A critical

makeover for
pharmaceutical
companies
Overcoming
industry obstacles
with a cross-
functional strategy
Contacts

London

Jo Pisani
Partner, PwC UK
+44-20-780-43744
jo.pisani
@strategyand.uk.pwc.com

Dr. Myrto Lee

Director, PwC UK
+44-7889-644-833
myrto.lee
@strategyand.uk.pwc.com

2 Strategy&
About the authors

Jo Pisani is a recognized innovator with Strategy&, PwC’s strategy

consulting group, where she leads the pharmaceutical and life sciences
practice. She is a partner with PwC UK. Based in London, she focuses on
strategy throughout the pharmaceutical value chain, particularly new
business models and digital.

Dr. Myrto Lee is an advisor to pharmaceutical and life sciences

executives for Strategy&. She is a director with PwC UK and is based
in London, where she leads the Europe, Middle East, and Africa critical
teams practice. She has nearly 20 years of experience advising the
pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, with a focus on regulatory,
market access, government affairs, medical affairs, and R&D strategy.

Strategy& 3
Executive summary

This is a difficult time for global pharmaceutical companies — so

difficult, in fact, that many are reconsidering their business models.
The litany of concerns that pharmaceutical companies face includes
payors tightening up on cost management, strained government
healthcare budgets, the need to understand and adopt new
technologies, and challenges to their traditional pricing mechanisms
by empowered stakeholders, from patients to payors. Moreover, the
regulatory maze in many parts of the world is tough to navigate, with
unique rules and varied outcomes depending on national policies,
issues, and bureaucratic processes.

Compounding the external obstacles, however, is the internal culture of

most pharma companies. This is an industry that has long operated
through disparate components — silos that separated R&D, commercial,
production, and supply chain. And, in turn, these walled-off parts of the
organization have been disconnected from the external-facing parts,
which are responsible for managing relationships with regulators,
policymakers, the medical community, and the rest of the industry. These
silos can obstruct patient access and breed inefficiency and waste. They
affect drug approval time and pricing, influence support for specific drugs
by the medical community, and seriously hinder financial performance.

It is time for pharmaceutical companies to restructure their operating

models in a way that brings all of these interdependent functions
together. To accomplish this goal, they should build the organization
around what we call critical teams. These teams should be directly
responsible for gathering information, developing insights, and drawing
up strategic plans about the facets of the pharmaceutical business that
are often overlooked in the formal organizational structure: namely,
regulatory affairs, pricing and market access, government affairs, and
medical affairs. These four categories are the subteams of a pharma
company’s critical team.

4 Strategy&
Rather than having knowledge about these aspects of the business
model buried in other pharmaceutical functions — an inefficient and
ultimately unsatisfactory approach — the critical team would be
independent but cross-functional, working closely with R&D and
pharmacovigilance; sales, marketing, and key account management;
and supply chain. A primary task of the critical team would be to make
sure that each function is aware of what the others are doing and
benefits from the knowledge of the team.

As a concept, critical teams are not new; most pharmaceutical

companies already rely on experts in external healthcare industry
activities for ad hoc strategic advice and direction. But that does not
go far enough; it fails to apply the critical team as a bridge across key
functions. Thus, the ability of the team to effectively advance the needs
of the entire organization is significantly diminished.

This report offers a detailed framework for implementing a successful

critical team strategy. It provides an analysis of the pharmaceutical
landscape through the lens of critical team activity, allowing
management to reflect on how connected and effective the company’s
current critical team is and how the organization can improve its
capabilities by fully leveraging its team.

Strategy& 5
Disruptive times

The global pharmaceutical industry has long been known for

unpredictability. Returns on investment from research efforts are
volatile, and payor pressure and the vagaries of regulatory decisions
often add to the uncertainties of the sector. Still, it would be difficult to
find a period in the past when pharmaceutical companies faced a more
challenging and disruptive time than they are experiencing now —
a time, that is, when drug companies have no choice but to reevaluate
their business model to survive.

Consider the range of global trends affecting pharmaceutical businesses:

• Aging population. In Western Europe, about one in five people are

age 65 or older. By 2030, that proportion will climb to one in four. As
populations age, payors are forced to reconsider how to pay for the
treatments needed by an older cohort of individuals and how to
achieve the best patient outcomes.

• Squeeze on healthcare budgets. Public and private payors are

relying more on patient outcomes to make decisions that are aimed
at managing scarce budgets and focusing on cost-effectiveness and
comparative clinical effectiveness.

