BeiGene

SANOBAR SYED

In an interview with SANOBAR SYED, Associate Director at BeiGene; she expands on the trends, challenges and predicaments surrounding the pharma industry. She also talks about the new projects that she has been working on and emphasizes on the technological trends in the pharma sphere.

1. What are some of the major challenges and trends that have been impacting the pharma industry lately?

I believe that the pharmaceutical industry is dynamic and ever changing globally, although more so in the United states. There are 4 key stakeholders that make up the healthcare environment – academic, advocacy, industry and community. To be able to have a detailed eye on these 4 and integrate that in meaningful fact based deliverables is every forecaster & commercial analytics leader's primary challenge. This is always easier said than done. Strategic Forecasting is often used to create multiple scenarios and is the most primary important critical step to be used in (not limited to) Finance, P&L, Investment decisions, supply chain, medical, sales, marketing, resource management , budgeting and commercial teams. The other emerging challenge is lack of “usable” data and information which is further aggravated with the Digital wave. We are often in situations of being “Data rich but Insights Poor.”

2. What keeps you up at night when it comes to some of the major predicaments in the pharma industry?

I would like to rephrase the question as what keeps me going every morning. It’s a mammoth task to convert the insights to foresights. Add in the complexity of therapeutic areas and different geographies. Especially if the firm is undergoing M&A or restructuring of the business/brands, it becomes critical to continue generate insights and be an enabler in decision making. Resource allocation, budgeting, inventory & supply management, P&L and finance are some of the functions impacted by the presence of sharp insights. One of the human level challenges can be shifting priorities, attrition or layoffs, data quality issues etc. Both the organization and human level challenges persist but the show must always go on.

3. Can you tell us about some key projects that you have worked on and what are some of the technological and process elements that you leveraged to make the project successful?

Lately, I successfully integrated and transformed multimillion dollar brands into new way of working leading to the creation of the “one source of truth”. The number has successfully been integrated and has demonstrated its critical role in the success of any key pharmaceutical launch as the metric allows for the forecast and buy-in across finance, supply chain, sales and marketing teams, and other business units. The single number allows for the maximum efficient alignment of all business units and is integrated in forecasting and strategy of departments, for example HR hires accordingly. Finance set the correct financial ratios, this number, etc. become the most primary important critical step to be used in (not limited to) Finance, P&L, Investment decisions, supply chain, medical, sales, marketing, resource management, budgeting and commercial teams globally. I have learnt that key objectives for each brand, what pipelines need to be backed with certain business decisions that align on analysis is super critical in success. Coupling this with change management and detail, will lead to sustained business continuity.

“Lately, I successfully integrated and transformed multimillion dollar brands into new way of working leading to the creation of- one source of truth.”

4. What are some of the technological trends which excite you for the future of the pharma Industry?

Ask yourself, are pharma manufacturers software companies, “not so much”, are pharma manufacturers excellent adopters of agile technologies, “not always”. But there is an increased digital and omnichannel trend. A platform is a collection of technologies, business processes and people so it’s very important to have the right mix of all three to develop analytical capabilities in a sustainable manner. Overtime, as the analytics organizations mature, they should carry out a thoughtful evaluation of their analytical priorities and start evaluate components of the platforms that fit into their org design and will generate efficiencies in internalizing. Hurrying to internalize all parts of the analytical platforms could lead to sub-optimal outcomes and could actually generate in-efficiencies. We need to learn how to integrate insights and look at the key insights gap, once we have this then analytics can reason to it.