Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the ...Winning Strategies for Effective...
Transcript of Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the ...Winning Strategies for Effective...
In association with
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical IndustryA review of current working practices
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration
in the Pharmaceutical Industry
A review of current working practices
Table of Contents
FOREWORD ............................................................................................................................. 1 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY....................................................................................................... 2 2. STUDY OBJECTIVE ............................................................................................................. 3 3. THE INDUSTRY FACES PROFOUND CHALLENGES ....................................................... 4 4. THE IMPORTANCE OF COLLABORATION ....................................................................... 5
4.1 WHAT IS COLLABORATION? ................................................................................................ 5 4.2 THE NEED FOR COLLABORATION ........................................................................................ 6 4.3 KNOWLEDGE COLLABORATION ........................................................................................... 6
5. THE GLOBAL ENTERPRISE ............................................................................................... 8 5.1 CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS ARE THE NORM ....................................................................... 9 5.2 THE MOVE TO VIRTUAL TEAMS ......................................................................................... 10 5.3 MANAGING GLOBAL DIVERSITY......................................................................................... 11 5.4 ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT IN PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES ............................................. 12
6. IGNORE CULTURAL ISSUES AT YOUR PERIL............................................................... 15 6.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS FOR EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION............................. 16 6.2 THE FORMATION OF THE 24/7 CULTURE............................................................................ 17 6.3 LANGUAGE BARRIERS IMPEDE COLLABORATION ................................................................ 17 6.5 ORGANISATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR COLLABORATION ....................................................... 17
7. THE BACKBONE FOR COLLABORATION ...................................................................... 18 7.1 INTRANET ........................................................................................................................ 19 7.2 GROUPWARE................................................................................................................... 21
8. CURRENT COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE ....................................................................... 22 8.1 AUDIO ............................................................................................................................. 23 8.2 AUDIO CONFERENCING .................................................................................................... 24 8.3 VOIP............................................................................................................................... 24 8.4 PRESENCE AWARENESS................................................................................................... 24 8.5 INSTANT MESSAGING ....................................................................................................... 25 8.6 EMAIL.............................................................................................................................. 25 8.7 SHARED WORKSPACES.................................................................................................... 26 8.8 DATA REPOSITORIES ....................................................................................................... 27 8.9 ELECTRONIC LAB NOTEBOOKS ......................................................................................... 28 8.10 PORTALS....................................................................................................................... 29 8.11 EXPERTISE LOCATORS................................................................................................... 30 8.12 NET MEETINGS.............................................................................................................. 30 8.13 VIDEOCONFERENCING.................................................................................................... 31 8.14 FACE-TO-FACE.............................................................................................................. 32 8.15 SUMMARY OF ATTITUDES TO CURRENT COLLABORATIVE TOOLS ...................................... 32
9. WINNING STRATEGIES FOR BETTER FUTURE COLLABORATION ............................ 33 9.1 SELECT THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGICAL COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENT................................ 33 9.2 ENSURE COLLABORATION IS CONTEXTUAL – INTUITIVE AND SEAMLESS............................... 35 9.3 CREATE THE CULTURE..................................................................................................... 36 9.4 MEASURE THE IMPACT ..................................................................................................... 36 9.5 PROMOTE THE BENEFITS TO IMPROVE ADOPTION ............................................................. 38
10. CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................ 39 11. APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................ 41
11.1 ABOUT THE AUTHORS .................................................................................................... 41 11.2 ENDNOTE ...................................................................................................................... 41 11.3 CONTACTS .................................................................................................................... 42
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Foreword
Considerable investment is being made by the pharmaceutical industry to enable teams to work
effectively together across departmental, functional, company and geographic boundaries.
This is a natural response given the complex nature of an industry where key success factors include:
• Global research, development and product team inter-working
• A knowledge based industry working on a project basis
• A global matrix working environment with many areas of deep expertise
• Critical partnerships with third parties such as Contract Research Organisations, universities
and biotechnology companies
When speed to market is critical, where informed and timely decisions can have large financial
implications, collaboration is a key factor to ensure value is delivered.
Investment in collaboration has varied tremendously across companies in both the level of investment
and the degree of success.
As a leading provider of collaborative solutions to the industry for many years, BT has developed a deep
understanding of the particular collaboration issues faced by the pharmaceutical industry – and how
they may be overcome to generate business improvements, improve cost management and deliver
increased shareholder value. Active reviews with many of our customers have revealed different
strategies in different stages of collaboration development.
We are acutely aware that the answer to improved collaboration lies in many areas such as corporate
culture, social networks, and trust between individuals – to name but a few. Technology is a strong
enabler to better collaboration but it must be intuitive, easy to use and enable natural people interaction
for widespread adoption.
We also believe that the correct technology, coupled with cost reductions, can allow richer social
collaboration and more intuitive usability. These factors include, but are not limited to:
• Advanced Interaction, including presence, all forms of messaging, conferencing, etc
• Collaborative work environments
• IP telephony and the ability to integrate voice and video with other solutions
• Ubiquitous broadband availability
• IT system improvements
• Reduced cost of bandwidth
It is against this background that BT commissioned this research to develop winning strategies for
collaboration … and to share them with all interested parties.
We are sure that you will find this report a valuable aid to improving your collaboration initiatives.
Gary Hawksworth, Healthcare Solutions, BT
1
1. Executive Summary
In an environment of rising costs and increasing demands on productivity
and innovation, the challenge for today’s pharmaceutical company is to “do
more with less.” Having sought economies of scale and product pipeline
boosts through M&A activity, pharmaceutical companies are being forced
to look internally to seek the improvements needed to meet the
expectations of financial investors. Productivity gains at each phase,
however small, have an amplifying effect - “they don’t just add up, they
multiply.” Enterprises that fail to use modern communication technologies
and who do not leverage the knowledge base of their workers, limit the
potential for collaboration and run the very real risk of falling behind the
competition.
Collaborative solutions employ information systems to enable individuals or
groups of individuals to work concurrently on information. The result is that
the working environment behaves in the same way regardless of
geographical location, communication channel or device - and the benefits
apply to all:
• Advanced interaction
• Collaborative working
• Mobility
We are in the midst of a fundamental paradigm shift as new technologies
bring integrated voice, video, and web solutions to the pharmaceutical
desktop. Emerging collaborative solutions now offer the user the ability to
co-ordinate seamlessly between tools without the need to switch between
systems. Information can be shared in an integrated and synchronised
manner allowing decisions to be made on the most up-to-date information.
Collaborative solutions provide both hard, quantifiable benefits and many
soft, difficult to measure benefits. Even small productivity increases can
shave months off development times and provide millions of dollars in
savings; while the soft benefits such as improved management of
dispersed teams and faster decision making, accrue to deliver significant
productivity improvements.
Study findings highlighted the fact that collaboration is primarily about
behaviour not technology. Successful implementation of collaborative
working practice and collaborative tools requires:
• A corporate culture of openness and sharing
2
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Rewards for effective team working and collaborative behaviour
• Appropriate and timely training to support the introduction of new tools
• Intuitive and straightforward solutions
• Integrated and linked solutions (contextual collaboration)
• Rigorous document and records management
• The impact of collaboration to be measured whilst at the same time
promoting the benefits
Although all pharmaceutical companies practice collaborative working, the
quality in many cases is poor and leaves significant room for improvement.
This report examines the relationship between the key elements of
technology and behaviour, and provides an insight into the winning
strategies for further improvements in business performance through
enhanced collaborative practice in the pharmaceutical industry.
2. Study Objective
The objective of this project was to review how well collaborative practice is
embedded in today’s pharmaceutical industry by understanding the
relationship between business performance, business processes and
collaborative behaviour. The project focused on the use of tools in normal
working practice and their relation to the culture and behaviour within the
organisation.
The study was based on 30 semi-structured, qualitative, in-depth interviews
conducted with a representative sample of executives from a wide range of
functional areas including discovery, clinical development and commercial.
Interview feedback was used to build an overall picture of the macro-
business processes which might benefit from improved collaborative
working. The majority of interviews were concentrated in the UK, and
where relevant North America and Continental Europe. Participant
companies included:
• AstraZeneca • BMS • Pfizer
• GSK • Eli Lilly • Wyeth/AHP
• Novartis • Roche • J&J
• Bayer • Sanofi-Aventis
3
Industry Challenges
First to market pressure
Pressure to sustain product flow
Decreasing periods of exclusivity
Pressure to meet investor expectations
Patent expiries
Lack of new products
Generic competition
Healthcare cost containment
Spiralling R&D costs
M&A activity
Pace of globalization
Outsourcing and strategic partnering trends
Heightened regulatory demands
Managing vast amounts of information created by new technology
Managing geographically dispersed teams
Travel restrictions
3. The Industry Faces Profound Challenges
Today’s pharmaceutical industry exists in a fast-changing environment,
with mounting pressures exerted from many different directions including
regulatory constraints, rising costs, demands on productivity and
innovation, mergers and challenges to patent protection.
Drug development costs are reaching unsustainable levels - in 2003, in
excess of $900 million was required to take a product to market, as
opposed to $230 million in 1987.1 Blockbusters, which have driven
impressive growth in recent years, are becoming increasingly difficult to
find and the falling number of new medicines now means that R&D
productivity is a key issue. Just to keep pace with the annual industry
growth rate of 10%, the top 10 Pharma players need to launch at least 5
significant NCEs per year.2
Companies have invested heavily in new discovery technologies
characterised by the convergence of life sciences and information
technology. We are now entering a period where the promise of these
“New Sciences” will begin to deliver, but the application of new technology
has created an added problem in terms of the vast amounts of new data
that now need to be organised and managed.
Added to these factors are increasing regulatory demands and the need to
demonstrate the utility of new treatments versus existing treatments.
Recent concern about the safety of medicines in addition to the shrinking
willingness of the public to accept side effects, has led to some drug-safety
experts and lawmakers wanting even larger and longer clinical trials for
new drugs, further increasing development costs.
The research-based pharmaceutical industry has long been one of the
most complex and resource-intensive in the world - but complexity is now
increasing at a spectacular rate. In order to maximise the quality and speed
of the discovery and development process, companies are dramatically
increasing the collaborations within the different parts of R&D as well as
their reliance on external partners. This collaborative approach is the right
way to do business, but it adds a level of complexity to both intra- and inter-
functional interactions. Multiple units within an organisation must
collaborate across the extended enterprise i.e. not only with each other, but
also with external partners.
Exacerbating these complexities is the challenge of size. Consolidation
within the industry as well as organic growth, have created extremely large,
global organisations. Infrastructures are stretched to the limits,
4
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Collaboration has been a huge success - geographically dispersed teams recognised the need for a vehicle of communication over and above telephone and travel.’
inefficiencies are amplified and simple tasks such as access to data,
become cumbersome. Paradoxically, these very large organisations still
rely on high-innovation work and intensive small group collaboration.
Science innovation occurs best in smaller environments. A serious and
growing challenge is therefore for companies to re-create a small-company
environment within the larger organisation without harbouring “knowledge
silos.”
The result of these challenges is that the pharmaceutical industry now has
to do “more with less,” the response will require a fundamental change in
the traditional way companies operate internally; without this, increased
innovation - and increased profitability - is an improbable outcome.
4. The Importance of Collaboration
4.1 What is Collaboration?
The definition of collaborative working varies greatly from person to person
and from company to company, in its simplest form, secure collaborative
working uses information systems to enable individuals or groups of
individuals to work concurrently on information, no matter whether they are
dispersed or co-located.
Collaboration is already a huge part of the corporate way of life in the
pharmaceutical industry - employees rely on email, telephone and video
conferencing; they are also leveraging the capabilities of the digital
workplace to share knowledge and information with people across the
enterprise as well as with external networks. However, in reality not all
pharmaceutical companies have realised the true potential of collaborative
tools - much money has been spent in this area but crucially many
companies have omitted to invest in encouraging personal interaction, the
result being poor uptake and severe limitations on true collaborative
working.
To derive value from collaborative investments, collaboration must be
viewed as more than just technology deployment. This activity is about
behaviour, work habits, culture, leadership, management, and business
goals and value. Collaboration is a business strategy, not a tool strategy
and technology implementation alone does not change behaviour.
Collaboration strategies are now shifting from a focus on tools to the
integration of collaboration into business processes to improve
performance. Improving work practices within business processes requires
5
‘Collaborative tools are just enablers - it is the human links that are crucial.’