• Rise of health technologies. Advances in mobile communications

and the digitization of health diagnostics, treatment, equipment, and
services are changing how care is delivered and how pharmaceutical
companies conduct R&D. As new technologies emerge, new
regulatory policies follow, adding complexity to the approval and
reimbursement processes.

• Empowered consumerism. Consumers are playing a more critical

role than ever before in their own care, demanding enhanced access
to information relevant to their conditions and treatment programs.
The change is influencing payors, regulators, and policymakers.
Pharmaceutical companies are affected in a wide range of areas:
pricing, the types of drugs they develop, return on research
investment, and the role they must play in patient compliance.

6 Strategy&
A disjointed system

Pharmaceutical companies around the world confront substantial

regulatory constraints. Increasingly complex and strict regulatory
policies in Europe and the U.S. demand multiple submissions of drug
approval applications to satisfy the rules in every region, and extensive
documentation to meet clinical trial and pharmacovigilance standards.

At the same time, regulators are taking steps to accelerate innovation

and efficiently license medicines, diagnostics, and digital applications
that demonstrate positive outcomes. By communicating with regulators
proactively, pharma companies now have the opportunity to grant
patients early access to new medications, particularly those that target
unmet diagnostic and treatment needs. At the same time, regulators — By communicating
as well as providers and payors — appreciate fast-cycle analytics on
patient progress to support value-based healthcare solutions.
with regulators
proactively,
Amid this context, patients are playing a bigger role in the pharma
healthcare dynamic than ever before. They increasingly want to
be partners in determining their healthcare strategies and lifestyle
companies have
choices, joining with providers in making informed decisions. Valid the opportunity
decisions are dependent on clear and timely demonstrations of drug to grant patients
outcomes and efficacy by pharmaceutical companies. (For a survey
of the external pressures that pharmaceutical companies face, see
early access to new
Exhibit 1, page 9.) medications.
To illustrate the regulatory maze that pharmaceutical companies must
navigate, Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business, analyzed payor
decisions related to 19 drugs approved by the European Medicines
Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2013 and 2014.
We found a significant discrepancy in reimbursement decisions for
similar drugs among four large E.U. payors:

• France’s Haute Autorité de Santé: Reviewed 19 drugs and approved

all for reimbursement. Approval criterion was comparative clinical
effectiveness.

Strategy& 7
• Sweden’s Tandvårds- och läkemedelsförmånsverket (TLV): Reviewed
16 drugs and approved 13 for reimbursement. Approval criteria
focused on cost-effectiveness.

• Germany’s Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im

Gesundheitswesen (IQWiG): Reviewed 18 drugs and approved 12
for reimbursement. Approval criterion was comparative clinical
effectiveness.

• U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE):

Reviewed nine drugs and approved six for reimbursement. Approval
criteria focused on cost-effectiveness.

Separately, we found that, as with Sweden’s TLV, the U.S. Centers

for Medicare & Medicaid Services reviewed 16 of these drugs and
approved 13.

Decision making appears to be even less predictable in specific

therapeutic areas (see Exhibit 2, page 10). For example, the three
metabolic drugs under consideration in the two years we analyzed
received approval from all payors and regulators except IQWiG, which
rejected all of them because the agency was unhappy with the choice of
comparator drugs used in the clinical studies.

Moreover, even the terminology used in the approval process can be

confounding, forcing pharmaceutical companies to work their way
around mutable definitions. For oncological and neurological drugs,
Strategy&’s review found that half of the time, clinical outcome — that is,
mortality rate — was the primary factor. But for the other half, surrogate
endpoints, such as changes in a diabetes patient’s glucose level, were
favored metrics. With the metabolic drugs, surrogate endpoints were the
sole criterion for reimbursement, and with respiratory drugs, this
approach was preferred in 75 percent of the cases.

Pharmaceutical companies are at a disadvantage — especially in

comparison with other healthcare stakeholders (for example, national
health programs or payor organizations), which are increasingly
working together to accomplish critical goals, such as lower prescription
costs. Some of this is a problem of the pharma industry’s own making.
Over the years, insularity has begun to infect many pharmaceutical
companies. Silos have emerged that separate, for example, R&D from
the commercial, production, and supply chain parts of the business. And
all of these parts are disconnected from the critical outward-facing
aspects of the industry: regulatory affairs, pricing and market access,
government affairs, and medical affairs — the very parts of the business
that must cope with the greatest degree of disruption in the current

8 Strategy&
Exhibit 1
What external forces want

Regulator

“I want to accelerate innovation and license products and diagnostics that

demonstrate real outcomes.”

