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The acronym “M&A” has become commonplace in the life science industry. The abbreviation for “Mergers & Acquisitions,” is a key topic for 2024 and beyond to “unlock value and drive innovation across health industries.” M&A is driven by a shared vision of growth and transformation, helping organizations enhance patient care and extend their reach.
Organizations typically pursue acquisitions for three main reasons:
While the completion of a merger marks a milestone, the true challenge—and opportunity—lies in what follows. Post-merger integration (PMI) is a crucial phase in determining the long-term success of M&A endeavors. Successful integration involves meticulous planning and execution across various areas, including corporate governance and cultural alignment. Each area plays a pivotal role in the seamless unification of merging entities. In this article, we’ll review essential strategies for successful post-merger integration in the healthcare sector.
During organizational change, it’s crucial to emphasize communication and collaboration to align cross-functional teams effectively. By rethinking how your organization handles change, you can avoid the pitfalls of outdated processes. Developing and implementing strategies that promote genuine process transformation will help maintain accountability and transparency across the newly combined organization. Moreover, establishing a corporate governance framework that supports a diverse, people-centric culture will spur innovation and encourage collaborative problem-solving.
Corporate governance starts with establishing a clear structure delineating roles and responsibilities across the newly formed organization. A robust framework helps minimize disruptions and align decisions with the combined entity’s long-term strategy.
Key steps for establishing a corporate governance:
Cultural differences between merging organizations can be the biggest barriers to successful integration. Harmonizing these cultures is essential for creating a cohesive and productive work environment.
If the culture of an organization suffers, so will retention. Jonathan Keyser, the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win, said, “A good culture equates to so much more than just an enjoyable workplace or a happy team. A strong culture acts as a safeguard to protect your business’s most valuable resources.”
While there are many strategic business benefits to M&A, your employees may not feel the same confidence. During transitions, employees often feel uncertain about the organization’s direction and vulnerable about job security, which can negatively impact morale and productivity. Team members might experience survivor syndrome or guilt after a workforce reduction. They may feel grateful to keep their job while also missing their colleagues. In such times, compassion and authenticity are essential. In post-merger integration, it is essential to implement three techniques for retaining staff:
Beyond specific strategies for governance, operations, culture, and employee retention, several overarching best practices can ensure a smoother integration process.
A successful merger or acquisition in the healthcare sector starts with a strong integration plan. By focusing on corporate governance, operational excellence, cultural alignment, and employee retention, biopharma and life science organizations can achieve a smooth transition that drives transformation and growth. With a commercial success partner like BioLaunch Solutions, we will help you implement these strategies with careful planning, prioritizing people and patients. Together, we’ll build a unified organization that combines the strengths of both teams to thrive in a competitive industry.
Are you anticipating a merger or acquisition? We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how we can help! Contact us today.
Clinical superiority alone does not guarantee the success of a therapy. Launching a new biopharmaceutical product is a demanding process, with 90 percent of clinical drug developments failing. Without meticulous preparation and research, poor strategic planning accounts for 10 percent of these failures. For a successful launch, your organization must have a deep understanding of the market, a strong commitment to meeting customer needs, and influential real-world data.
As you prepare to introduce your therapy to the market, answer these five essential questions to evaluate your launch readiness.
You developed your product to fulfill a need in the market and it is essential to understand the overall landscape thoroughly. This involves market research and competitive analysis—a deep dive into what sets your product apart and identifying potential challenges. Leveraging data and research allows you to position your product for success, gaining a competitive edge and identifying potential challenges early on. “The right data at the right time is a linchpin in the drug commercialization process underpinning every decision and action from bench to bedside,” said Yasser Ali. “It enables a more streamlined, efficient, and effective path to bringing new therapies to market, ultimately enhancing patient outcomes, and achieving commercial success.”
When collecting data, it is crucial to engage all stakeholders—from healthcare professionals and patients to payors and distribution partners. Diverse perspectives provide a holistic understanding while ensuring everyone feels included and valued. Physicians, nurses, and pharmacists contribute valuable insights into clinical needs and patient care, while patients and caregivers share real-world experiences that highlight challenges and expectations. Collaboration with patient advocacy groups, payors, and regulatory bodies ensures product accessibility, affordability, and compliance with industry standards. Engaging market access teams, commercialization experts, and educational partners enriches the understanding of market dynamics and helps craft targeted strategies.