‘Adoption of collaborative tools across the organisation is patchy. It all depends on culture and team leadership.’
collaboration “in context” while tapping into ‘communities of practice’ as
sources of best practice and innovation.
“Contextual collaboration” as it is known, has the potential to help
pharmaceutical companies bridge the gaps that chronically reduce
productivity such as the geographic dispersal of workers, the coordination
of management where there is joint responsibility, and working across
organisational boundaries and time zones. The goal is to make online
collaboration as simple and as intuitive as it is to work with people in the
same room; while extending the boundaries of that “room” to be
independent of function or geographic location.
4.2 The Need for Collaboration
Given the pressures that the pharmaceutical industry currently faces, it is
clear that even incremental gains in efficiency and productivity can result in
a faster time to market for a product or technology. As part of this strategy
many companies are putting in place initiatives to improve collaboration
across the extended enterprise. The primary purposes are to foster
communication between increasingly specialised and geographically
dispersed groups, provide accurate reports of programme advancement,
and support decision making processes. The success of any business is
driven largely by the quality of decision making and the skill at which teams
execute those decisions. Both decision making and decision execution are
dependent on the quality of communications and access to information and
knowledge. Better communications and knowledge access lead to better
decisions, and better results implementing those decisions.
Productivity gains at each phase, however small, have an amplifying effect
- they don’t just add up, they multiply. Enterprises that fail to use modern
communication technologies and who do not leverage the knowledge base
of their workers, limit the potential for collaboration and run the very real
risk of falling behind the competition.
4.3 Knowledge Collaboration
The pharmaceutical industry is unique - essentially pharmacos and
biotechs collect and manage knowledge, the drug products being the
physical manifestation of this process.
Knowledge is said to exist in two forms: 3
a. Knowledge which can be expressed in words and numbers. This is known
6
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Despite all collaborative efforts, only around 10% -15% of intellectual capital is captured in any structured format. The rest resides on paper, in lab notebooks and in researcher’s heads.’
‘‘Knowledge sharing is achieved through cross-team learning.’
as “explicit” knowledge and can be easily communicated and shared in the
form of data, standard procedures or universal principles. This is the hard
knowledge stored in databases.
b. Knowledge stored in people’s heads. This is known as “tacit” knowledge
and is highly personal and hard to formalise. Insights, experience,
intuitions and hunches fall into this category.
In a strict sense, it is the individuals themselves that work within the
pharmaceutical industry that create knowledge - this can occur in one of
four ways:
a. Socialisation - formal and/or informal discussions as well as corridor chats
leads to the sharing of opinions, observations and knowledge. Participants
are sharing their “tacit” knowledge.
b. Externalisation - this is where an individual converts the knowledge from
his/her own head into a format which can be reused by other people - e.g.
by writing a report or summing up experimental conclusions. Here “tacit”
knowledge is being converted into an “explicit” form.
c. Combination - here individuals take “explicit” knowledge (or data) from one
or more sources and combine them to form new knowledge. This is the
combination of existing “explicit” knowledge - e.g. an individual may mine a
database and publish his findings for others to use.
d. Internalisation - this is where an individual uses “explicit” knowledge to
create new “tacit” knowledge in his/her own head - e.g. equivalent to the
above example of mining the database but not publishing the results.
The knowledge-intensive nature of pharmaceutical R&D makes the ability
to capture, communicate and exploit knowledge, not merely to provide
decision-support tools, a key determinant of their success. Systems are
already available to take care of explicit knowledge - SOPs and other
procedures as well as clinical data can be managed through intranets,
document management systems and information management systems.
The hard part is managing the tacit knowledge - e.g. tapping into the
experience, intuition, and knowledge in a scientist’s head. This type of
knowledge is almost impossible to document and according to many
respondents, represents a huge problem for any organisation. Important
tacit knowledge is too often lost through staff turnover.
Conversion between tacit and explicit knowledge requires the interaction of
human beings and is instrumental in the formation of new knowledge.
Collaborative tools play a large part in this process by facilitating the
human linkages - whether by means of a directory of different thought
leaders in a given company or by virtual meetings that bring subject matter
7
‘The majority of people work in teams most of their working day.’
‘Most teams in development are therapy specific. This limits the transfer of best practice through collaboration.’
experts together.
Collaborative tools underpin the processes of knowledge creation in the
pharmaceutical industry - without effective collaboration the products of
R&D cannot be realised - i.e. knowledge cannot be created without
facilitating human linkages, and documents cannot be produced unless
geographically dispersed teams are united.
5. The Global Enterprise
All the companies interviewed work in a collaborative way utilising teams to
progress individual projects which are aggregated into drug discovery,
candidate development and launch programmes. Work is sub-divided
down from large programmes into projects and sub-projects to which teams
of specialists deliver their outputs.
The cross-functional team is the basic functional unit and consists of a core
group which is supported by an extended network of specialists. Work is
allocated across the team members for concurrent completion.
Individuals and teams are constantly connecting with one other, allowing
them to share information and knowledge in order to progress projects
forward. However, the effectiveness of the collaborative working practices
employed by functions, teams, and individuals varies greatly - both by
company and within individual companies.
The nature of the project work and the resultant collaborative working style
varies depending on the area of R&D.
In discovery, data collaboration predominates. Researchers share and
explore new ideas, collect and record data and synthesise it to validate
these ideas and create new knowledge. Higher teams must then
collaborate across functions to evaluate this information to decide on future
research directions. Typical discovery cross-functional teams include:
• Core group – usually site specific: chemistry, biology, pharmacology and
HTS, etc
• Therapeutic team – often globally distributed: strategic role to steer the
project and the work forward (technical + commercial representatives)
In clinical development, the emphasis of collaborative work is on the
creation of documentary evidence of the results of clinical trials, ensuring
compliance with strict and detailed regulations and project
schedules/deadlines.
8
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Many project leaders have stopped thinking altogether and do not practice strategic collaboration – they’re too busy fire fighting!’
‘Functional experts are just required as a technical resource - they are not required for guidance, wisdom or other expertise!’
In development, typical cross functional teams include:
• Study teams
• Multi-country clinical teams
• Sub-teams for operational needs
• Product development teams
In pre-launch/commercial the collaborative emphasis is on decision
making.
The typical cross-functional teams include:
• Strategic marketing
• Market research
• Medical affairs
• Clinical
• Manufacturing
5.1 Cross-Functional Teams are the Norm
All respondents reported that team working has become the predominant
way of working at all levels. Individual working now may only account for
less than 40% of daily working time compared to historic norms. The trend
is to continue to work more in teams and undertake more joint work
together with colleagues during meetings.
Teams have also become much more dynamic and may be formed on an
ad hoc basis to meet short-term needs, or on a long-term basis to meet
strategic objectives. Tactical teams rely on accessing information quickly
and establishing short-term collaborative relationship to solve a specific
tactical problem or manage a particular study. After the work is completed
in weeks or months, they break-up and individuals are reassigned to new
teams. It is increasingly common for functional specialists to be working
both tactically and strategically on several different teams concurrently.
In contrast, at the start of a new candidate development programme a
“product team or therapeutic team” is appointed. These long-term teams
are responsible for steering the development programme through to
launch. The team is responsible for apportioning and delegating tasks/sub-
projects to functional departments. Therefore, team members have to
establish a wide network of collaborative partnerships with the various
specialist functions - usually spanning several different international sites.
Functional departments in development are now largely repositories for
9
‘Drug development is becoming a mechanical, robotic process with little time or opportunity for sharing knowledge.’
‘Multi-national collaboration can be a problem in virtual teams. Culture clashes often occur between the Europeans and the US - each side knows best.’
knowledge and resources to service the needs of the therapeutic areas. In
the majority of companies interviewed, therapeutic areas are discrete with
little cross therapeutic communication and collaboration, albeit with a few
notable exceptions driven by “grass roots” scientists. The result is
“therapeutic silos,” especially in clinical where there is a marked resistance
for therapeutic teams to share good and bad experiences with other teams.
This issue of “lessons learned” is being addressed by a few companies to
spread “best practice” and reduce repeatable and avoidable mistakes
made by project teams.
Study results confirmed that the cross-functional team is now the
cornerstone of all team working in the industry and is prevalent at all levels.
Cross-functional teams are not simply site specific but are, more often than
not, international in their dimensions. The variety, structure and duration of
these cross-functional teams will continue to increase.
5.2 The Move to Virtual Teams
Project working has changed significantly in the pharmaceutical industry as
companies have become increasingly decentralised. Organising and
tracking project work could easily be done in the past by moving around on
site to see all team members - individuals could simply exchange
information and brainstorm together in the same room. Now with team
members highly distributed, managers have to visit project resources
virtually rather than physically – this is virtual project management. Project
working and management is increasingly using Internet – based
collaboration tools.
A virtual project is a collaborative effort towards a specific goal or
accomplishment which is based on “collective yet remote performance.”4
This need to work apart and together has driven the need for management
tools that enable communication and coordination at a distance. The
global structure of teams has grown up to support the “virtual projects /
programmes” that now dominate the way R&D is progressed on a
worldwide scale. This trend to web project management has facilitated
distributed decision making in global teams, the next step being integrated
process management.
10
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Global pharmaceutical companies are 24/7.’
‘It is not easy to manage people scattered all over the place - you need to ensure that people are contributing.’
5.3 Managing Global Diversity
The research indicated a clear trend for companies, who although global,
favoured as much co-location for discovery team members as possible. In
development, a minority of respondents reported a trend to regionalisation.
Pre-launch to commercialisation was very much driven by global teams.
In discovery, intensive collaboration is crucial to enable the core teams to
exchange information and validate information on drug targets and leads.
Study findings suggested that this is best undertaken in an environment
where scientists can easily physically share information on their areas face-
to-face and informally. The research clearly indicated an emerging trend
towards co-location which was felt to enhance collaboration and knowledge
sharing between teams by reinforcing social networks. Discovery units tend
to be grouped together by a therapy speciality on specific sites to foster the
feeling of being part of a small company and of entrepreneurship – yet with
the resources and support of a global player.
Clinical development is highly regulated and process orientated supported
by comprehensive documentary evidence that provides a traceable link to
every individual step of a drug candidate’s development pathway. This
means the collaborative basis of team work revolves around document
construction, management and project schedules. Each phase of clinical
development has clear regulatory and commercial objectives which the
team must help the drug candidate to clear in order to progress to the next
stage. There is intense pressure on the product/therapy teams to meet
deadlines and push the candidate forward whilst still meeting regulatory
commitments.
Clinical development has become more complex with higher standards and
with larger, more global trials. Product and study teams have become
international with representatives from different countries and cultural
backgrounds working together to manage projects on a virtual basis.
Overlaid on this has been the M&A activity which respondents indicated
had often brought different or even conflicting working practices and
hindered collaboration. The research clearly indicated that the majority of
companies contacted were struggling to efficiently and effectively manage
the complexity of global clinical development in a collaborative manner.
The key strategic team in development/pre-launch has become the “global
product team or therapeutic team” – a high level and powerful cross-
functional team which is responsible for managing the whole development
programme from the time a lead becomes a candidate though to launch
where it will hand over to the global commercial/marketing team. Typically
11
‘Product teams are so focused - they will not seek out expert help until they are faced with a full blown crisis.’
‘CROs are a necessary evil in clinical development – but if you are close enough to them, it is possible to detect problems early enough to intervene and clear things up.’
this team will comprise of representatives from key clinical departments as
well as commercial (strategic marketing).
Top management has invested very significant decision making power in
this team which in the past would have rested with functional heads and
technical specialists. However, respondents have indicated that this has
caused collaboration problems due to an emphasis on individual task
completion rather than collective thinking - i.e. each team member is so
focused on his/her own share of the work that they lose sight of the
common objective.
Outsourcing and working with external suppliers has become an every day
activity for R&D teams. No more so than for clinical teams who have an
ever increasing need to collaborate closely with CROs and contract
laboratories; however, the depth and breadth of this collaboration is in the
majority of cases limited. There is significant resistance to allowing the
CRO or laboratory team members to work closely with the core study or
product teams. Respondents were unanimously suspicious of contractors
and were reluctant to share information and knowledge with them. In part
respondents commented that the strategic goals and aims of CROs were
not aligned to that of their customers.