Patient

“I should be informed of decisions relating to my health and be able to

manage my condition to fit my lifestyle.”

Payor

“I must contain healthcare costs without compromising patient outcomes.”

Policymaker

“My policies need to encourage uptake of innovation and meet my

stakeholders’ needs.”

Provider

“I need to adhere to evidence-based medicine to optimize my performance

and deliver excellent patient outcomes.” Source: Strategy& analysis

Strategy& 9
Exhibit 2
E.U. payor approval rates for drugs, 2013–14

Oncological
10 40% of reviewed oncological
drugs were approved by all
five payors and regulators

The most common reason

for payors not approving was
high drug costs
Respiratory
75% of reviewed respiratory 4
drugs were approved by all
regulators and payors;
the fourth was an orphan
drug product

Neurological
Metabolic 2 One drug received 100%
approval; the other was not
All payors and regulators 3
approved by IQWiG (choice
approved selected of comparator) or NICE
metabolic drugs, except (high cost)
IQWiG, which rejected
all three (due to choice
of comparators)

Source:
www.ema.europa.eu;
www.fda.gov;
www.iqwig.de;
www.g-ba.de; www.tlv.se;
www.nice.org.uk;
www.has-sante.fr;
www.cms.gov;
www.q1medicare.com;
www.blueshieldca.com/
bsca/bsc/public/member/
mp/home/

10 Strategy&
environment. The result is myopia: pharmaceutical companies that fail
to see clearly how the disjointed approval system is affecting patients,
payors, and providers.

The dangers of silos may not always have been obvious, but today, with
more stringent regulatory requirements, greater oversight of healthcare
spending, and more demanding patient and doctor constituencies, there
is much less room for inefficiency and waste. A product’s costs and
returns will be disappointing if a company makes decisions without
considering the impact on all stakeholders. Say, for example, a company
launches a new compound without a clear window into how much
payors will earmark for the product, or what regulators will accept as
the minimum data set for accelerated approval, or even the education
and support that will be needed to prepare the medical community to
embrace the drug. These examples are not isolated; repeated over and
over with different variables in an incohesive pharmaceutical
organization, they have a cascading effect that weakens
the company’s performance.

Strategy& 11
The critical team strategy

To fix this broken system, pharmaceutical companies must address the

shortcomings in their operating models. At its optimum, the front line
of the pharmaceutical operating model would be composed of what
Strategy& calls a critical team. The critical team is composed of four
subteams that gather knowledge about and monitor issues pertaining to
regulatory affairs, pricing and market access, government affairs, and
medical affairs. These subteams act as cross-organizational threads to
link together pivotal pharmaceutical functions that focus on evidence
generation and management (R&D and pharmacovigilance), customer
management (sales, marketing, and key account management), and The critical team
connected delivery (supply chain).
is composed of
Most pharmaceutical companies have the capabilities needed for four subteams
effective critical teams, and many have certain facets of critical teams that monitor
in operation. But few companies have taken these teams as far as they
issues of
can go, to act as a bridge between all of the company’s key functions.
Critical teams represent a new framework for the industry, and there regulatory
are various ways a company might structure them. For companies that affairs,
operate under highly decentralized business models, our vision is that
pricing and
the subteams would all report to a local critical functions (CF) leader,
who in turn reports directly to the global or regional CF leader. market access,
Depending on how aggressive companies want to be with their government
transformation, we advocate the creation of a board-level position for
affairs, and
the top CF leader, given the important role we expect the teams to play
in the future and the critical nature of the customer and business medical affairs.
insight they will bring to the organization.

Critical teams are particularly pivotal in today’s pharmaceutical

organizations because they’re the company’s internal communicators
and its liaison to external stakeholders. They provide market insight
and analysis that informs customer- and patient-centric activities across
the pharmaceutical value chain. They can be used to leverage all
possible avenues of evidence available to a company, ultimately to assist
project teams in determining regulatory and market strategies for
molecules from research through life-cycle management. In today’s
pharmaceutical industry environment, it is no longer sufficient to have,

12 Strategy&
for example, sales reps promoting products alone or regulatory experts
shaping R&D activities without input from other parts of the
organization. Indeed, given the changes in the landscape, the company
should look to the critical teams to determine the most important
strategic path forward.

