Fostering Innovation
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Commercial Strategy
Go-to-market Strategy, New Product Launches, Strategic Planning, Forecasting
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Market Research & Insights
Market Research, Voice of the Customer, Competitive Intelligence
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Business Development
Licensing and Distribution, Business Case Development, Alliance Management
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Digital Transformation
Program Development, Technology Evaluation, Technology Deployment
Commercial Strategy
Strategic Plan Development and Implementation
While leading Strategy and Projects for a F100 Distribution division, Rob was a member of the executive team and responsible for drafting the Annual Strategic Plan that served as guidance to the organization and was presented to corporate leadership team.
In addition to leading the Planning process, Rob also led several key initiatives from the Plan including onboarding of a Patient Services startup acquisition, leading a facility consolidation project, and collaborating with the IT and Commercial organization on defining the next generation platform.
Commercial Launch
Rob successfully launched three brands at a Big Pharma company, including developing the go-to-market strategy and leading the cross-functional launch projects.
Each project included close collaboration with the respective Global Brand Team and conducting extensive local primary and secondary research with KOLs, prescribers, payers, and other SMEs.
The cross functional teams included participants from across the organization, including regulatory, supply chain, quality control, operations, sales operations, medical affairs, finance, brand team and others. Therapy areas included oncology, cardiovascular, and immunology.
Market Research and Insights
Market Insights
Rob was recently engaged by a manufacturer of equipment used in pharmaceutical operations to conduct in-depth interviews with pharmaceutical and contract manufacturing experts, as part of an initiative to gain market insights and competitive intelligence.
Rob conducted over a dozen interviews within a limited timeframe and was able to provide key insights on industry trends, vendors' strengths and weaknesses, areas of unmet needs and opportunities, and key success factors for market entry.
Competitive Landscape
A F200 Pharmaceutical Company was looking to develop market profiles for a set of rare disease areas, and sought a consultant with experience in evaluating new market opportunities to conduct a deep dive and build competitive landscape and conduct analysis of the therapy areas.
Rob worked with the client's External Innovation team and built a factbook for the disease areas. Each profile included disease overview, epidemiology, patient journey, current and emerging treatment options, unmet needs, and opportunity size. Project was well received and served as basis for conducting analyses for R&D and externalization initiatives.
Market Research
Engaged by the Commercial Leadership of an emerging Real-World Evidence solution company, Rob led an initiative to conduct qualitative research and generate insights in the areas of commercial opportunity, product development, competitive landscape, regulatory trends, and unmet needs.
Rob met initially with the client team to understand their objectives and collaboratively built questionnaires focused on distinct external stakeholder groups.
The interviews were conducted by phone and enabled ongoing feedback and fine tuning to the questionnaires as insights were generated. A set of quantitative questions were included as follow-up to detail commercial practices and insights.
FIndings were compiled into an executive level presentation and delivered successfully to the client's commercial team, providing valuable insights on "How to win" and "Where to compete".
Business Development
Licensing & Distribution
During his role at a Big Pharma company, Rob led and contributed to a number of initiatives to license and distribute late-stage products that would generate additional revenues and fully utilize the organization's commercial capabilities.
His role and participation spanned the entire process - from searching and evaluating potential candidates, engaging the partner, building and approving business cases at local and regional levels, and negotiating the agreements, in conjunction with business development, finance, and legal counterparts.
Rob led the successful development of a partnership agreement to in-license and distribute an infection drug in Latin America, which was forecasted to attain nine figure revenues before loss of exclusivity.
He also contributed to several local and regional initiatives, and was able to build relationships with colleagues in the UK and US.
Alliance Management
While working for a Big Pharma organization, Rob was responsible for managing the relationship of a newly formed distribution agreement with another Pharma company for a biologic treatment.
He worked closely with in-house team and the Partner lead throughout the initiative, ensuring alignment on local strategy development, tactical planning, regulatory and pricing strategy development, and development of medical affairs team and advisory boards.
The dynamic economic and financial markets along with complex regulatory pathways required several adjustments in terms along the way, and these were made possible through a collaborative and open approach with the partner.
Digital Transformation
Innovation Program Development
Rob led the participation of the regional division of a Big Pharma company in a globally-sponsored Innovation Pilot seeking to test innovative and nontraditional channels for engaging patients.
He worked with a team of four in developing and approving a seven figure business case, and worked closely with the Global Innovation team to setup and deploy the pilot in key regional markets.
The scope of the pilot included selecting an external agency to develop a “healthy lifestyle” campaign theme and materials, establish retail channel partnerships to help execute the campaign, and collaborate with distribution chain partners to measure program results.
The pilot was delivered on-time and within budget and successfully measured the effectiveness of the campaign tactics and channels.
Patient Program Development
While at a Big Pharma company, Rob was assigned to lead an initiative to reshape the existing commercial discount program, which relied heavily on manual processes and lacked centralized business rules and key administrative controls, leading to loss of margins, missed opportunities, and suboptimal patient treatment adherence.
Rob led a team of four in defining the next generation patient program. A key step included organizing an off-site whiteboarding session to draw stakeholder input, buy-in, and then distilling learnings into program components.
The team was successful in achieving consensus on program components and selecting a technology vendor to develop the program platform, which included establishing connectivity across a network of independent and chain pharmacies.
The project was transitioned to IT and Brand Team for implementation, and has been operational for 10+ years. It has been a pillar of the commercial program and has provided over 3 million patients with valuable disease education, specialist support, and medication discounts across a network of 20K pharmacies.
Technology Assessments
Emerging Technology Evaluations:
While leading projects at a health insurance organization, Rob led several vendor assessment initiatives to identify and contract with emerging vendors and technology solutions, including CRM, Contact Center, eLearning, ePayments, and digital broker solutions.
CRM Platform Evaluation:
While leading projects at a Life Sciences Big3 Wholesaler, Rob partnered with the IT department at Pharma wholesaler to evaluate and contract with a CRM Platform (MS Dynamics) to be configured for Patient Services platform and for Sales Force Automation platform for the sales team.
Technology Deployments
Digital Channel Deployment:
Developed go-to-market plan for healthcare technology startup; including launch of digital market and sales campaigns (inbound and outbound), integration of campaigns with CRM solution, corporate website relaunch, development of white papers, and implementation of Sales Intelligence and Engagement solutions.
eCommerce Deployment:
Advised and assisted publishing company in their initiatives to revive their commercial and digital strategies. In addition to commercial strategy changes, relaunched digital edition of their quarterly magazine, and recently assisted with ecommerce platform migration to Shopify.