leveraged in the future? III. Commercialization What are the right platforms to support the products and sales & marketing strategy for the initial product(s)? What is the optimal investment in customer relationship management suite and how should ROI be ensured from this system? What will be the right differentiators in terms of physician or patient engagement, and how can today’s investments support them tomorrow? 5 focus areas to enable the right foundational investments We have identified five “focus areas” where right foundational investments have proven to create value in the longer run as companies’ scale: Enable collaboration & information management Pharma and biotech companies grow very rapidly as they cross each hurdle during development, approval and launch phase. With this exponential growth at every stage, it is critical to preserve the core DNA of the company in terms of both knowledge and culture. Having scalable, easy to use and widely adopted collaboration platforms and knowledge management systems plays a large role in facilitating rapid onboarding of large teams and empowering them to operate efficiently in a short time.