Because critical teams are cross-functional, they will accomplish their

goals only if there is consistent and ample overlap, cross-collaboration,
and communication among the four operating model categories within
the organization (see Exhibit 3, next page). If these parts of the business
are separated and unable to communicate among themselves effectively,
it won’t matter how robust the company’s critical team is, because its
impact will be lost in a vacuum.

Strategy& 13
Exhibit 3
New pharma company operating model

Focus on Evidence generation Connected delivery New connections

generating evidence and management to delivery systems,
Manufacturing
R&D providers, and patients
Ensure patient safety Distribution
and product efficacy Pharmacovigilance Advanced manufacturing

Health outcomes Just-in-time supply

Value proposition
Research articulation
Critical
teams

Customer management
Sales and marketing
Key account management

Part of the solution in healthcare delivery

Embrace multichannel strategies and digital
Drive patient-centric approaches

Critical teams
(subteams: regulatory affairs, pricing and market access, government affairs, medical affairs)

Foster cross-functional collaboration

Proactively share customer feedback
Prepare and shape the external environment

Source: Strategy& analysis

14 Strategy&
 Operating levers

An organization must develop a series of operating model levers for the

critical teams in order to profitably deploy them. These levers should
also be the building blocks for a pharmaceutical company’s new
operating model:

• Strategy must be explicitly spelled out and coherent across the critical
teams, and aligned closely with business objectives that are regularly
validated against shifting requirements and regulations in the industry.
Stakeholders should know about the strategy too, and buy into it.

• Organizational structure should be built around clear roles and Organizations

responsibilities, globally and locally, that leverage functional
expertise across the organization. Noncore activities can be
must develop
outsourced to improve efficiency, and the organizational structure operating model
can be linked to business needs while providing room for mobility levers — from
and innovation among the ranks. Mobility across the critical teams
should be encouraged to inspire the development of creative ideas
strategy to
that can improve and expand on the benefits that each of the critical culture and
teams’ subteams can bring to critical team capabilities. skills — for
• Process, systems, and tools emphasize tracking the progress
critical teams
of critical teams in achieving specific strategy goals focused on to profitably
demonstrating value, quality, and compliance in a cross-functional deploy them.
environment. Relevant IT systems are vital to support and
enhance (a) knowledge sharing across local and global teams;
(b) customer-centric services to meet needs of key stakeholders and
to demonstrate patient and economic outcomes; (c) transparent
interactions with stakeholders; and (d) efficiency gains. Measuring
the contribution of critical teams to the business can be difficult
because the work these units do cannot be directly linked to sales.
Nevertheless, key metrics need to be defined to measure progress
against objectives. As digitization becomes increasingly important
in the pharmaceutical industry, critical teams must be early adopters
of technology.

Strategy& 15
• Skills and culture address awareness of external stakeholder
needs and combine it with business acumen and strategic insight
to deliver value to customers, suppliers, patients, and providers.
Well-developed on-boarding and training programs are necessary to
improve the performance of proactive, motivated individuals — in
short, problem solvers, not blamers — who are inspired to work in
critical teams. A critical team must be driven by the desire to adopt
innovation and facilitate it across the organization to enable patient-
centric products and services.

The roles that the individual operating levers play in each of the
subteams vary depending on the organization’s needs. But in all
cases the purpose of implementing these levers is to enable critical
teams to improve organizational insight and responses to payor,
regulatory, and competitive challenges. In other words, the levers
position and enable the critical team to perform its necessary role as
the fulcrum of the company’s transformed operating model. Strategy&
has created a maturity model that explains how each of the operating
levers can best support the development and cultivation of each of Insight from
the subteams.
the regulatory
affairs teams
Subteam: Regulatory affairs should shape
• Strategy: Regulatory insight helps shape drug development and R&D and
marketing plans across R&D and product life-cycle management marketing
using all available innovative regulatory pathways. The goal is plans.
to actively harmonize regulatory and payor requirements for
earlier access.

• Organizational structure: Financial and staff resources dedicated

to regulatory issues and communications are allocated efficiently,
including outsourcing arrangements when needed, which allows the
pharmaceutical company to anticipate and manage the cost of these
activities while getting the most out of them. Bringing market access
and regulatory subteams together under the critical team umbrella
can result in more efficient and effective product development
programs and life-cycle management.

