With the ever-increasing competitive landscape for Life Sciences Products, be they pharmaceuticals, diagnostics or medical devices, having an efficient, compliant business process for the development and manufacture becomes an imperative and not a “nice to have.” As globalization gathers pace and emerging markets in Asia and South America become serious challengers to the traditional dominance by North American and European players, having a streamlined operation with the inclusion of all the previous “bit part” technologies become a necessary and central feature to the business. Organizational architecture with the complementary techniques and systems that provide for end to end oversight and control become a must, if one intends to be a future player, otherwise one’s potential to compete at any significant level diminishes. Since it’s unlikely that executive management will accept this as a viable scenario for the business, what’s required is an overarching strategy to enable progress at a sustainable pace to match the market growth of the company’s product portfolio and their sales. So how should this be addressed? Where and how do you start to move your company in this type of direction?
Yes, there are lots of ideas and technologies out there in the marketplace and each one will/may provide benefit, but all too often they only solve an isolated issue and are not fully integratable. For real change what is needed is an integrated approach that focuses the energies and talents of the company’s human resources on big questions and then as the as these are addressed, to load in pieces of technology that can aid in building the solution to overcome that discrete issue. However, in doing that it is important to avoid the “Ostrich effect”, by burying one’s head in the sand to overcome related complementary processes, since all too often, it is possible to solve one issue and in the process of completing that cause “N” new problems/issues. One key point to keep in mind is simple is often beautiful and a “kiss” (keep it simple stupid), philosophy is a guiding principle that will pay off and benefit the company.
All too often overelaborate solutions fail “in the field “because they are/ l become fragile or may be difficult to implement. The key is to keep simplicity because this will help promote agility and ease of implementation. In such a dynamic environment this is an imperative otherwise one runs the potential of locking the company into technologies that might prove perishable longer-term and may even age badly. To best avoid these situations, it is strongly advised to seek the opinions of a knowledgeable consultant and together develop a plan that meets the company’s goals, whilst at the same time leaving space open for future possibilities. Moving forward then, as one plans out the strategies, it is vital that one’s attention remains focused on the needs of the customer, since this will always clarify whether there is a real need for something you may be contemplating, and whether it is truly a priority.
Next installment; architecture and what’s important.