5.4 Room for Improvement in Pharmaceutical Companies
Although all pharmaceutical companies practice collaborative working, the
quality in many cases is poor and leaves significant room for improvement.
This is because companies have had to manage a new and more complex
environment in which their R&D and commercial teams are widely
dispersed - due to both M&A activity and organic growth.
The research showed that team members do not fully commit themselves
to collaboration and fail to achieve the “multiplier effect” of true
collaborative working - instead they simply tolerate collaboration, not
getting much more out of it than they commit to it. There was a growing
realisation amongst some respondents that simply putting together a
diverse group of people to work in a cross-functional team does not
necessarily result in a timely and well run clinical study, or a well rounded
development programme for a drug candidate.
This research and other similar studies have shown that “programme/
project/ product quality” depends on how effectively members from different
functional areas integrate information and perspectives – i.e. work
collaboratively. In reality, this means the migration from a parochial view of
12
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Internal collaboration contributes to innovation and efficiency.’
‘Effective collaboration reduces duplication of work. It avoids reinventing the wheel and enables teams to move faster.’
the world - “my function, my values and my goals are paramount” - to a
broader view that - “we are all in this together.” In those companies with
high levels of collaborative working practices, individuals and teams are
committed to effective and meaningful collaboration with each other and
with external stakeholders. They take the time to understand, appreciate
and utilise the data and opinions that each member brings to a team. They
are also eager to solicit help outside the team when they reach an
impasse.
Poor team working skills often appear to be at the root of poor collaborative
working practices. Several respondents were of the opinion that a key
failure point for collaborative working especially in the technical areas, was
due to differing or hidden agendas – political infighting between
departments and functional representatives which spills over into
operational activities. This crops up particularly in cross-functional teams
where different site cultures result in different working behaviours. The
basic failure to collaborate can cause project delays and sometimes
jeopardise entire projects.
Although there is now top management emphasis on “success is team
success and rewards are team rewards,” too often interviews revealed that
this was not really embedded in company practice. Personal accountability
and responsibility remain important and cannot be hidden away under team
blame and failure. Collaborative working practices start from an individual
understanding and commitment to team working as demonstrated by the
leading companies who have invested heavily in supporting managers to
improve their team working skills.
There was a consensus from the research that effective and timely
communication practices are the basis of collaborative working. The
majority of respondents wanted to have at least one face-to-face meeting
with other team members prior to the commencement of a project. This
very human need has been lost as a result of decentralisation. Repeated
reorganisations have broken up many social networks and with so many
people spread over so many locations, it is very difficult to re-establish
these social links. E-tools from a team working perspective, so far have not
managed to effectively recreate and rebuild these social networks for
effective team working.
The respondents also reported that the old ways of disseminating
information between team members and their “extended networks” do not
work efficiently anymore. The pressure to meet deadlines especially in
development has meant a lack of time for proper exposure and testing of
13
‘In the long-run if employees don’t evolve, then they won’t last!’
knowledge. Similarly the lack of opportunities to access people either
because they are in meetings or simply not in the office due to travel
commitments or home working, limits opportunities for knowledge sharing
and collaboration. The reluctance of product teams to seek external
knowledge through closer collaboration with functional departments and to
exercise “best practice” across therapeutic areas has led to some
significant problems - including avoidable delays and even major safety
concerns. This appears to be in part due to the emasculation of functional
departments and the intense pressure on product teams to avoid delays to
project schedules.
The system-centric company
In Practice• High investment in sophisticated tools but slanted strongly towards improving discovery productivity and efficiency. Slow to introduce collaborative tools for the rest of the company.• Indiscriminate and over use of e-mail:
– mass emailing for corporate communications– “block deletes” without reading – emails often need to be backed up by voice calls to ensure receipt
• “Metrics” orientated environment deters workers from entering information readily into the official system - regarded as too “reports” orientated to be a true database.• High resistance to change. Scientists reluctant to share “personal lab information” by switching from paper to e-lab notebooks.• Restricted access to “expertise locator” available to higher management only – e.g. team leaders and upwards.• Shared workspaces used to varying degrees and success – many just “data dumps.” Preference to share data via email attachments.• No official top management encouragement towards information sharing or collaboration – simply viewed as just “another management initiative.” • High preference for insular, small teams with little interest in collaborative working with other teams.• Social networks predominate.• Teleconferences and net meetings main meeting tools for virtualteams.• Limited use of videoconferencing due to poor quality images.
In Theory• Company intranet in place.
• Advanced system in place for tracking the efficiency of the discovery process – for example:
– therapy areas under investigation at any one time
– number of employees working on a particular area, and
– status of target evaluation
• A sophisticated discovery portal system that allows users to define and receive information that interests them – e.g. a biologist’s page will be different to that of a chemist’s even though at times the same information is being mined.
• Users are able to submit news onto the system and make it available to others in different locations.
• Planned investment in technology to collect lab bench information e.g. e-lab notebooks.
• Portal system to be rolled out over the whole company.
Company A: has invested much money in collaborative technologies and in-house software development but has failed to pay attention to the “human issues” surrounding technology implementation. Behaviour has not widely changed as a result of implementation and resistance to change persists.
In Practice• High investment in sophisticated tools but slanted strongly towards improving discovery productivity and efficiency. Slow to introduce collaborative tools for the rest of the company.• Indiscriminate and over use of e-mail:
– mass emailing for corporate communications– “block deletes” without reading – emails often need to be backed up by voice calls to ensure receipt
• “Metrics” orientated environment deters workers from entering information readily into the official system - regarded as too “reports” orientated to be a true database.• High resistance to change. Scientists reluctant to share “personal lab information” by switching from paper to e-lab notebooks.• Restricted access to “expertise locator” available to higher management only – e.g. team leaders and upwards.• Shared workspaces used to varying degrees and success – many just “data dumps.” Preference to share data via email attachments.• No official top management encouragement towards information sharing or collaboration – simply viewed as just “another management initiative.” • High preference for insular, small teams with little interest in collaborative working with other teams.• Social networks predominate.• Teleconferences and net meetings main meeting tools for virtualteams.• Limited use of videoconferencing due to poor quality images.
In Theory• Company intranet in place.
• Advanced system in place for tracking the efficiency of the discovery process – for example:
– therapy areas under investigation at any one time
– number of employees working on a particular area, and
– status of target evaluation
• A sophisticated discovery portal system that allows users to define and receive information that interests them – e.g. a biologist’s page will be different to that of a chemist’s even though at times the same information is being mined.
• Users are able to submit news onto the system and make it available to others in different locations.
• Planned investment in technology to collect lab bench information e.g. e-lab notebooks.
• Portal system to be rolled out over the whole company.
Company A: has invested much money in collaborative technologies and in-house software development but has failed to pay attention to the “human issues” surrounding technology implementation. Behaviour has not widely changed as a result of implementation and resistance to change persists.
The culture conflict company
In Practice• The new merged organisation has stepped back 3-4 years in terms of collaborative efforts compared to the strong predecessor company.• Collaborative efforts have ceased until the new organisation reaches a steady-state – losing valuable time. • Incompatible legacy data in many different formats.• Significant “tacit” knowledge lost as a result of staff turnover following merger – failure to manage this in the transition period.• There has been a failure to nurture “communities of practice”– a “kick start” will be required to recreate them and build new relationships.• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. This imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.• Teleconferencing and email attachments predominate in the new organisation with limited use of share workspaces and videoconferencing.• An inherent dislike of sharing information has been compounded following merger with the arrival of many new, unfamiliar and unknown people from a different company. Internal silos persist especially along company boundaries. • An efficient “expertise locator” remains an unmet need – but top management do not want to invest in this area. Many workers still rely on their social networks and self-developed contact lists; but networks have been broken following merger.• In the new organisation there is a need for more customised information - too much is pushed at workers via email and it takes too long to find operationally relevant data.
In TheoryThe collaboratively strong predecessor company:• Organised its knowledge management and collaborative efforts around the intranet and a Groupware model:
– All tools were accommodated on the intranet
– Single point of entry was provided via portal technology
– The central data repository had forced people to store information in a standardised format – “future proofing”
– Communities of interest were very active
– Videoconferencing was a readily available tool
• Had strong commitment to using collaborative working practices from top management.
• Had widespread commitment to the use of cross-therapeutic collaborative teams to bring “learning” from across the organisation.
The collaboratively weak predecessor company:
• Termed “weak” as a result of its corporate culture towards collaboration and poor implementation of collaborative working practices.
• It had many of the same e-tools for collaborative working as the strong company, but simply viewed e-tools as an “added layer of complexity to the business, rather than “an opportunity to improve productivity and effectiveness.”
• Knowledge management was not a corporate priority and there were limited initiatives in place.
Company B: the collaboratively weak company purchases the collaboratively strong company and collaborative efforts grind to a halt following merger.
In Practice• The new merged organisation has stepped back 3-4 years in terms of collaborative efforts compared to the strong predecessor company.• Collaborative efforts have ceased until the new organisation reaches a steady-state – losing valuable time. • Incompatible legacy data in many different formats.• Significant “tacit” knowledge lost as a result of staff turnover following merger – failure to manage this in the transition period.• There has been a failure to nurture “communities of practice”– a “kick start” will be required to recreate them and build new relationships.• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. This imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.• Teleconferencing and email attachments predominate in the new organisation with limited use of share workspaces and videoconferencing.• An inherent dislike of sharing information has been compounded following merger with the arrival of many new, unfamiliar and unknown people from a different company. Internal silos persist especially along company boundaries. • An efficient “expertise locator” remains an unmet need – but top management do not want to invest in this area. Many workers still rely on their social networks and self-developed contact lists; but networks have been broken following merger.• In the new organisation there is a need for more customised information - too much is pushed at workers via email and it takes too long to find operationally relevant data.
In TheoryThe collaboratively strong predecessor company:• Organised its knowledge management and collaborative efforts around the intranet and a Groupware model:
– All tools were accommodated on the intranet
– Single point of entry was provided via portal technology
– The central data repository had forced people to store information in a standardised format – “future proofing”
– Communities of interest were very active
– Videoconferencing was a readily available tool
• Had strong commitment to using collaborative working practices from top management.
• Had widespread commitment to the use of cross-therapeutic collaborative teams to bring “learning” from across the organisation.
The collaboratively weak predecessor company:
• Termed “weak” as a result of its corporate culture towards collaboration and poor implementation of collaborative working practices.
• It had many of the same e-tools for collaborative working as the strong company, but simply viewed e-tools as an “added layer of complexity to the business, rather than “an opportunity to improve productivity and effectiveness.”
• Knowledge management was not a corporate priority and there were limited initiatives in place.
Company B: the collaboratively weak company purchases the collaboratively strong company and collaborative efforts grind to a halt following merger.
14
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Culture is the single biggest barrier to sharing knowledge and information.’
‘There are no real incentives to promote information and knowledge sharing.’
The collaborative company
In Practice• ‘Grass roots’ scientists within these tight therapeutic areas recognised the benefits of collaboration and requested the formation of communities of practice to link people across the organisation around a given subject.
• The majority of communities of practice are supported by adequate resources.
• Workflow benefits are increasingly being realised as a result of access to e-tools via the desktop.
• Increased use of mobile systems for remote workers – especially senior executives and remote/home office workers.
• Cross-therapy learning events take place in order to generate new knowledge and re-use existing knowledge.
• Adoption and use of the e-collaborative tools remain patchy throughout the organisation despite intensive support efforts.
• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. As in other companies, this imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.
• To reduce the amount of “corporate emails” the onus has now been place on individuals to check the relevant bulletin boards.
• Increased emphasis on visual communications:
– High quality videoconferencing available (as good as face-to-face) but very expensive and available only on major sites
– Access problems to normal video suites
– Evaluating video kiosks in offices and labs for “impulse use”
In Theory• Discovery efforts in the new organisation were organised into tight therapeutic areas to allow smaller groups of researchers to work independently and quickly (recreating a small company environment).
• Branded collaborative intranet.
• Communities of practice in place company-wide via portal technology.
• Central data repositories.
• Implementation of e-lab notebooks in the near future to enhance discovery data sharing and collection.
• Expertise bank.
• Groupware software in place:
– Instant messaging available to all
– Shared workspaces/ object sharing
• Net meeting facilities.
• Emphasis on visual communications:
– Two levels of videoconferencing available:
• High quality
• Normal quality
– Evaluating new visual communication modes
• Evaluating opportunities for VoIP implementation.