• Process, systems, and tools: All available regulatory pathways and

early access schemes to accelerate approval are proactively assessed
and, if appropriate, adopted. Upcoming regulatory changes are
anticipated, allowing the organization to adjust its operations plan to
align with new rules and policies, a much more efficient strategy
than reactively adjusting processes and procedures following
inspections. The regulatory affairs team aggressively tries to reduce

16 Strategy&
 time to filing and uses new technology to facilitate faster global
dossier compilation of key regulatory documentation needed across
multiple territories.

• Skills and culture: The confidence to maintain an ongoing dialogue

with regulators is fostered, even to the point of challenging status
quo and conventional wisdom. Rather than treating regulators as
obstacles, regulatory affairs teams should consider alternative
beneficial approaches to regulator requests and policies, working
across the company to enable faster access and broader involvement
in healthcare delivery and transformation.

Subteam: Pricing and market access

• Strategy: Market research and discussions with payors are leveraged

to produce payor insight that informs R&D and commercial
strategies, as well as a coordinated pricing and reimbursement
approach meant to replace the typical reflexive individual reactions Pricing and
to local payor restrictions. market access
• Organizational structure: Silos are eliminated in favor of proactive
teams need
interaction across organizational teams to enable integration of the to create
input from a critical team. partnerships
• Process, systems, and tools: Diseases and patient pathways are
with payors
assessed and analyzed using all available external and internal data to deliver
to generate evidence for patient-centric drug development programs. outcomes.
Analytical techniques are used to assess revenue leakage and define
processes to better manage pricing transparency in the context of
increased tenders and pricing pressure.

• Skills and culture: The ability to develop trusted partnerships with

payor groups leads to creative contracting and pricing agreements
focused on outcomes rather than defensive pushbacks and
adversarial negotiations.

Subteam: Government affairs

• Strategy: Government policy changes are assessed and prioritized

in real time to determine how they affect business objectives,
avoiding the “fire drill” of panicky reaction to policy decisions
that are divorced from company goals and programs. Also,
forward-looking policies are developed pertaining to transparency
in real-world data studies and pricing.

Strategy& 17
• Organizational structure: Capabilities are needed at both corporate
and local levels. Policy positions are proactively drawn up at the
corporate level and distributed to be tailored to local requirements
and help shape the local policy environment. Every part of the
organization must be involved in policy shaping so that the message
being communicated is consistent.

• Process, systems, and tools: Since government affairs teams are

cross-functional, strategy execution vis-à-vis government policy
decisions is spread across the organization, allowing the company
to proactively take advantage of opportunities and better manage
risk. Technology is a good facilitator, allowing strong stakeholder
management and effectiveness tracking. For example, a tool akin to a
customer relationship management program could be used to capture
interactions with external organizations so that the pharmaceutical
company’s in-field resources have access to the information at a
moment’s notice. Alternatively, dashboards could be tailored to pull
information from multiple company-wide sources to measure the
success of critical teams in meeting business-aligned objectives.

• Skills and culture: An ongoing dialogue in a trusted advisor Government

relationship with relevant policymakers is maintained, obviating the affairs
typical transactional policymaker engagement that predominates in
the industry now and often leads to mistrust. With an ongoing
capabilities are
relationship, the pharma industry can be proactive, providing needed at both
valuable input into policy development, rather than simply reacting the corporate
to new policies.
and local levels.

Subteam: Medical affairs

• Strategy: Pre- and post-approval, cross-functional teams compile

real-world data analyses to demonstrate a new drug’s strength as a
patient-centric solution offering positive patient outcomes. Medical
affairs in-field resources take over the medical education role that
sales reps formerly had with primary care prescribers. But they focus
on scientific exchange rather than sales, challenging the standards of
care and identifying gaps in disease management and opportunities
for pharmaceutical companies to partner in the healthcare system.

• Organizational structure: In-field medical professionals from

medical affairs teams support sales reps and key account managers
while remaining distinct from them. In addition, medical affairs’
insight from the field — particularly about gaps in care and
opportunities to serve new populations, formulations, and digital
solutions — are fed back into R&D to help determine future
development strategies.

18 Strategy&
• Process, systems, and tools: Innovative medical education
campaigns are developed and linked to assessments to show
improved patient outcomes. These efforts, delivered to the healthcare
professional community, are designed to raise awareness of gaps in
care that current and future products can close. Digital and
multichannel strategies are used to inform but also to collect
feedback that can be the foundation of product development and
patient outreach programs. Processes are in place to enable full
transparency of interaction between the medical affairs team and
healthcare professionals, and systems are used to track the
effectiveness of different channels and campaigns. Collected
information is proactively shared throughout the organization to
increase touch points and outreach to the medical community, while
reactive responses will become a thing of the past.