By adopting a comprehensive and inclusive approach to strategic evaluation, you can better understand patient demographics, prescriber behavior, and the challenges in educating healthcare providers and patients about new treatment options. This approach ensures that your product reaches the market, making a meaningful impact on patient lives.
Given the constantly evolving market trends and regulatory changes for healthcare and life science industries, it’s essential to implement mechanisms that allow for adaptive strategy execution. This includes establishing robust feedback loops, fostering an environment of continuous learning, and leveraging data analytics to inform decision-making.
To ensure seamless collaboration among team members, you need to assess how your teams are communicating cross-functionally and how they are sharing feedback and insights in pursuit of the company’s goals and objectives. By actively engaging in these aspects of execution support, your team members feel involved and integral to the strategic planning process.
Incorporating a maturity assessment can significantly enhance your execution support now and in the future. As your organization matures, you become less reactive and more data-driven, making informed decisions based on performance metrics and financial results. A mature organization also empowers its workforce, providing them with the information, training, and authority to address issues and seize opportunities autonomously. This level of maturity not only fosters agility but also instills a sense of confidence and control, enabling your organization to adapt to problems or capitalize on emerging opportunities swiftly. By aligning your execution support with your maturity level, you ensure that your strategic plans are actionable, resilient, and adaptable to change, providing a sense of reassurance and security to your organization.
According to Bain & Company, “The most consistently undervalued factor contributing to a successful launch is the way leadership teams organize and manage the launch process.” To effectively face operational and strategic challenges, your leaders need specific skills and resources. Supporting your leaders starts with identifying and addressing any skill and competency gaps through extensive training and development resources.
Since every leader is unique, it is essential to tailor any training programs to specific roles and individual needs. Conducting a baseline assessment will help you recognize and leverage your leaders’ existing capabilities while pinpointing specific areas that require focused development. Incorporate various leadership development strategies like mentorship, workshops, and continuous learning into your overall plan for targeted development and growth. Additionally, creating a leadership playbook can help standardize best practices and foster a future-focused leadership culture that can evolve and adapt.
It’s a stark reality that nearly half (46 percent) of new drug launches fail to meet expectations because of inadequate understanding of the market and customer needs. For a successful market entry and growth, you need to ensure a continuous frontline feedback loop—requiring an optimized field force team and robust communication strategy. Field force teams play a crucial role by receiving real-time feedback from healthcare providers and expertly managing relationships with multiple stakeholders. Their efforts in educating providers, improving patient identification, and enhancing overall experiences are vital for the success of healthcare commercialization.
Your communication strategy should include detailed instructions for how your field force team shares the product’s unique value to healthcare professionals and patients and outlines communication efforts to ensure there is a continuous evaluation of feedback throughout the launch process to keep leadership informed. By relaying challenges to leadership, they can better provide support, remove roadblocks, make necessary adjustments, or evaluate ways to reposition in a dynamic market. Additionally, with effective communication and ongoing education, you can improve internal stakeholder buy-in, increase business efficiency, minimize bias, and manage risk through informed decision-making.
According to PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey, over half of health industry CEOs plan to make at least one acquisition in the next three years. With the substantial trend of biotech acquisitions, it is important to consider what your organization’s strategy is. Acquisitions of any size can cause major disruptions in culture and operations.
During times of organizational change, focus on how communication and collaboration can help create alignment for cross-functional teams. By addressing your organization’s approach to managing change, you can mitigate the risks of sticking to old processes. It’s essential to develop and implement mechanisms that will drive true process transformation to ensure accountability and transparency throughout the newly integrated organization. Additionally, creating a framework that fosters a diverse, people-first culture will encourage innovation and collaborative problem-solving. Aim to create a patient-first, business-focused environment where the new organizational objectives are the central focus.
At BioLaunch Solutions, we are committed to ensuring our healthcare and life science partners achieve seamless product launches in complex markets. With a proven track record of launching over 23 groundbreaking therapies, we provide strategic guidance and innovative solutions to enhance product performance, cultivate meaningful patient advocacy engagement, and ultimately, better patient outcomes.