Company C: following merger a few years back, this company has cautiously and carefully invested in the e-tools as well as in change management to help workers adapt and adopt new working practices. This system has been built around communication and collaboration rather than knowledge management.
In Practice• ‘Grass roots’ scientists within these tight therapeutic areas recognised the benefits of collaboration and requested the formation of communities of practice to link people across the organisation around a given subject.
• The majority of communities of practice are supported by adequate resources.
• Workflow benefits are increasingly being realised as a result of access to e-tools via the desktop.
• Increased use of mobile systems for remote workers – especially senior executives and remote/home office workers.
• Cross-therapy learning events take place in order to generate new knowledge and re-use existing knowledge.
• Adoption and use of the e-collaborative tools remain patchy throughout the organisation despite intensive support efforts.
• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. As in other companies, this imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.
• To reduce the amount of “corporate emails” the onus has now been place on individuals to check the relevant bulletin boards.
• Increased emphasis on visual communications:
– High quality videoconferencing available (as good as face-to-face) but very expensive and available only on major sites
– Access problems to normal video suites
– Evaluating video kiosks in offices and labs for “impulse use”
In Theory• Discovery efforts in the new organisation were organised into tight therapeutic areas to allow smaller groups of researchers to work independently and quickly (recreating a small company environment).
• Branded collaborative intranet.
• Communities of practice in place company-wide via portal technology.
• Central data repositories.
• Implementation of e-lab notebooks in the near future to enhance discovery data sharing and collection.
• Expertise bank.
• Groupware software in place:
– Instant messaging available to all
– Shared workspaces/ object sharing
• Net meeting facilities.
• Emphasis on visual communications:
– Two levels of videoconferencing available:
• High quality
• Normal quality
– Evaluating new visual communication modes
• Evaluating opportunities for VoIP implementation.
Company C: following merger a few years back, this company has cautiously and carefully invested in the e-tools as well as in change management to help workers adapt and adopt new working practices. This system has been built around communication and collaboration rather than knowledge management.
6. Ignore Cultural Issues at your Peril
The biggest challenge to get employees to work together collaboratively is
not a technological problem - it's a cultural and organisational one.5
The study identified a number barriers to collaborative working which
include:
• Inherent dislike of sharing information - “knowledge is power”
• Low perceived “value” in sharing information
• Mistrust of those who individuals have not met in person
• Concerns over who will have access to the information - worries over repercussions where sensitive information is concerned
• Geographical distribution of workers
• Working styles - culture
• Resistance to change
• Effort required - an added burden
• Lack of leadership
• Lack of training
• Transactional nature of relationships - idea of separate functions working towards different goals
As companies grow and as the amount of information generated increases,
fewer people have time to read the literature or are able to personally
interact with those outside their particular programme. This results in
isolated projects, the inability to stay current, and the repetition of effort.
The problem in large pharmaceutical companies is that there are too many
people, too much information and too little time devoted to overcoming the
15
‘‘There are people who think that knowledge is power and who do not share information - or they share knowledge but only on their terms.’
‘Technical tools cannot substitute the traditional, human, face-to-face way of sharing information around the table - they can only reinforce contact.’
barriers to sharing information in order to develop a collaborative culture.
Collaborative tools on the market today make it easy to coordinate large
groups by enabling members to post questions, work jointly on documents,
schedule meetings and track progress toward goals. But not every
company is positioned to take advantage of the tools. The danger for many
is overspending on collaborative technologies without making the cultural
and organizational adjustments necessary to derive any benefit from them.
Collaboration software just won't work if you don't have an environment
that encourages people to work together. This will be a big leap for many
companies where individuals are rewarded for controlling knowledge and
highlighting their own achievements, rather than for sharing knowledge and
focusing on team accomplishments.
The study results highlighted that culture was indeed a critical factor in
ensuring greater collaboration - “as with any technology implementation,
20% rests on the technology itself, and 80% on culture.” This issue is even
more important where ‘virtual teams’ are concerned - the process of
developing a common understanding in virtual teams is complex and often
slows decision making down. Many respondents felt frustrated by their
company’s internal culture as it does not create the right environment for
collaboration.
6.1 The importance of Relationships for Effective Collaboration
Many times in the context of this research respondents have commented
that nothing quite beats face-to-face meetings - i.e. “seeing the whites of
their eyes.” To work effectively, relationships must be built with other team
members or decision makers; and close relationship are best built through
face-to-face contact.
There is currently little time for social chat within the modern
pharmaceutical workplace - the friendly building of relationships around the
coffee machine or water cooler have gone as a result of decentralisation
and remote working. Many respondents felt that some form of visual
communication is better than just voice to further relationships. For teams
to collaborate effectively and to share information freely there needs to be
an element of trust that is inherent in a corporate culture. This can only be
achieved through the development of good relationships.
The hierarchical nature of pharmaceutical companies prevents some teams
collaborating well. Senior people can be very territorial, defensive and even
closed. If these senior people happen to be part of your team, team
16
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘The problem of having to work in family time is becoming a problem – it is like being trapped in a never ending process.’
‘Everyone automatically works in English – very often people forget that their colleagues are not as fast as they are – and often don’t understand subtleties.’
collaboration becomes difficult as individuals have to work around
managerial “egos” and sensitivities.
Information hoarders will always exist and with a lack of incentives that
reward results, personnel often feel that it is not in their interests to share
information - they become economical with information, thus impeding
collaborative efforts.
In many cases collaboration is at odds with the company’s corporate
culture so implementation will be disruptive. Shifting a corporate culture
from being competitive to being co-operative is not easy, requiring changes
at all levels of the organization, including the CEO.
6.2 The Formation of the 24/7 Culture
With businesses becoming global and with the vast majority of
pharmaceutical companies having offices across all time zones, it is often
necessary to conduct business outside the normal working day. The time
differences between the US and Central Europe, or between Europe and
Asia only allow for minimal work day overlap. This requires interaction
between global team members to occur early in the morning or late into the
evening and team members that engage in frequent global interactions
might keep a 12-16 hour a day work schedule. This type of frequent, out-of-
hours interaction has a negative impact on quality of life.
6.3 Language Barriers Impede Collaboration
Collaborative teams within pharmaceutical companies are more than likely
to include many different nationalities, particularly in the strategic pre-
launch teams which are global by nature. As more and more collaboration
is becoming virtual and thus not face-to-face, team members often forget
that English may not be their colleagues’ first language. Very often people
are guilty of not making allowances for others, particularly when there is
little face-to-face contact. Silences can be misinterpreted as a failure to
understand and even as stupidity when in fact, they are due to colleagues
taking the time to work out a response.
6.5 Organisational Framework for Collaboration
Organisational structural changes during the 1990s as a result of M&A
activity and efforts to speed up development had far reaching changes on
17
‘The problem is that key user groups are often not properly consulted - then technology is imposed that does not meet user needs.’
‘Information hoarders exist – incentives that reward results often mean that individuals do not feel that they benefit from not sharing information.’
teams and team working. One of the key changes was to structure aspects
of discovery and all development around therapeutic areas, rather than
functional departments. In the new structures respondents explained that
functional departments are required to “sell their services” to therapy areas
and sometimes to compete with external providers e.g. CROs, as top
management seek to speed up development and reduce costs through
increased outsourcing. The other major change has been the proliferation
of R&D sites around the world. This trend to decentralisation has increased
the complexity of operational management and the deployment of teams.
Collaboration strategists must overcome organisational issues such as
persuading people to work differently, establishing incentives and
performance measures that foster greater information sharing and co-
operation. Community building efforts are valuable to create synergies
across processes and functional groups. Embedded within the
collaborative application might be a “my networks” pane that lists personal
resources (e.g. team members, friends, mentors, learning modules),
communities of practice (e.g. communities of people around a given
subject matter) to which the user belongs, and other project teams working
in closely aligned areas. This approach provides users with peripheral
vision of what else is going on that might influence their own work
practices. In this respect, collaboration becomes a cornerstone of
knowledge management and enterprise learning strategies.
IT departments of many large pharmaceutical companies appear to be out
of touch with the real needs of the business and often lag significantly
behind the pace of technological change. However, some respondents
mentioned that IT departments are now catching up and focusing more on
business needs.
7. The Backbone for Collaboration
Pharmaceutical companies are organising their collaborative technology
platforms around an intranet and Groupware model.
18
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘The intranet is not well designed and you can never find the information you require - most is out of date.’
‘I spend too much time trying to access relevant information - both from inside and outside the company.’
Figure 1: Collaborative Platforms
Internal Libraries
ToolsData MiningVisualisation
Decision Support
Groupware
Directories
Data Repositories
Portals
ExternalContent
External Libraries
CollaborativeIntranet
Shared Workspace
Instant Messaging
Scheduling
White Boards
USERS
E-Lab Notebooks
Internal Libraries
ToolsData MiningVisualisation
Decision Support
Groupware
Directories
Data Repositories
Portals
ExternalContent
External Libraries
CollaborativeIntranet
Shared Workspace
Instant Messaging
Scheduling
White Boards
USERS
Internal Libraries
ToolsData MiningVisualisation
Decision Support
Groupware
Directories
Data Repositories
Portals
ExternalContent
External Libraries
CollaborativeIntranet
Shared Workspace
Instant Messaging
Scheduling
White Boards
USERS
E-Lab Notebooks
7.1 Intranet
An intranet permits a widely dispersed group of people to interact,
connecting them and their ideas. It offers the best and fastest solution for
information to be dispersed in order for knowledge to be created but it
cannot succeed alone.
The goals behind a collaborative intranet include:
• To facilitate the interaction of individuals
• To enable data to be repurposed and reused
• Increase effective use of online tools - including training tools (FAQ,
tutorials, classes, etc.)
• Allow web-based approaches for collaboration - including means for
researchers to easily and rapidly post information in a variety of data
formats
• Identify a network of experts for answering inquiries
• Lead focus groups to determine needs
• Investigate approaches peers are undertaking
• Smoothly interface all departments and other necessary groups
• Promote the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge by creating a process
19
‘What is needed is change management and training not just the tools. People are busy doing their day-to-day job and do not have the time take on extra burdens.’
‘The IT department is not in tune with the company’s real business needs. They tend to focus on fixing what they have rather the new emerging technologies.’
to capture vital information residing on scientist’s computers and in their
heads
Portals are creating new channels for information and data access from a
single entry point. The content and presentation of the default page
presented upon access can be customised therefore allowing companies to
define and tailor the information and tools available to different sets of
workers across the organisation.
Many pharmaceutical companies have expended a lot of effort on the
intranet model and not enough on the area of personal interaction.
Creativity and innovation are fostered in small groups of people with
different, but complementary, perspectives. In order to compete in the post-
genomic era, pharmaceutical companies need to use a dynamic intranet to
create a network that allows these small groups to find one another and
innovate. They need to fashion a truly collaborative intranet in order to
facilitate individuals to use the intranet to help them create knowledge.
Most intranets do not yet facilitate the creation of a vibrant community and
have not succeeded in decreasing the friction of information transfer
between different groups. It is usually very difficult for individuals to post
explicit information in a useful manner for others to view and the
presentation of tacit information is virtually impossible. Knowledge creation
does not arise spontaneously - it requires people: people to examine facts;
people to combine facts; people to use the facts. It requires the creation of
a community of practice that can socialise, externalise, combine and
internalise the data, allowing new knowledge to come forth. It emerges
from the personal interactions, conversations and contemplations of
people.
Knowledge cannot be separated from the communities that create, use and
maintain it. These communities are particularly useful in the pharmaceutical
industry with an organisational structure that tends to be based on cross-
functional teams. Communities of practice are effective tools to link people
within their discipline while maintaining the focus of a cross-functional
team. Industry experience is that behavioural and organisational, rather
than technology issues need to be in the centre of attention when
establishing new or encouraging existing communities of practice. A critical
requirement is resource allocation to help create and maintain a viable
community - information and links must up-to-date, without this information
flow will stagnate and the community will die.
20
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Global team rooms have had a huge impact and the benefits have been felt by all – it has certainly cut down on travelling time.’
‘When the Europeans switch off the US can take on the work and then hand back to the Europeans the next day.’