• Skills and culture: Strategic channels to key opinion leaders and

clinicians are opened, providing data, ideas, and insight for brand
planning. These dialogues and analytical insights are crucial in
translating healthcare professional needs into opportunities for
pharmaceutical companies. Scientific strength is balanced with
Medical affairs
commercial acumen, strong relationship building, and alliance teams identify
management skills, fostering public–private collaboration. opportunities
for pharma
These descriptions portray the ideal state for pharmaceutical to partner in
companies, when operating levers and critical teams are perfectly
aligned; silos are eliminated; cross-functional, open communication
the healthcare
is the norm rather than the aspiration; and strategic goals mesh with system.
tactical product development and go-to-market campaigns. In
actuality, though, given that most pharmaceutical companies have
some critical team activities but usually in silos, change will be
gradual. More commonly, companies will go through a series of
organizational maturity stages as they implement each aspect of
critical team capabilities: reactive, tactical, strategic, and leading
(see Exhibits 4–7).

Most pharmaceutical companies are currently in the tactical stage.

Depending on where a company’s critical teams are on the maturity
curve at subteam level or collectively across the subteams, a decision
can be made about whether to simply improve capabilities in the current
organizational model or more radically turn the operating model upside
down — in other words, begin again in light of the disruptive operating
environment. Experimenting with a company’s operating model is more
easily done locally, where there is less complexity and fewer moving
parts, but we have observed that some pharmaceutical companies are
taking aggressive steps to transform themselves at the corporate level.
Typically, the demands for greater connectivity across critical teams are

Strategy& 19
motivating more sweeping changes. To accomplish transformation,
companies will need to answer a number of key questions about how
their critical teams will operate: Should there be one critical team
leader across subteams? Where should critical teams sit within the
organizational structure? How will the critical viewpoint be represented
at the board level?

20 Strategy&
Exhibit 4
Regulatory affairs (RA)

Reactive Tactical Strategic Leading

Strategy
RA enables R&D strategy RA enables both R&D and Regulator and payor needs RA provides regulatory
but has limited involvement product life-cycle are balanced, while insight to enable innovation
in product life-cycle management strategy consideration is given to across R&D and product
management innovative regulatory life-cycle management,
pathways including faster, parallel
filing and accelerated
There is proactive access globally
engagement to shape
regulator policy

Organizational structure
RA teams are split by Local RA reports to global Local RA, medical affairs, Local RA reports to local CF
activity performed RA, but RA sits within R&D and sometimes pricing and leader, who in turn reports to
market access and global or regional CF leader
Local RA doesn’t report to Limited outsourcing (e.g., government affairs report
global RA publishing) to the same head Outsourcing leverages
cross-functional efficiencies
No outsourcing Global RA reports outside (e.g., with clinical)
R&D
Outsourcing of all noncore
activities

Process, systems, and tools

There are siloed regulatory End-to-end regulatory RA proactively anticipates RA leverages all available
processes only, with processes are used regulatory policy changes, regulatory pathways and
complex written procedures using an embedded early access schemes to
focused on R&D needs Simplification efforts are optimizing filing and tracking accelerate approval
under way for procedures approach
Global oversight of local and short-term business RA takes a risk-based
activities is limited priorities, including resource Global division oversees approach to change
allocation local activities via global management
tracking systems
Team is ready to implement
There is a robust process identification of medical
for resource allocation products (IDMP)

Skills and culture

Reactive and unconfident Ad hoc interactions with Ongoing dialogue with RA maintains continuous
regulator interactions lead to regulators raise queries regulators helps RA dialogue with regulators as
a perception that RA is about regulatory concerns understand requirements a trusted advisor where
nonstrategic and have confidence to appropriate, bridging payor
Regulators seen as blocking connect input from other and healthcare provider
business critical functions needs

Source: Strategy& analysis

Strategy& 21
Exhibit 5
Pricing and market access (P&MA)

Reactive Tactical Strategic Leading

Strategy
Responses to payor P&MA uses payor demands Team uses market research P&MA uses market research
demands on drug pricing to inform future pricing to generate payor insight and payor discussions to
are defensive decisions that informs commercial generate insight that
strategies informs R&D and
commercial strategies

