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Operating levers
An organization must develop a
series of operating model levers
for the critical teams in order to
profitably deploy them. These levers
should also be the building blocks
for a pharmaceutical company's new
operating model:
• Strategy must be explicitly spelled
out and coherent across the critical
teams, and aligned closely with
business objectives that are regularly
validated against shifting requirements
and regulations in the industry.
Stakeholders should know about the
strategy too, and buy into it.
Organizations must
develop operating model
levers — from strategy
to culture and skills — for
critical teams to profitably
deploy them.
• Organizational structure should
be built around clear roles and
responsibilities, globally and locally,
that leverage functional expertise
across the organization. Noncore
activities can be outsourced to improve
efficiency, and the organizational
structure can be linked to business
needs while providing room for
mobility and innovation among the
ranks. Mobility across the critical
teams should be encouraged to inspire
the development of creative ideas
that can improve and expand on the
benefits that each of the critical teams'
subteams can bring to critical team
capabilities.
• Process, systems, and tools
emphasize tracking the progress
of critical teams in achieving
specific strategy goals focused on
demonstrating value, quality, and
compliance in a cross-functional
environment. Relevant IT systems
are vital to support and enhance
116
world monitor
(a) knowledge sharing across local
and global teams; (b) customer-
centric services to meet needs of
key stakeholders and to demonstrate
patient and economic outcomes;
(c) transparent interactions with
stakeholders; and (d) efficiency
gains. Measuring the contribution
of critical teams to the business can
be difficult because the work these
units do cannot be directly linked to
sales. Nevertheless, key metrics need
to be defined to measure progress
against objectives. As digitization
becomes increasingly important in the
pharmaceutical industry, critical teams
must be early adopters of technology.
• Skills and culture address
awareness of external stakeholder
needs and combine it with business
acumen and strategic insight to deliver
value to customers, suppliers, patients,
and providers. Well-developed on-
boarding and training programs are
necessary to improve the performance
of proactive, motivated individuals —
in short, problem solvers, not blamers
— who are inspired to work in critical
teams. A critical team must be driven
by the desire to adopt innovation and
facilitate it across the organization to
enable patient-centric products and
services.
Insight from the regulatory
affairs teams should shape
R&D and marketing plans.
The roles that the individual operating
levers play in each of the subteams
vary depending on the organization's
needs. But in all cases the purpose
of implementing these levers is to
enable critical teams to improve
organizational insight and responses
to payor, regulatory, and competitive
challenges. In other words, the levers
position and enable the critical team
to perform its necessary role as the
fulcrum of the company's transformed
operating model. Strategy& has
created a maturity model that explains
how each of the operating levers can
best support the development and
cultivation of each of the subteams.
Subteam: Regulatory a