7.2 Groupware
Groupware is software that groups or teams use together over computer
networks and the Internet. It is based on the assumption that computer
networks can help people increase their decision making ability and
productivity by collaborating and sharing information. The core element of
Groupware is that it provides mechanisms to share and distribute
information. Frequently, communication is informal in this environment and
users freely exchange information and collaborate. Groupware
technologies are particularly well suited to R&D, where specialists in given
technologies or techniques who may be dispersed worldwide need to
exchange their expertise in order to find solutions to specific problems.
Groupware defines the flow of documents and the work that must be done
to complete the project. It facilitates interaction which must occur in order
for knowledge to be created and decisions to be made by providing
communication and collaboration mechanisms where face-to-face
conversation is difficult or expensive.
Some Groupware systems offer simple communication tools such as email,
instant messaging, white boards, or threaded discussion groups. This type
of Groupware primarily provides means for users to share, structure, and
exchange information that typically lies outside of corporate data
repositories. Other Groupware packages provide similar communication
mechanisms but are more integrated with corporate data repositories and
can reference the documents or experimental data within those
repositories. This type of Groupware also typically provides a work
environment where information is organised on a project-based structure.
Depending on the nature of the required collaboration, Groupware can be
tightly integrated with existing email, resource management, scheduling, e-
learning, and project management systems. Given the increasing
importance of collaboration both within and between organisations,
Groupware systems provide selective access and information sharing.
As is the case in communities of practice, behavioural and organisational,
rather than technology issues are at the forefront when encouraging the
adoption and use of Groupware. The structure and goals of the shared
workspace need to be defined in advance as do roles and responsibilities.
Without leadership and resource allocation the shared workspace will
deteriorate into a collection of disjointed documents and unrelated
information.
21
‘There is much resistance to enter information into the official system over and above what is required.’
‘Very sophisticated tools are in use in discovery, but there is a real need to improve the tools available to the rest of the company.’
8. Current Collaborative Practice
Collaborative solutions have reached the level of reliability, ease-of-use,
and utility levels whereby they are finally beginning to change behaviour.
The tools are helping to build more effective work teams, manage globally
dispersed resources, shorten development cycles and lower operating
costs.
Selecting the right tool for the right task is an important feature and will
result in positive collaborative experiences. Important considerations
include the size of the audience, the intended level of interaction and the
immediacy of the required response. Chat and instant messaging are forms
of synchronous communications. Like a telephone call, a chat or instant
messaging session is live and each user responds to the other in real time.
In contrast, discussion forums and email for example, are asynchronous
communications. Some amount of time may pass before a person
responds to a message and/or reuses, repurposes or redistributes the
information. Effective collaboration requires the right mix of both
synchronous and asynchronous tools used in the appropriate manner.
Table 1: Pros and Cons of Synchronous and Asynchronous Collaborative Tools
Pros• Time to structure response and gather necessary information • Durable store of knowledge and information• Organisation of information and knowledge• Information can be reused/re-purposed and re-distributed• Audit trails of usage can be applied – added securityCons• Delay in response• Static by nature• Information transfer rather than communication – does not promote externalisation• Information/knowledge sharing must be encouraged so that the system does not stagnate• Users must know how to access required information
Pros• Immediacy of response• Brings geographically dispersed teams together in real-time• Ideal for decision support• Dynamic by nature• Facilitates socialisation • Promotes flow of tacit knowledge• Lies outside corporate data repositories – less inhibitedCons• Information must be prepared/ready to be shared • Data requires capture and storage• Presence required in the same “space” in real time • Users must be able to access others – expertise locator, directories.
• Email• Discussion groups/forums• Data repositories/databases• Intranet• Document sharing (e-room environment)• Recorded broadcasts/web-casts
• Chat – telephone, mobile, teleconferencing• Instant messaging• Net meetings• Video conferencing• Face-to-face
Asynchronous Collaborative ToolsSynchronous Collaborative Tools
Pros• Time to structure response and gather necessary information • Durable store of knowledge and information• Organisation of information and knowledge• Information can be reused/re-purposed and re-distributed• Audit trails of usage can be applied – added securityCons• Delay in response• Static by nature• Information transfer rather than communication – does not promote externalisation• Information/knowledge sharing must be encouraged so that the system does not stagnate• Users must know how to access required information
Pros• Immediacy of response• Brings geographically dispersed teams together in real-time• Ideal for decision support• Dynamic by nature• Facilitates socialisation • Promotes flow of tacit knowledge• Lies outside corporate data repositories – less inhibitedCons• Information must be prepared/ready to be shared • Data requires capture and storage• Presence required in the same “space” in real time • Users must be able to access others – expertise locator, directories.
• Email• Discussion groups/forums• Data repositories/databases• Intranet• Document sharing (e-room environment)• Recorded broadcasts/web-casts
• Chat – telephone, mobile, teleconferencing• Instant messaging• Net meetings• Video conferencing• Face-to-face
Asynchronous Collaborative ToolsSynchronous Collaborative Tools
There is a wide variety of collaborative tools available within
pharmaceutical companies - but often these tools are being used
inappropriately. In addition, many of these tools are not intuitive, which
limits their wide spread adoption and use in everyday collaborative
working.
Respondents reported that all too often the selection and introduction of e-
tools failed to take into account the practical business needs of their work
function. Consequently there was a mismatch between expectations and
22
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘The mobile phone plays a key role in global collaboration by allowing people to contact other team members to share immediate thoughts.’
reality. A further point raised, was that many of the tools were complicated
or cumbersome to use (switching between different applications) - resulting
in limited uptake. Finally implementation of new packages was more often
than not poorly managed with little follow up to initial training programmes.
Unsurprisingly widespread adoption of collaborative tools has not met
expectations of IT departments and top management. In contrast, a few
respondents reported that their companies are now investing more time in
canvassing the opinions of managers on their needs and investing heavily
in implementation programmes, resulting in higher uptake.
The study examined the attitude and perceived value of current
collaborative tools. Results confirmed the fact that human beings are
inherently visual beings - we want to see as much as we want to hear.
Combining verbal and visual exchange of information was found to
increase the “richness” and add value to the collaborative experience.
Figure 2: Combination of Verbal and Visual Information Exchange
“Ric
hnes
s”
Connectivity
Audiotelephone, mobile
Webemail, instant messaging, e-rooms, white boards, discussion groups
Audio + Webnet meetings
Face-to-Face
Audio + Videovideo streamingvideo conferencing
Audio + Video + Webvideo conferencing + web meeting
8.1 Audio
Nothing compares to live conversation and since its invention over 100
years ago, the telephone has become the gold standard by which other
communication services are measured. Mobile networks have increased
reach and accessibility but at the same time, have made individuals too
accessible out of hours impacting on lifestyle.
23
‘People often do not give their full attention to the teleconference - some are even checking emails at the same time. This really devalues the quality of the discussion.’
‘VoIP has human as well as cost benefits. You can start a conference and then easily bring in other participants as well as other collaborative tools - this flexibility offers real user benefits.’
8.2 Audio Conferencing
Given the global acceptance of the telephone, it is no surprise that
teleconferencing is the most commonly used form of conferencing in the
pharmaceutical industry today. It is easy to set up and allows universal
access, unlike videoconferencing there is no need to book dedicated
rooms.
Teleconferencing is not without its weaknesses, however. The study
revealed that the vast majority of teleconference participants multitask
during audio meetings instead of focusing on the topic at hand. Some
companies have introduced a “closed laptop” policy to try and combat this
behaviour. Participants also complain that they do not know who is present
at any given time - “people log-in and wander off.” In addition,
teleconferences do not allow participants to share non-verbal cues
including gestures, posture and facial expressions. Therefore, despite the
obvious benefits, teleconferencing is not the perfect tool.
8.3 VoIP
VoIP (voice over IP) is emerging as the second best solution to face-to-
face or videoconferencing. It allows for natural voice exchange and is
cheaper for global organisations than meeting face-to-face or by video link.
Introducing VoIP is a significant investment but it offers long term cost
effectiveness as well as collaborative benefits over and above
teleconferencing - VoIP allows additional participants seamless entry into
discussions avoiding the need to dial long, complicated numbers; as well
as the ability to bring in other collaborative tools at any time. The move to
VoIP is considered by many respondents to be a move closer in the
direction of contextual collaboration.
8.4 Presence Awareness
Presence awareness, to data has been a specific functionality of instant
messaging that allows people to contact each other by the ability to “see”
who out of their contacts is online at any given time. It can be extended to
see where contacts are and the processes they are currently involved in.
Today presence awareness is starting to move out of just instant
messaging and into other systems such as VOIP, allowing the user the
ability to choose the communication medium based upon the availability
indicated by the presence system.
24
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘The aim of electronic tools is to reinforce contact and human practice.’
‘Too much information is pushed at executives via email - time is lost just trying to keep abreast of the situation.’
8.5 Instant Messaging
Instant messaging provides a way to send short messages to other people
in real time via pop-up messages. Initially these messages are typed, but
as network bandwidth and multimedia capabilities improve, instant
messaging will use voice and video. Instant messaging is one of the
fastest-growing forms of Internet communications due to its real-time
nature; it bridges the gap between voice calls and email. Like email it
requires a response but current systems do not archive messages.
8.6 Email
Email lets users communicate with one another, coordinate activities, and
easily share information. However, lack of discipline regarding the use of
email leads to inappropriate and over-use, email mountains result - some
respondents to the study complained of having 500+ emails on their
system at any given time.
Problems arise where alerts or notifications are sent out in duplicate and
where individuals inappropriately use the system as a means of document
sharing and/or transfer. The attitude and use of email is culturally
entrenched - many companies collaborative culture has revolved around
email systems with document attachment capabilities. Moving people away
from reliance on email requires a fundamental change in behaviour -
solutions noted in the study include placing the onus on individuals to
check bulletin boards to avoid the need for email alerts and stipulating that
data should reside in shared workspaces or data repositories. Instead of
attaching documents to emails, only a link to the document should be
provided. This saves data being circulated unnecessarily, avoids email
overload and affords the recipient the choice of whether to follow the link or
not.
Email “overload” is an underestimated problem in most pharmaceutical
companies, it has a negative impact on workflow - few people have the
time to deal with email, they block delete and the result is that information
is lost and/or not acted upon. For this reason email has not been regarded
as an effective communication tool with people preferring to use voice or
even face-to-face where possible.
25
‘Shared work spaces are revolutionising how people work.’
‘Our shared workspace is just a data dump and there is no logical order to any of the information - users know in advance that they will be unable to find anything of use in it.’
8.7 Shared Workspaces
Shared workspaces are a core of Groupware applications and provide a
mechanism to share and distribute information, documents and/or objects.
The ability to share any of these with ease and immediacy is critical to
meeting the expectations of joint working and to help people communicate
and collaborate - shared workspaces not only provide a central information
store but also access to common tools. They may also include chat rooms
for real time discussions and bulletin boards to post documents or
questions.
Access to the workspace can be controlled therefore promoting not only
internal collaboration, but providing a means for secure collaboration with
external partners.
In conjunction with other Groupware functionalities, shared workspaces:
• Stimulate cooperation between team members
• Coordinate people and processes and reduce bottle-necks in
information sharing
• Define the flow of documents and the work required to complete
various stage-gate processes
• Maintain version control and audit trails
• Archive in terms of record of events, activities, problems and solutions
• Facilitate decision making
Shared workspaces have revolutionised how many teams work in the
pharmaceutical industry but as with all technology implementations,
adoption is patchy across the industry and even within individual
companies. Culture and behaviour play a large part as does team
leadership. To avoid a “data dump” situation, discipline has to be exerted
over the structure of the workspace as well as adherence to roles and
responsibilities. Without permanent management of the information
throughout its lifecycle, it rapidly loses its value no matter how rich the
collaborative environment. Resource must be allocated to prevent loss of
information - for this an integrated approach as well as an integrated
solution is required.
Effective use of shared workspaces requires a fundamental change in
behaviour; users often revert to familiar tools that they are comfortable with
- e.g. email. The problem lies in the fact that many pharmaceutical
companies have invested heavily in IT solutions but have failed to provide
adequate training; therefore, the users lack the confidence to use the new
26
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘People are very busy. The thought of putting data into a database is often viewed as added work - why bother when they are done with the information and no-one is ever going to use it again.’
‘Always best to reinvent the wheel and hope you come up with a better design!’
tools effectively. The problem is further compounded by M&A activity that
brings together two culturally diverse organisations with different
technology implementations.