Organizational structure
P&MA is absorbed within Local P&MA teams are Strategic P&MA is in same P&MA reports to CF team
commercial and siloed separate from commercial team as government affairs, leader at global level
and report to global P&MA while sales-focused P&MA is
teams in commercial Local CF teams report to
global or regional CF team
Process, systems, and tools
There are no clear systems Process and tools focus on Systems and tools are Process focuses on diseases
or tools for value proposition short-term issues with designed to provide value and outcomes to generate
creation or real-world data limited knowledge sharing propositions and convincing patient-centric solutions
generation, and no use of and no use of analytics evidence to payor
analytics community throughout the
product life cycle

Skills and culture

Team lacks interaction with Interaction with payors is Trusted relationships with Trusted partnership with
payors and the ability to on ad hoc basis; payors help in negotiating payor groups fosters
respond adequately to relationship-building skills the best drug pricing strategic pricing and
pushbacks during pricing are limited; tendering is not utilization negotiations
negotiations seen as strategic CF team supports and creative contracting
interaction among P&MA
and all of the other critical
functions

Source: Strategy& analysis

22 Strategy&
Exhibit 6
Government affairs (GA)

Reactive Tactical Strategic Leading

Strategy
There is no clear GA Ad hoc GA strategy GA strategy focuses on Real-time assessment and
strategy linked to business addresses short-term issues long-term issues, prioritizing prioritization of policy
objectives without a company-wide key trends and building changes informs a GA
remit trusted advisor status strategy aligned to business
objectives
GA acts as policy shaper for
business-critical issues

Organizational structure
There are no local or global There is a limited global-level Local GA teams report to Local GA team is part of
GA teams; CEO has no team with no local GA teams; global, and CEO is fully local CF team, which reports
engagement in shaping CEO has limited engagement engaged in shaping policy to a global CF leader
policy in shaping policy
CEO is an industry leader in
business-critical topics

Process, systems, and tools

There is no process, tools, Policy positions are available Execution of GA strategy Proactive GA strategy
or communication strategy on short-term issues, but are via cross-functional GA development and execution
for critical topics only sporadically teams is based on policy take advantage of
communicated internally positions for short- and opportunities and limit risk,
long-term issues including use of technology
and analytics to track GA
campaigns

Skills and culture

GA skills are limited, and Company is building global GA maintains continuous Company earns trusted
there is no plan to build GA capabilities and cross- dialogue with policymakers advisor status with
capabilities, since GA is not functional interactions to and influencers, with the policymakers and
considered strategic facilitate relationship company enjoying advisor influencers and forms
building with policymakers status for key issues with external coalitions and
policymakers partnerships as needed
GA seen as the connecting
glue for CF teams

Source: Strategy& analysis

Strategy& 23
Exhibit 7
Medical affairs (MA)

Reactive Tactical Strategic Leading

Strategy
There is narrow remit for MA develops disease area MA generates customer There is a cross-functional
post-launch input into strategies while providing insights from market effort to develop real-world
commercial strategy only, input to real-world data research and medical data strategy pre- and
and no cross-functional strategy and contributing to information to develop post-approval, and to develop
disease area strategy development of patient- cross-functional disease patient-centric solutions with
centric solutions with limited area strategies incorporating demonstrable patient
attention to outcomes real-world data to drive outcomes, aligned to a digital
patient-centric approaches strategy; company acts as a
with the ability to track trusted advisor and partner to
outcomes healthcare providers

Organizational structure
There are no in-field local Limited in-field MA There are more in-field MA In-field and headquarters
MA resources resources report to the resources than sales reps resources are optimally
same leader as regulatory for specialty leveraged across MA
MA reports to commercial affairs
locally Local MA reports directly to MA reports to local CF
MA reports globally to global MA leader, who in turn reports to
There are separate medical commercial, but there are global or regional CF leader
information teams stronger links with clinical Involvement of MA teams
across product life cycle is
growing

Process, systems, and tools

MA provides advice to MA provides advice to Approach to input into MA informs clinical
clinical development team clinical development team clinical is proactive development through
on request and produces medical customer insights and
education material for key Medical information develops innovative medical
MA reactively provides products responses are consolidated education campaigns,
medical education in globally, running outcomes- focusing on improved patient
response to product queries Team standardizes medical based medical education outcomes
information responses for campaigns and generating
Healthcare provider key products insights from key opinion MA enables superior
payments are manually leaders transparency for interactions
tracked System for healthcare with healthcare professionals
provider aggregate spend
data analytics is Enterprise-wide data
implemented analytics are leveraged