Our full-service approach to biopharma commercialization has helped our clients proactively navigate complex health ecosystems and optimize time to market. By working as an extended member of your team, we can help ensure cross-functional collaboration, effective communication, and continuous improvement to execute your strategic planning. We provide tailored solutions from commercial and digital readiness assessments to leadership skills and competencies assessments. We also specialize in post-merger integrations to mitigate risks and ensure alignment between cross-functional teams. Our tailored process assesses your organization’s governance, operational goals, retention strategies, and cultural alignment to build a holistic strategy.
By addressing these five critical questions and leveraging the expertise of BioLaunch Solutions, you can confidently navigate the complexities of launching a new therapeutic option and be well-prepared for long-term success. If you want to learn more about the problems we solve, or you are ready to start developing a tactical plan, we look forward to discussing your organizational goals.
The topic of patient-centricity continues to gain momentum, but what does it truly mean? According to a widely accepted definition developed from a collaboration of industry leaders with patients, it is “Putting the patient first in an open and sustained engagement of the patient to respectfully and compassionately achieve the best experience and outcome for that person and their family.”
Patient-centricity focuses on providing individualized care in a collaborative way that considers the patient’s unique needs, preferences, values, and perspectives in all aspects of care delivery. From incorporating patient feedback into service improvements to implementing systems that allow for personalized communications, there are a variety of ways an organization can concentrate their efforts.
Companies that effectively integrate patient perspectives into their processes and strategies are more likely to achieve better patient outcomes and gain a competitive edge in the market. Therefore, for biotechnology and biopharma investors, evaluating a company’s level of patient-centricity can be crucial to evaluating its potential. To determine if a company takes a holistic approach to patient care or simply uses “patient-centricity” as a tagline, consider asking these seven questions.
Engaging with patients from the very beginning of the development process is critical to understanding their needs, preferences, and experiences. Acknowledging that every patient is unique, John Jacoppi at Cytokinetics said, “Every patient is different, and you need to build in agility and flexibility to whatever program that you’re putting into place.” Establishing open, direct, and transparent communication channels is essential to facilitate ongoing dialogue between the organization and the patient community throughout the product lifecycle.
By creating a clear blueprint for engagement and appointing a dedicated person to oversee the process, companies can foster meaningful relationships with patients and gather valuable insights from early development to post-commercialization. Examples of this approach include:
The pharma industry is undergoing a paradigm shift, moving from a product-centric to a patient-centric model of drug development. This evolution is characterized by the systematic integration of patient perspectives beginning in early research and throughout clinical trials, development, and commercialization. This requires consistent communication so patients can share continuous feedback on treatment effectiveness, side effects, and overall experiences. This ongoing feedback loop informs actionable insights and ongoing improvements, fundamentally altering how new therapies are conceived, tested, and brought to market.
While the industry has made significant strides, challenges persist in quantifying the return on investment for patient engagement initiatives. To ensure engagement efforts continue to influence core business decisions, we need to further encourage the financial value of patient engagement.
Companies should present concrete examples of how patient feedback has previously shaped decisions. Examples could include:
When evaluating previous engagement strategies, identify the organization’s key champion for patient-centric initiatives at the highest level. Knowing this person will help you understand who influences decisions within the organization and highlight any gaps or support needed to ensure future success.
Collaboration with patient advocacy groups is essential to addressing unmet needs of specific groups. From product development to marketing strategies, patient groups can provide insights into patient needs that lead to the development of more effective treatments or support services that resonate with the patient community. By fostering authentic connections with their identified patient advocacy community, patient needs are prioritized throughout the product lifecycle.
Educational content must produce meaningful outcomes for patients in a clear, complete, and transparent way. It should be personalized to the patient, caregivers, community culture, and disease state. To assist with the complexities of the healthcare system, you may need to gather input and feedback from appropriate community stakeholders.
Although healthcare and pharma are heavily regulated industries, the use of digital and social communications to engage with patients is on the rise. Patients, especially those in younger generations, are turning to social media to understand medical conditions and engage in health-related online activities. These platforms have become essential communication strategies for educating patients.