8.8 Data Repositories
Since their inception, Pharma companies have run experiments and
recorded data. For many years that data was stored on paper or in a lab
book. Converting this data into an electronic format is essential for a
complete legacy system. This can be a major hurdle and probably the
biggest problem associated with re-working systems is getting data “into
shape” so it can easily be accessed by researchers who span the globe.
Magnifying this problem has been M&A activity, predecessor companies
are often made up of predecessor companies themselves which further
complicates the situation as each had their own legacy system and
preferred data storage format which may or may not be compatible.
There is much debate of the value of legacy data - some feel that so much
work has been done to clean up and add value to the data that it is cheaper
and easier to rerun the experiment. On the other hand, others believe that
there are insights into drug development in old data that are still valuable -
e.g. throughout the life cycle of a drug discovery programme, many insights
may emerge that are relevant beyond their immediate use. However, faced
with drying pipelines and the never ending quest to be more efficient in
drug development, pharmaceutical companies are beginning to tackle the
technical and cultural issues of what to do with legacy data. Keeping track
of all the information generated in the drug development process and
exploiting it to the full is far from straightforward. Much potentially useful
information continues to be lost because it never gets further than an
individual’s brain.
The challenges over successful data mining all centre around integration -
integration of access, integration of mining tools, integration of
interpretation tools, etc. At the moment, information still tends to be
fragmented and sit in “silos.” And, more importantly, the study highlights
the fact that the sharing of information and knowledge has not been high
priority. Companies often maintain large data sets which can be physically
accessed but which lack the “metadata.” Metadata is especially important
to legacy data because the context is lost over time. Therefore, to create
knowledge from existing information companies today have to make sure
that the data they are storing will be of use to future scientists - systems
must be designed that capture both data and the context of the experiment
27
‘Knowledge sharing in our organisation is not a global process.’
‘E-lab books are on their way but there is huge resistance to this initiative. Scientists are very protective over the information in their paper lab books and are very reluctant to share information.’
that generated that data (i.e. the metadata). By forcing data to be captured
in a standardised format, data repository systems are intended to provide a
“future-proof” solution to this problem.
Collaborative technologies such as corporate intranets have provided a
solution to the distribution of knowledge across pharmaceutical
organisations (knowledge management) by facilitating common access to
geographically distributed databases. People can now see information from
many different sources in an intuitive and integrated way. Data repositories
can be mined, visualised and then the results published so that others
across the organisation can use the information. However, as with other IT
implementations, organisations have focused heavily on the technical
solution and have over-looked the human element such as training people,
reducing their resistance to change, and encouraging people to share
knowledge.
An outstanding issue is that many researchers have difficulty dealing with
the huge amount of information available and many are still spending too
much time accessing irrelevant information. Even when new information is
processed, there are few effective ways to disperse any new knowledge
that is created. Portals are providing a partial solution by allowing user
defined functionality and role based access, yet there remains an unmet
need for search tools to be more intuitive and for users to be able to
effectively “profile” the information they want to see. Searching is time
consuming and relies on proactive user pull. Respondents commented that
they need a more intelligent system that allows them to pre-define the
information they require and one that automatically links them to critical
internal and external information based on this profile.
8.9 Electronic Lab Notebooks
Electronic lab notebooks are essentially data repository systems designed
to support user workflow and processes through the discovery cycle. In
practical terms this means being able to document accurately experiments
that have been carried out as well as search for, retrieve and analyse those
experiments in order to inform future research efforts - the key point being
that digitised information is far easier to share and collaborate on.
The research community has mixed emotions regarding the adoption of e-
lab notebooks. There are those who believe that their paper lab books are
as personal as diaries and who are unwilling to make that information
available to a wider audience; and then there are others who are eager to
28
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Company-wide portals are expected to change working processes - portals will provide single access for all user needs.’
gain from the potential benefits of this tool:
• Faster experiment write-up
• Repetitive task automation
• Greater compliance with information standards and standard operating
procedures
• Generation of knowledge stores to enable smarter decision making on
future projects
• Access and retrieval across different research groups and sites - enabling
users to monitor experiments in progress and receive notifications when
new data is posted
Investment in e-lab notebooks will provide pharmaceutical companies with
the answer to an unavoidable need; namely that information storage,
sharing and retrieval affords a core competitive strength, but widespread
uptake of the tool will require attention to the more soft issues of human
behaviour. Widespread adoption of e-lab notebooks will require a change
in attitude and behaviour. Users must realise a net gain from the system
thus aiding not only uptake but also reducing resistance to change.
8.10 Portals
Portals are creating new channels for information and data access from a
single entry point. Single entry is becoming an important feature as users
find the process of having to go into different systems and enter multiple
passwords not only irritating, but time consuming.
Portals serve as a ‘one-stop’ information resource for specific topics on an
intranet and facilitate the link between cross-organisational communities.
The study revealed increased deployment of the portal model for therapy
groups, product teams and functional departments.
The content and presentation of the default page presented upon access
can be customised towards specific user communities or groups - users
can enter and immediately gain access to the tools they require and see
what is important, read it and/or download it. In an era where access to
vast amounts of data is possible, portals provide a means of pulling all the
relevant information for specific user groups together in one space so that it
can be accessed and mined.
29
‘If you want to find someone, you ring around.’
‘The efficiency of net meetings could be increased if documents for discussion were sent out in advance.’
8.11 Expertise Locators
For knowledge to be effectively created, connections must be made - not
only between information and people, but connections between the people
themselves.
The study highlighted that common questions are, “How do I identify
people in my organization who have the expertise I need to learn about;
and how do we share knowledge person-to-person?” Solutions to these
questions have been implemented to varying degrees across the industry
with many companies placing little emphasis in this area.
Online phone books are often available where people are listed under title
and department leaving it to a best guess scenario as to who to contact.
Departmental websites may provide contact details, but many people still
rely heavily on existing social networks. The problem is that social
networks are often broken following merger. Some companies have
introduced more formalised “expertise locators” which store information on
people’s competences and experiences.
Ideally, when storing data in central repositories, the metadata should
provide a link from finding the information to contacting the people involved
in its creation. Similarly having found a person, respondents commented
that it should be possible to find the work they have primed as author or
contributed to. Search navigation needs to be able to switch from
information based navigation to people and vice-versa.
8.12 Net Meetings
A network meeting application allows users to hold meetings over the
network. Attendees sit at their workstations and collaborate on a joint
project by opening documents on the screen and working on these
documents together. Electronic mediated communication such as this lacks
the interpersonal cues that are so important for building trust between team
members. Participation among new members may be difficult without visual
interaction. Introduction prior to these meetings helps build relationships
among participants. Respondents to the study commented that information
does not flow freely unless there is mutual trust between all attendees. As
with teleconferencing, it is preferable for photos of team members to be
distributed to help participants visualise real people.
The rapid growth in net meetings is due to the fact that users need only an
Internet-connected computer and a telephone, both of which are available
on virtually every desktop. The downside to net meetings is that there is no
30
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Video-conferences are a good way of putting faces to names as getting everyone together face-to-face is not often possible.’
visual link, but the convenience and immediacy of the tool often outweighs
the need for visual cues. Where visual links are required, network meetings
are run in conjunction with videoconference sessions so attendees can see
one another and collaborate on computers at the same time. In fact, many
study respondents often expect a net meeting to run concurrently with a
videoconference not only to add value to the video link but to allow
additional non-visual attendance.
Net meetings in conjunction with videoconferences are particularly useful in
training situations, where new data has to be presented to teams, or in
situations that require decision making. In large meetings, respondents
found it is useful to have a chat window open. This helps where language
may be a barrier for some participants - due to their poor English skills they
may be hesitant to ask questions out loud, a dialog box gives these people
the time to compose the question before it is posted.
8.13 Videoconferencing
Where audio conferencing fails, videoconferencing excels by allowing
participants to share both verbal and non-verbal cues. By allowing people
not only to hear but also to see other participants, videoconferencing
enables more effective communications and fosters and environment of
interaction and collaboration. In addition, visual cues allow foreign
language speakers to be better understood. A particularly important issue
is that participants on-camera cannot easily multitask, leave the room, or
be distracted; which further enhances the overall impact of the meeting.
The ideal videoconference situation remains high-interaction meetings
between a relatively small group of participants or locations - multiple
screens (>4) often diminishes the overall quality of the interaction.
However, collaboration is more effective if the attendees have met face-to-
face before - people tend to trust others more if they have already met and
built a personal relationship; and teams that have established mutual trust,
communicate and exchange information more readily and openly.
Although videoconferencing is an excellent vehicle for bringing globally
dispersed teams together, it is far from a perfect tool. Imperfect visual
images plus time delays lead to misinterpretation of verbal communication
and body language. Technology is already in place that affords “movie
quality” pictures, but videoconferencing is inherently expensive, hence high
quality systems are not widely available.
Co-ordinating access to videoconference suites across multiple locations is
31
‘The impact of the video-conference begins to diminish if you have more than 4 or 5 participating locations.’
‘Ideas are best seeded by human contact, collaborative technologies then allow individuals to pursue those ideas.’
also a cumbersome task - many rooms are booked well in advance. In
addition, even with dedicated administrators, time is lost in set up and
getting everyone ready to start. For many, today’s videoconferencing
experience offers little value over and above teleconferences and/or net
meetings.
To make videoconferencing appeal to a wider audience it has to be
cheaper as well as more accessible, reliable, and faster to set up. Many
respondents to the study were concerned that desktop video chat would be
greedy in terms of bandwidth and if general access were allowed then
network performance could be seriously compromised. In response to the
accessibility issue, a small number of companies are piloting video kiosks
which offer wide potential across organisations:
• Human resources: global interviewing and recruitment
• Discovery labs: viewing samples and discussing projects
• Senior executives: strategy and operations meetings
8.14 Face-to-Face
Technical tools cannot substitute the traditional human face-to-face way of
collaborating and sharing information around a table - “nothing beats
seeing the whites of their eyes.” It is the best way of building relationships
and team moral. Face-to-face affords the full range of visual cues without
any misinterpretation. Nevertheless, wide geographical distribution of
teams means that routine face-to-face is not possible due to cost of travel
and time constraints of participants. Even co-located workers often resort
to teleconferencing rather than attempting to get multiple people together in
the same room at the same time.
The goal of future of collaborative environments is to simulate “face-to-
face” working as closely as possible by affording seamless transfer
between different modes of communication and collaboration.
8.15 Summary of Attitudes to Current Collaborative Tools
The following tables summarise respondent views to current tools and
practices.
32
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Technology must be simple to win acceptance quickly.’
