$3B in Pharmacutical Product Strategy
Guiding a Fortune 100 Pharmaceutical company as they attempt a digital expansion into the production market.
Question: How do you drive transformational growth at a 120yr old company that has already tried this expansion play three times?
Answer: Investigate backwards through the silos until you can find a place to begin transformational change to knit a new path forward.
Summer/Fall 2023Current Revenue
Future Revenue Goal
Contract Overview
Purpose:
To identify early stage digital transformation opportunities for a $3B market expansion over five years from supplying pharmaceutical and biotech research equipment to supplying pharmaceutical & biotech production supplies.
Client:
An American-headquartered life science and clinical research company. A global supplier of analytical instruments, clinical development solutions, specialty diagnostics, laboratory, pharmaceutical and biotechnology services and other reagent, consumable, instrumentation, and service providers. As of 2023, the company had a market cap of $202 billion. It ranked between 90-100 on the Fortune 500 list based on its 2022 annual revenue of $44 billion. Currently Under NDA (See Resume)
Industries:
Laboratory Equipment, Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical, Healthcare
Team:
VP of North America Pharma & Biotech Production Products and Services, Director of Production Products, Head of Production Sales, Director of Production Services, Head of Services, Digital Sales Manager, Head of UX Digital Front Office, Lead Designer, Project Manager, Product Manager/Head of Research (Self)
Scope:
Four months, Remote with on-site research, B2B & B2C client, North American Pharma & BioTech production market expansion, Team of 10
Personal Responsibilities:
Determine the strategy for discovery research, conduct research, provide analysis and opinion on best path forward, identify best options for digital transformation, align stakeholders across silos
Outcome:
Successfully identified multiple avenues for technological improvements across Sales, Marketing, Warehouse, and Customer Service silos. Identified long term product strategy to match market fit research. Established pipeline for improvement idea refinement.
The Work
The Ask:
How can we find new ways of innovating in the digital space to help drive a market expansion for a 120-yr old company?
The Method:
Dig through years of past internal research into this question, interview everyone involved in this internal chain, find out how to differentiate the company from the field by interviewing with SMEs.
The Answer:
To start, we only focused on the North American market. We weren’t in a place to differentiate ourselves through price, so it had to be through service and quality. The plan involved breaking down internal silos between Sales, Customer Service, Warehouses, and Marketing, and setting up a behind-the-scenes network that would allow each silo to reinforce one another through a virtuous cycle.
Product Attributes
Basic Attributes aka “Table Stakes”:
Deliver the exact lot and batch specific supplies that were ordered, on time and with all the correct documentation from upstream suppliers. (Note: At the time of my onboarding this was proving extremely difficult to meet.)
Elevated Performance Attributes:
Predict what the customer is going to need in the future based on past purchases and be prepared to have it sourced and ready.
“Delight” Attributes:
Unable to determine within time allotted.