Leadership plays a pivotal role in embedding a patient-centric culture across all levels of an organization. “True patient-centricity starts with a commitment from the very top, from the CEO on down,” said Megan Guhl in Courier Health’s State of Patient-Centricity in Biopharma 2024. “Every single pharma biotech company is going to tell you that they should be patient-centric, but is it woven into the culture and objectives?” Companies should highlight their initiatives to promote this culture, such as providing training programs for employees, incorporating patient-centered goals into performance evaluations, and including patient care as a core company value.
To measure effectiveness, companies can track metrics like patient satisfaction scores, engagement levels with educational materials, and patient outcomes. Feedback from patients and their caregivers can also provide valuable insights into these initiatives’ success.
An emerging biotech startup was preparing to launch its second groundbreaking therapy. The treatment targeted a rare endocrine disease, addressing the needs of a patient community that had been overlooked for too long. Understanding the need to make a meaningful impact, they partnered with BioLaunch Solutions to identify and navigate key challenges faced by this underserved community.
Partnering closely with their team, we engaged healthcare providers and patient advocates in an open, direct, and transparent dialogue. Through these conversations, we gained valuable insights into the disease, its impact on patients, and the struggles faced by caregivers. With this knowledge, we developed a comprehensive plan for educational resources. Our goal was clear: to ensure that the therapy would effectively reach and benefit those who needed it most.
Although the process had its challenges, seeing the impact made on patients and their caregivers reinforced why we’re passionate about our work—bridging the gap between innovative treatments and those they’re designed to help.
At BioLaunch Solutions, we are driven by a passion to make a meaningful difference in the lives of patients, families, and caregivers. At the heart of our logo and brand is the DNA helix. It symbolizes our commitment to supporting organizations cross-functionally and ensuring that all team members have the tools and resources they need to succeed. Regardless of their role, every individual within an organization plays a crucial part in putting patients at the center of all efforts, and our visual representation reinforces our dedication to delivering patient-centric solutions.
Whether you are a biotech or biopharma company seeking to enhance your patient-centric approach or an investor looking to make informed decisions that prioritize patient needs, BioLaunch Solutions is your partner in success. Our innovative strategies and tailored support can help you navigate the complexities of the healthcare landscape, from early development through commercialization, while always keeping the patient voice at the forefront. By asking the right questions and assessing a company’s genuine commitment to patient-centricity, you can make a lasting impact on the lives of patients, their families, and caregivers, while driving long-term success for your organization and community.
To learn more about how BioLaunch Solutions can help you achieve your goals and improve outcomes for patients, we invite you to explore our case studies. Contact us today to discover how our patient-centric solutions can transform your organization and the lives of the patients you serve.
Commercial strategy in healthcare and biopharma is about creating value that aligns with the industry’s rigorous demands and high stakes. With fierce competition, complex regulatory environments, and an increasing demand for innovation, teams and organizations must continually adapt and refine their commercial strategies and tactics to stay ahead.
Three core elements of healthcare and biopharma commercial strategy are:
Identifying unmet medical needs: How does your product improve the lives of patients? Compared to other commercial strategies, what makes commercialization of healthcare and biopharmaceutical products unique is the patient impact. A successful commercial strategy requires early engagement with the patient community to gain a deep understanding of the patient populations and the specific needs not currently being met by existing treatments. This understanding requires robust data analysis and market research to help identify gaps in care and potential patient benefits that competitors have overlooked.
Understanding the competitive landscape: How is your company positioned in the market? By understanding competitors’ products, their drug administration and delivery, sales strategies, and market performance, you can more effectively refine your value propositions. It’s essential to assess not only current competitors but also anticipate new market entrants.
Strategic product positioning: How will you promote and market your product? Once you understand needs and competitors, you can focus on strategically positioning your product to maximize market potential. This includes tailoring marketing messages, choosing the proper distribution channels, and setting price points that reflect the product’s value in terms of patient outcomes and cost-effectiveness compared to alternatives.
Traditional commercialization models in healthcare are challenged by more modern and agile approaches that reflect technological changes, patient expectations, and regulatory landscapes. If your organization wants to improve their commercialization strategy, there are a variety of innovative models, tools, and strategies you can implement.