Table 2: Pros and Cons of Synchronous Collaboration
• Co-location required for routine face-to-face• Wide geography means expensive - cost/ time of travel • Co-ordination of travel around other commitments
• “Nothing beats seeing the whites of their eyes” –personal, social• Best way of building relationships and team moral• Immediacy – excellent for decision making• Full range of communication signals – little misinterpretation
Face-to-Face
• Imperfect visual image• Time delay – misinterpretation of verbal communication• Co-ordination of access to VC suites in multiple sites• Expensive for little benefit over TC• Desktop solutions (video chat) would disable network• Time to set-up and get everyone ready to start• Cost to set-up and equip rooms plus telecommunication costs (biggest chunk)• Dislike of adding cost to cost centre
• Second best to face-to-face• Latest technology is like have person sitting next to you• The package (bandwidth) that the company opts for dictates quality• An excellent vehicle for bringing globally dispersed personnel together – heavily used at times such as 9/11• Enables users to see facial responses and body language • Can be combined with other smart tools e.g. white boards• Attendees can make contributions in advance by way of bulletin boards and email
Videoconferencing(VC)
• Requires training• Easy to forget how to set up • Incompatible with some telecom systems• No visual link
• Enables team to work from the same document and discuss same page/data• No time delay – real time• Fast to set up – convenient for participants• Flexible scheduling – sit at own workstations• Multiple parties in many locations
Net Meeting
• Requires response• Annoyance factor – potential for overuse
• Messages in real time via pop-ups • Potential for voice and video messages
Instant messaging
• Not sure who is present at any given time• Overuse of expensive mobile time in many cases • Distractions of other tasks
• Easy to set up and universal access – does not require booking of meeting roomsTeleconferencing (TC)
• Mobile phones make individuals too accessible • Life style impact on out of office hours – ‘never away from desk’
• Instant access• Text messaging can be good for instant accessPhone / Mobile
ConsProsSynchronous Collaboration
• Co-location required for routine face-to-face• Wide geography means expensive - cost/ time of travel • Co-ordination of travel around other commitments
• “Nothing beats seeing the whites of their eyes” –personal, social• Best way of building relationships and team moral• Immediacy – excellent for decision making• Full range of communication signals – little misinterpretation
Face-to-Face
• Imperfect visual image• Time delay – misinterpretation of verbal communication• Co-ordination of access to VC suites in multiple sites• Expensive for little benefit over TC• Desktop solutions (video chat) would disable network• Time to set-up and get everyone ready to start• Cost to set-up and equip rooms plus telecommunication costs (biggest chunk)• Dislike of adding cost to cost centre
• Second best to face-to-face• Latest technology is like have person sitting next to you• The package (bandwidth) that the company opts for dictates quality• An excellent vehicle for bringing globally dispersed personnel together – heavily used at times such as 9/11• Enables users to see facial responses and body language • Can be combined with other smart tools e.g. white boards• Attendees can make contributions in advance by way of bulletin boards and email
Videoconferencing(VC)
• Requires training• Easy to forget how to set up • Incompatible with some telecom systems• No visual link
• Enables team to work from the same document and discuss same page/data• No time delay – real time• Fast to set up – convenient for participants• Flexible scheduling – sit at own workstations• Multiple parties in many locations
Net Meeting
• Requires response• Annoyance factor – potential for overuse
• Messages in real time via pop-ups • Potential for voice and video messages
Instant messaging
• Not sure who is present at any given time• Overuse of expensive mobile time in many cases • Distractions of other tasks
• Easy to set up and universal access – does not require booking of meeting roomsTeleconferencing (TC)
• Mobile phones make individuals too accessible • Life style impact on out of office hours – ‘never away from desk’
• Instant access• Text messaging can be good for instant accessPhone / Mobile
ConsProsSynchronous Collaboration
Table 3: Pros and Cons of Asynchronous Collaboration
• Security, sensitivity and confidentiality• Too much information – filters required• Information must be maintained
• Highly effective for sharing data, information and knowledge with a large audience• Best place to house tools• Portals provide single point of access and can be tailored to audience requirements
Intranet
• Don’t know where to look for information• Search tools not intuitive enough• Relies on proactive user pull• Not successful at capturing tacit information• Legacy data a major issue• Huge amounts of information constantly being generated• Requires users to add knowledge and information to the system
• Easily accessible• Effectively captures and stores knowledge• Forces knowledge to be captured in a standardised format• Data can be used for validation purpose• Static• Future proof if data standardised
Databases / Data
Repositories
• Changing people’s working processes• Barrier to sharing information with people they have not met • Users need to “buy into” the concept of sharing information• Must synchronise with existing desktop environment• Training required• Not sufficient document control for validation purposes
• Facilitates communication where face-to-face is difficult or costly• Can be used with external suppliers as well• Maintains version control• Excellent archive in terms of record of events, activities, problems and solutions• High accessibility• Promotes joint team working • Facilitates decision making• Promotes informal communication
E-rooms/ Groupware
• Not deemed as communication – better to use voice or even face-to-face• Overused – e-mail mountains, communication overload and can lead to ‘e-mail rage’• Difficult to manage version control• Legal ramifications on wording of email • Emails often dumped without action
• Easy to use – part of desktop setup and via systems such as “Blackberry”• Instant data transfer both internal and external• Suitable for a large or small audience
ConsProsAsynchronous Collaboration
• Security, sensitivity and confidentiality• Too much information – filters required• Information must be maintained
• Highly effective for sharing data, information and knowledge with a large audience• Best place to house tools• Portals provide single point of access and can be tailored to audience requirements
Intranet
• Don’t know where to look for information• Search tools not intuitive enough• Relies on proactive user pull• Not successful at capturing tacit information• Legacy data a major issue• Huge amounts of information constantly being generated• Requires users to add knowledge and information to the system
• Easily accessible• Effectively captures and stores knowledge• Forces knowledge to be captured in a standardised format• Data can be used for validation purpose• Static• Future proof if data standardised
Databases / Data
Repositories
• Changing people’s working processes• Barrier to sharing information with people they have not met • Users need to “buy into” the concept of sharing information• Must synchronise with existing desktop environment• Training required• Not sufficient document control for validation purposes
• Facilitates communication where face-to-face is difficult or costly• Can be used with external suppliers as well• Maintains version control• Excellent archive in terms of record of events, activities, problems and solutions• High accessibility• Promotes joint team working • Facilitates decision making• Promotes informal communication
E-rooms/ Groupware
• Not deemed as communication – better to use voice or even face-to-face• Overused – e-mail mountains, communication overload and can lead to ‘e-mail rage’• Difficult to manage version control• Legal ramifications on wording of email • Emails often dumped without action
• Easy to use – part of desktop setup and via systems such as “Blackberry”• Instant data transfer both internal and external• Suitable for a large or small audience
ConsProsAsynchronous Collaboration
9. Winning Strategies for Better Future Collaboration
9.1 Select the Right Technological Collaborative Environment
Selecting the optimal collaboration tool to fit the situation is a critical
consideration.
33
‘The most important factor is to keep the technology straightforward and intuitive so that it is easy for people to learn and to use - that way they keep using it.’
‘All too often the technology is too complicated to use.’
Table 4: Considerations for the Selection of Collaborative Tools
YesPotentialYesAsynchronous
HighMediumLowData sharing
NoYesNoSynchronous
HighHighHighAccessibility
Excellent fitPoor fitGood fitAudience size >25
Excellent fitMedium fitGood fitAudience size 5-25
Excellent fitExcellent fitGood fitAudience size 1-5
NoYesYesRequires response
MediumHighHighEase-of-use
Shared WorkspaceInstant MessagingEmail Criteria
YesPotentialYesAsynchronous
HighMediumLowData sharing
NoYesNoSynchronous
HighHighHighAccessibility
Excellent fitPoor fitGood fitAudience size >25
Excellent fitMedium fitGood fitAudience size 5-25
Excellent fitExcellent fitGood fitAudience size 1-5
NoYesYesRequires response
MediumHighHighEase-of-use
Shared WorkspaceInstant MessagingEmail Criteria
In selecting the appropriate conferencing tool, users must consider the
nature of their requirements and the potential benefits (and weaknesses) of
their conferencing options. The most important considerations are the size
of the audience and the intended level of interaction. As above, the right
choice might include a combination of options. For example, a quarterly
commercial team meeting might include a videoconference between 3 or 4
locations, a teleconference to permit remote users to participate and a live
net meeting session.
Table 5: Considerations for the Selection of Collaborative Conferencing Tools
LowHighLowHighAccessibility
Excellent fitGood fitPoor fitPoor fitMeeting size >25
Excellent fitGood fitMedium fitGood fitMeeting size 5-25
Excellent fitGood fitExcellent fitGood fitMeeting size 1-5
HighLowLowLowOther expenses (e.g. travel)
ZeroLowHighLowNetwork cost
ZeroLowHighLowEquipment cost
HighMediumMedium - LowHighEase-of-use
HighHighHighLowCollaboration environment
YesYesSometimesNoPresentation of data
YesNoYesNoVisual cues
Face-to-faceNet MeetingVideoconferenceTeleconference Criteria
LowHighLowHighAccessibility
Excellent fitGood fitPoor fitPoor fitMeeting size >25
Excellent fitGood fitMedium fitGood fitMeeting size 5-25
Excellent fitGood fitExcellent fitGood fitMeeting size 1-5
HighLowLowLowOther expenses (e.g. travel)
ZeroLowHighLowNetwork cost
ZeroLowHighLowEquipment cost
HighMediumMedium - LowHighEase-of-use
HighHighHighLowCollaboration environment
YesYesSometimesNoPresentation of data
YesNoYesNoVisual cues
Face-to-faceNet MeetingVideoconferenceTeleconference Criteria
34
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Collaboration is not just a technology fix; collaborative solutions must address how people work within processes.’
9.2 Ensure Collaboration is Contextual – intuitive and seamless
Since the 1990s, collaboration strategies have revolved around tools with
little attention being paid to user needs and behaviour.
Email, group calendars, and discussion forums are representative of first-
generation solutions for individual and team activity. Instant messaging,
web conferencing, and Groupware represent second generation tools
being deployed. However, simply giving users the perfect tool for each
situation is not always the correct strategy. Not only does the unchecked
proliferation of tools for each situation result in higher levels of IT
complexity (and costs), but individual productivity gains without impact on
process outcomes are unlikely to impact on the bottom line.
Earlier collaborative efforts focused on people; today the focus is on how
people work within processes - it is no longer a personal productivity
endeavour (e.g. saving time or making individual tasks more efficient), the
goal now is to enable processes to perform at a higher level.
Contextual collaboration carries with it several attributes and features.
Tools currently used for collaboration typically require the user to switch
from among several open windows in order to communicate with team
members or colleagues - this can be both cumbersome and frustrating.
Contextual collaboration represents an integration of tools into a unified
interface - tools such as word processors, instant messaging, shared
calendars, Groupware, presence and real-time capabilities would all be
integrated so that teams could communicate quickly and instantly from a
single environment. The integrated environment provides a managed
repository providing document and record management and an audit trail.
Without permanent management of the information throughout its lifecycle
it rapidly loses value no matter how rich the collaborative environment.
Figure 3: Unification of Tools
CONTEXTUAL COLLABORATION
Conversation(VoIP)
PresenceAwareness
ObjectSharing
e.g. Documents,Databases
SharedWorkspaceAggregation of shared objects
& tools
CONTEXTUAL COLLABORATION
Conversation(VoIP)
PresenceAwareness
ObjectSharing
e.g. Documents,Databases
SharedWorkspaceAggregation of shared objects
& tools
35
‘The only way adoption of collaborative tools can be improved is to employ a top down solution – team and project leaders have to set the example and then dictate the means of collaboration for the team. This sounds hard, but if a soft approach is taken, then people just ignore the directives.’
The goal of contextual collaboration is to make online collaboration as
simple and as intuitive as possible allowing more proactive goal
management and more focused work processes. It mimics the richness of
co-located small team working by combining process rigour for compliance
with captured ad hoc interaction and collaboration. The movement towards
contextual collaboration continues to be adopted to improve productivity,
reduce coordination costs, and better connect people to peers and teams.
9.3 Create the Culture
Not only do pharmaceutical companies have to ensure that the technology
is intuitive and seamless, but they need to develop and reward a culture of
openness and sharing. Shifting a corporate culture from being competitive
to being co-operative is no small undertaking and will require changes at all
levels of the organisation, including the CEO.
Training is required - users must be familiar with and comfortable using the
tools. If they lack confidence in their abilities, they won’t adopt. When a
collaborative solution is first adopted, the structure of the workspace is only
an approximation of user best practice, no matter how intimately involved
the users were in defining the environment. Over time as end-user
confidence and familiarity evolves, the sophistication of the workspace will
grow accordingly. With adequate training and support, the result will be a
constant cycle of positive reinforcement and continuous enhancements in
productivity.
Employees need to be given incentives to contribute to the system;
rewards could be either financial or psychological (e.g. peer recognition).
Users must realise a net gain from the system and the value of sharing
information through collaboration must be reinforced. A major failing is that
the majority of pharmaceutical companies do not yet reward or include
collaboration in personal objectives - and without incentives behaviour will
not change.
9.4 Measure the Impact
Collaborative tools are likely to be adopted more widely within
pharmaceutical companies and their use become more routine if
employees and executives understand how much time and money can be
saved - and savings can be dramatic.
For example, at some companies, collaborative technologies have reduced
36
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Collaborative initiatives have impacted on productivity - but this is very difficult to measure.’
‘
the length and number of meetings. At Shell, it is believed that online
collaboration saved the company at least $237 million in 2000.6
The example below is based on the most obvious hard benefit from
collaborative solutions in the pharmaceutical industry i.e. that of travel
reduction; it is indicative only and based on comments and opinions
gathered during the interview process. The direct expenses of salary,
flights, sundries and hotels are included.