Skills and culture

Siloed culture focuses team MA implements tactical Team learns digital MA implements digitally
on purely MA activities, with relationship management approaches and analytics enabled engagement and
limited business acumen and while building capabilities in while leveraging strong relationship building with key
relationship-building skills real-world data know-how alliance and relationship opinion leaders, based on
and strategy development management skills strong scientific knowledge
balanced by strong business
acumen

Source: Strategy& analysis

24 Strategy&
Two companies, two successes

To illustrate the potential impact that credibility within the company to help
building more integrated critical team craft strategic options as well as the ability
capabilities can have on a pharmaceutical to be on equal footing with outside sources
company, consider the case of a global whose activities affected the company.
pharma company that assessed the cost
of government activities — including On the wings of this organizational
regulations, insurance and payor policy transformation, the company has
decisions, and agency rule making — on succeeded in areas where it was
its business at US$1 billion a year. In previously failing. The primary change
doing this analysis, the company realized is that the company is now a close-knit
that its operating model lacked strong partner with regulators and government
and cross-functional critical teams, agencies, helping to craft healthcare
particularly pertaining to understanding policy. Simultaneously, it has opened
and anticipating policymaker sentiment vital external channels for collecting
and decision making. As a result, the intelligence and insight that can inform
company was in reactive mode, unable to internal strategic options about product
respond effectively to government actions development and launches.
in a timely manner.
In another instance, a pharmaceutical
With a lack of visibility into regulatory company found itself facing policy
deliberations, pricing, and market access, changes on the payor side in Europe
each sector of the operating model acted and Asia, supported by government
independently, ensuring an inefficient decision making, that negatively affected
outcome. For example, in the absence of revenues from some of its leading brands
relevant intelligence to guide strategic by as much as 20 percent. Worse, pricing
launches, the company would begin to actions involving these drugs took the
think about preparing the market for company by surprise because it had
a drug just a year before the product’s invested little effort and few resources
introduction, far too late for a successful in understanding and anticipating what
pharmaceutical launch. But without a payor and physician communities, as
connected critical team, there was no well as governments, were considering
other option for developing an external to address spiraling healthcare costs.
strategy aligned to the business strategy.
However, after a campaign to build
Unhappy about the money it was critical team capabilities, things changed
losing due to its own shortcomings, radically for the company. By adding
the pharmaceutical company created a substantial skill sets in medical affairs,
framework for building a critical team government affairs, and market access,
capability that most mattered to the in particular, the company was able to
success of the business. Specifically, it integrate a much more well-rounded
created subteams to support ongoing view of the external payor, healthcare
communication and interaction with professional, regulatory, and policy
marketplace influencers, regulators, landscape into its internal market
pricing decision makers, and the discussions. Unlike before, the company
healthcare community. Members of these could proactively address fundamental
teams were not just policy wonks but questions: How can we protect our
also business strategists. This gave them cornerstone brands by having more

(continues)

Strategy& 25
coordination between our commercial essentially serving as an early warning
side and the critical teams? How do tool, a way to sound the alarm within
we communicate our points of view to the organization that an issue about a
the medical and payor communities, planned or existing drug would affect the
and how do we address their concerns company’s projected performance and
consistently? How do we provide the right that tactics and strategies would need
level of data to influence payor decisions to be altered to address the potential
without compromising the conditions problem. The successful difference at
the product is approved for? How do we this pharmaceutical company can best be
educate providers about the value of our described as a shift in emphasis and in
pharmaceuticals and work with them to internal planning cohesion. In the past,
drive efficiencies in healthcare delivery? the commercial team would go to market
without enough information to navigate
Previously, various silos were responsible conditions as they changed; now, the
for answering these questions and commercial team is benefiting from the
others. That, inevitably, led to collated foresight that external-facing
duplication of effort and inconsistent critical teams are amassing, using this
messaging in the marketplace. But now new knowledge to drive a more logical
the stronger and more coordinated and lucrative marketplace strategy for
capabilities of the critical teams are their leading brands.

26 Strategy&
Conclusion

Combined with a diligent effort to cross-pollinate the pharmaceutical

organization with strongly supported interdepartmental communications
and collaboration channels, critical teams can serve as a catalyst and
oversight engine for better-informed business decisions, from R&D
through commercial and supply chain activities. And perfecting the
capabilities of these critical teams will lead to development of
fundamental operating levers involving strategy, organizational
structure, process, and skills, further improving company performance,
productivity, and innovation. Having an integrated critical team can
make the difference between seizing the opportunity to get ahead of the
curve or becoming the victim of inevitable disruption.

Strategy& 27
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