Value-Based Care Models: Value-based care models are increasingly prevalent. These models focus on patient outcomes rather than the volume of care delivered. Commercial strategies in this model leverage data analytics to demonstrate products’ economic and clinical value to insurers and healthcare providers.
Digital Integration: Integrating digital tools and platforms in your commercial strategy is table stakes. From enhanced customer engagement and insights to streamlined operations, digital tools can help you make data-driven decisions and better adapt to market demands. Telemedicine, mobile health apps, and AI are only a few examples of how technology has transformed healthcare organizations. Leverage digital innovation to engage directly with end-users and gather real-time feedback for continuous improvement.
Collaborative Partnerships: Forging partnerships with healthcare providers, technology companies, logistics providers, regulatory experts, and prospects can lead to advantageous commercialization strategies. Partnerships can enhance commercial strategy by providing access to new markets, sharing resources, driving innovation, mitigating risks, providing regulatory support, and improving market credibility. They enable organizations to leverage complementary strengths and capabilities, accelerate time-to-market, and offer more comprehensive solutions to customers.
These are just a sample of the many ways you can innovate to improve your commercialization strategy. As an integrated commercial partner, BioLaunch Solutions can help you determine what strategies would be most beneficial to your product. With our commercial strategy services, we’ve helped organizations proactively address commercialization challenges and identify ways they can improve time to market. Contact us today to learn more.
For a commercial strategy to be successful, you need a holistic understanding of the product from its initial concept and design, through manufacturing and commercialization, to potential expansion. This is known as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and it ensures that a product continues to meet market needs throughout its lifetime.
BioLaunch Solutions empowers pharmaceutical and biotech companies to achieve optimal performance by focusing on their most valuable asset: their people. By fostering cross-functional collaboration and team optimization, BioLaunch Solutions helps organizations navigate the complex product lifecycle from pre-approval through post-launch phases, while driving patient-centricity throughout the process.
BioLaunch Solutions creates tailored blueprints to ensure that life-changing therapies effectively reach and benefit the patients who need them most. Additionally, they help your teams to deliver exceptional patient experiences, advocate for patient needs, and maintain a patient-centric approach at every stage. Through strategic guidance and support, BioLaunch Solutions enables teams to work together seamlessly, maximizing the potential of their products and ultimately delivering better outcomes for patients, enhancing patient advocacy efforts, and driving success across the entire organization.
A mid-sized pharmaceutical company acquired a promising new drug in the psychiatry space. Although their field teams had little experience in this area, they decided to proceed with the product launch using their existing team.
Through interactions with BioLaunch Solutions, company employees collaborated cross-functionally and shared knowledge on assessing the psychiatric care ecosystem and competitive landscape to forge common understanding of the marketplace. Segmentation of stakeholders also helped the company articulate a clear and patient-centric product value proposition that was well-aligned with the needs of psychiatric healthcare providers and patients.
This customized offering allowed the company to convey product benefits, illustrate its usefulness in psychiatric care, and showcase its impact on humanizing patient experiences and outcomes. BioLaunch Solutions’ technical expertise in developing bespoke commercial success roadmaps along with a commitment to mental health advocacy and team performance was critical in helping the company transcend the challenges of debuting in the competitive psychiatry market.
BioLaunch Solutions’ involvement provided a strategy for field force engagement with key psychiatric Centers of Excellence, establishing a schedule of call points to keep mental health providers informed about access processes, and ensuring patient support from the moment they are prescribed this new medication. These efforts led to a successful launch, creating success in a new therapeutic area, improving therapeutic options, and laying the groundwork for expanding market and product share in the competitive psychiatric care market.
As the landscape of healthcare and biopharma continues to evolve, there will always be new commercialization challenges to face. Companies that anticipate and prepare for changes in the market through innovative commercial strategies can achieve sustained success. Having a commercial success partner like BioLaunch Solutions can ensure you have the right tools to achieve your launch expectations. Through strategic evaluation, blueprint creation, execution support, and responsive strategy, we can help you navigate the complexities of the market and ultimately improve patient outcomes.
We want to hear about your experiences and challenges. Let’s connect and explore how we can drive success together.
We are committed to ensuring our healthcare and life science partners achieve seamless product launch in complex markets.
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