Table 6: Example of Potential Cost an Man Hour Savings through
Collaborative Solutions in Clinical Development
4 people = $360,8005 people = $451,0006 people = $541,200
1 person = $90,2002 people = $180,4003 people = $270,600
Total meeting cost savings over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)
$1,100Total cost per person per trip (salary + flights + hotel + sundries)
4 people = 492 days5 people = 615 days6 people = 738 days
4 people = 4,428 hours5 people = 5,535 hours
Hotel ~ $100 per nightMeals, taxis, car service, etc ~ $100
Hotel and sundries cost estimate
$450Round trip flight estimate
Assuming average salary of $100,000 pa = $150,000 pa amortised costAverage $450 per person per meeting
Salary costs for downtime
1 person = 123 days 2 people = 246 days3 people = 369 days ~ 1 year
Assuming average 9 hour day
Total downtime savings in terms of development man days (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)
1 person = 1,107 hours2 people = 2,214 hours3 people = 3,321 hours
NB: people vary over time
Total downtime over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)
82Number of meetings avoided during clinical development at a frequency of 1 per month
6.8 yearsAverage clinical development time (Ph I – NDA Approval)Source: Mean clinical development time for NCEs approved 2000-2001 (Tufts CSDD)
1.5 days per person Average work day 9 hours = 13.5 hours per personDowntime per meeting
1.5 hoursDuration of meeting
Assumption: That collaborative tools avoid the need for one face-to-face meeting per month over the average development cycle of an NCE (Phase I through to launch)
4 people = $360,8005 people = $451,0006 people = $541,200
1 person = $90,2002 people = $180,4003 people = $270,600
Total meeting cost savings over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)
$1,100Total cost per person per trip (salary + flights + hotel + sundries)
4 people = 492 days5 people = 615 days6 people = 738 days
4 people = 4,428 hours5 people = 5,535 hours
Hotel ~ $100 per nightMeals, taxis, car service, etc ~ $100
Hotel and sundries cost estimate
$450Round trip flight estimate
Assuming average salary of $100,000 pa = $150,000 pa amortised costAverage $450 per person per meeting
Salary costs for downtime
1 person = 123 days 2 people = 246 days3 people = 369 days ~ 1 year
Assuming average 9 hour day
Total downtime savings in terms of development man days (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)
1 person = 1,107 hours2 people = 2,214 hours3 people = 3,321 hours
NB: people vary over time
Total downtime over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)
82Number of meetings avoided during clinical development at a frequency of 1 per month
6.8 yearsAverage clinical development time (Ph I – NDA Approval)Source: Mean clinical development time for NCEs approved 2000-2001 (Tufts CSDD)
1.5 days per person Average work day 9 hours = 13.5 hours per personDowntime per meeting
1.5 hoursDuration of meeting
Assumption: That collaborative tools avoid the need for one face-to-face meeting per month over the average development cycle of an NCE (Phase I through to launch)
From the simple example above it can be concluded that by avoiding 3 to 4
people the need to travel and meet face-to-face once a month over the
clinical development period; the savings in terms of man hours are greater
than one year, and that the cost savings equate to those of a toxicology or
small formulation study for example.
A growing trend in the pharmaceutical industry is the growing reliance on
external partners. With margins to preserve and resources to optimise,
companies today must shed “non-core” activities. The second example
relates to productivity increases in clinical development as a result of
improved collaboration with external partners. In the past, documents were
shared with external CROs using fax and/or courier. Now, shared
workspaces are created and teams from both sides are working in real time
on information - avoiding delays can reap significant cost savings in
addition to decreasing cycle times.
37
‘Improved, better, and quicker decisions would prevent project hold ups.’
Table 7: Example of Potential Cost and Development Time Savings through
Improved Collaboration with External Partners
10%5%3%
US$11.4 millionUS$5.7 millionUS$3.5 million
Decreased cost of developmentBased on the direct cost of development of US$1.5 million per month. (Source: Friedman, Billings, Ramsey research. August 2000)
7.6 months3.8 months2.3 months
Decreased development time Based on the average duration of development time of 76 months per NCE (Source: Lehman Brothers research. “The Fruits of Genomics,” January 2001)
Results from varying levels of productivity improvementBenefits
Assumption: that collaborative tools support strategic alliances with external partners. The result of teams from both sides working in real time can offer significant productivity gains
10%5%3%
US$11.4 millionUS$5.7 millionUS$3.5 million
Decreased cost of developmentBased on the direct cost of development of US$1.5 million per month. (Source: Friedman, Billings, Ramsey research. August 2000)
7.6 months3.8 months2.3 months
Decreased development time Based on the average duration of development time of 76 months per NCE (Source: Lehman Brothers research. “The Fruits of Genomics,” January 2001)
Results from varying levels of productivity improvementBenefits
Assumption: that collaborative tools support strategic alliances with external partners. The result of teams from both sides working in real time can offer significant productivity gains
The third example relates to productivity increases in discovery as a result
of easier access to relevant information and sources of expertise. In many
companies, researchers are spending more than 15% of their time
searching for data and information,7 this leads to bad and slow decision
making. High-tech, cutting-edge drug discovery programmes are all very
well but bottlenecks at the data processing stage often negate the potential
advantages of new technology.
Table 8: Example of Potential Productivity Improvements in Discovery
10%5%3%
US$19.8 millionUS$9.9 millionUS$6 millionDecreased cost of discoveryBased on the direct cost of discovery of US$3 million per month.(Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)
6.6 months3.3 months2 monthsDecreased discovery time Based on the average duration of discovery time of 66 months perNCE (Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)
Results from varying levels of productivity improvementBenefits
Assumption: that collaborative tools result in productivity improvements in discovery as a result of easier access to relevant information and expertise
10%5%3%
US$19.8 millionUS$9.9 millionUS$6 millionDecreased cost of discoveryBased on the direct cost of discovery of US$3 million per month.(Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)
6.6 months3.3 months2 monthsDecreased discovery time Based on the average duration of discovery time of 66 months perNCE (Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)
Results from varying levels of productivity improvementBenefits
Assumption: that collaborative tools result in productivity improvements in discovery as a result of easier access to relevant information and expertise
Considering that the implementation of collaborative tools to support
knowledge creation and management has the potential to increase
research productivity by at least 5%, 4 then on average 3.3 months and
US$9.9 million could be saved in the discovery process.
9.5 Promote the Benefits to Improve Adoption
The bottom line is that effective collaboration strategies will enable
individuals and teams to be more productive within processes, with
success measured via improvement in process outcomes and more
sustained levels of innovation resulting from company insight.
New collaborative and communications tools deliver productivity
improvements as both hard, quantifiable benefits (already discussed), and
38
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
‘Collaborative tools have reduced the bottlenecks of information sharing. They enable teams to be tracked publicly which keeps them on schedule.’
as soft benefits. Soft benefits are perhaps always the most under-
appreciated since they are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify with
precision. Soft benefits include:
• Enhanced creativity and innovation.
• Faster and more informed decision making – 24/7 availability of
information
• Increased transparency across the organisation - decisions based on
current not expired data
• Improved productivity/efficiency
• Improved management of project teams
• Increased reach – which includes remote workers and multi-geographies
• Improved quality of life by minimising travel requirements
• Elimination of downtime by reducing time away from the office
10. Conclusions
Collaborative solutions now represent a core business tool that global
pharmaceutical companies need to fully embrace in order to compete in
today’s global marketplace.
The major finding of the study was that successful implementation of
collaborative working solutions requires intuitive tools combined with the
right cultural environment.
Table 9: Summary of Critical Factors for Successful Collaboration
•A corporate culture of openness and sharing
•Rewards for demonstrating effective team working and collaborative behaviour
•Appropriate and timely training to support introduction of new tools
•Leadership and example - team leaders must provide authority on collaborative behaviour
•Resource must be allocated – both in terms of technical support and system maintenance, but also at team level to direct the use and continuous optimisation of the collaborative workspace
•Defined roles and responsibilities – at all levels from the implementation team down to the project teams themselves
•The impact of collaboration needs to be measured whilst at the same time promoting the benefits
•
s
•
•s
•li
•
•
•s
Simplicity - tools developed for large groups of people must be easy to learn as well as simple, intuitive and traightforward to use
Accessibility - tools must fit seamlessly within the desktop environment
Customisation - different groups have different needs, tools hould be customisable as well as facilitate the customised
access to information
Integration - tools ideally need to be in an integrated and nked family that enables a user to move seamlessly from
one tool to the next (contextual collaboration)
Relevance - the tools must be relevant to the context of work as well as to meet specific business objectives
Connectivity - easy access to everyone else
Reliability – tools must work in the manner expected and ystems must be maintained
Critical Success Factors for Creating a Collaborative EnvironmentCritical Success Factors for Tools
•A corporate culture of openness and sharing
•Rewards for demonstrating effective team working and collaborative behaviour
•Appropriate and timely training to support introduction of new tools
•Leadership and example - team leaders must provide authority on collaborative behaviour
•Resource must be allocated – both in terms of technical support and system maintenance, but also at team level to direct the use and continuous optimisation of the collaborative workspace
•Defined roles and responsibilities – at all levels from the implementation team down to the project teams themselves
•The impact of collaboration needs to be measured whilst at the same time promoting the benefits
Simplicity - tools developed for large groups of people must be easy to learn as well as simple, intuitive and traightforward to use
Accessibility - tools must fit seamlessly within the desktop environment
Customisation - different groups have different needs, tools hould be customisable as well as facilitate the customised
access to information
Integration - tools ideally need to be in an integrated and nked family that enables a user to move seamlessly from
one tool to the next (contextual collaboration)
Relevance - the tools must be relevant to the context of work as well as to meet specific business objectives
Connectivity - easy access to everyone else
Reliability – tools must work in the manner expected and ystems must be maintained
Critical Success Factors for Creating a Collaborative Environment
•
s
•
•s
•li
•
•
•s
Critical Success Factors for Tools
New tools and communication infrastructures are now on the horizon which
will enable true contextual collaboration. With the convergence of voice,
39
video, and data networks, more pharmaceutical companies will realise
increased value through deploying IP collaborative solutions - including IP
telephony (VoIP), unified messaging, voice mail, and audio, video, and web
conferencing. These personal tools will enable workers to communicate
anywhere, anytime, with local and remote colleagues, without leaving the
comfort and efficiency of their workspace. Individuals will be able to work
with live information that is relevant, current and fluid. Online collaboration
will be as simple and as intuitive as it is to work with people in the same
room.
However, to truly embed collaborative working behaviour requires a
fundamental change in everyday working practice - to succeed the benefits
of collaboration and knowledge sharing must be continually reinforced. A
successful collaborative framework is a driver for cultural change and is a
vehicle for pharmaceutical companies to realise the full potential of their
greatest asset - their people.
1Parexel’s Pharmaceutical R&D Statistical Sourcebook 2004/2005 via Eli Lilly 2 Andersen Consulting 3 Nonaka and Takeuchis, “The Knowledge-Creating Company,” (Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1995) 4 Krile and Juell 5 Kirsner – Ecosystem, mastering the business environment 6 Ecosystems-Mastering the e-business environment 2001 – S Kirsner 7 Interview feedback
40
Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry
11. Appendix 11.1 About the Authors
RM Consulting and Urch Publishing partnered to implement this review, combining RM’s
recognised expertise in working with the pharmaceutical R&D community with Urch’s
experience in the business intelligence sector.
About RM Consulting
RM Consulting (est. 1999), is an international life science and chemical business consultancy
focused on providing management support services to the global pharmaceutical,
biotechnology, chemical and healthcare sectors. Charles Rowlands is the founding partner
with over 20 years experience in the life science and chemical sector. He has worked on
numerous strategy development and market assessment projects and can be reached on
About Urch Publishing
Urch Publishing Ltd. (est. 2001), is a specialist information provider and publisher to the
global pharmaceutical industry. Edwin Bailey is the founder and managing director. He can be
reached on [email protected].
11.2 Endnote
We would like to extend our thanks to all the respondents for their time and valuable inputs to
this review.
41
11.3 Contacts
BT Healthcare Solutions Marketing
Gary Hawksworth
BT Healthcare Solutions Marketing
BT Global Services, UK Major Customers,
PP13, First Floor, Orion Building
Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath,
Ipswich,
Suffolk IP5 3RE
Tel: +44 (0) 1473 605832
www.bt.com
RM Consulting
55 Princes Gate
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2PN
Tel: +44 (0) 207 225 3538/ 207 838 1010
www.rmpharmachem.com
Urch Publishing Ltd.
PO Box 27554
London SE4 2GZ
Tel +44 (0) 207 060 1099
www.urchpublishing.com
42