LogiPharma USA 2024: Conveying Key Goals and Strategies Across the Value Chain

On the second day of this year’s LogiPharma USA in Boston, a panel titled “Conveying Key Goals and Strategies Across the Value Chain,” discussed how collaborating with distributors and other logistical partners takes consistent and clear communication across the vast systems and networks that the pharmaceutical industry operates in. Headlining the discussion were Lucy Alexander, capabilities lead, global supply chain & strategy, AstraZeneca; Mohit Agarwal, global head, digital transformation supply chain, commercial excellence, Supply Chain Expert; and Scott Sutton, senior director, supply chain, Morphosys.

Alexander kicked off the conversation, discussing the best ways to manage strategy settings in a multinational company such as AstraZeneca.

“It really starts with being aligned at the corporate level,” said Alexander. “What is our corporate strategy? Sometimes, that can be difficult to instill, so we need to make sure everybody is clear on that. In business school, I had a strategy professor who explained to us that strategy was not what we were choosing to do, but what we were choosing not to do. We all know that’s a tough decision. It’s easy to say that you want to increase sales by 10%, but how you do that can be a bit thorny. As you start getting into things such as competitive positioning, I think those discussions are super important, and I think we need to have supply chains are part of those discussions so that we really understand what the organization is trying to achieve and then we can reflect that into our strategic approaches within supply chain management.”

Sutton offered his thoughts on how it may be different for smaller organizations such as Morphosys.

“I think a lot of the principles are very much the same, but there are some key differences as to how organizations go about the different aspects,” said Sutton. “For a small organization, I think less is more. Communication is easier, the ability to gain alignment is easier, and there’s less people in the organization. In big pharma, I see a lot of boards and communities need to review something inside out before it goes. In a smaller company, you reassemble a schedule or a meeting with an expert, get aligned, and move on. That part is a bit more simplified.”

Sutton also explained that there were a number of challenges specific to smaller pharma companies, such as finding the right partners and maintaining relationships with those partners.

“I firmly believe that you pick vendors and contract manufacturing organizations across your value chain, trying to match the vendor working with the size of your company, sometimes it's hard for a really small company to go to a big contract manufacturing organization, maybe even impossible,” he explained. Similarly, I think larger companies don’t go to smaller contract manufacturing organizations because it's just not quite the right match.”

Switching gears, the panel then discussed how to properly balance introducing new and emerging technologies while also managing risks and the critical nature of the work that's being done in pharma organizations.

“I’m a big fan of experimentation, said Alexander. “Find something small and safe that you can trial and learn as you go. For us, we've gone from technology that needs to be very specific about what it's going to do and how we're going to use it to things that are evolving. As I said, it’s when we can identify a small space and get everybody around the table to agree again. What are we trying to get out of this process and what does it look like? What data do you need to have available? It can be a bit constraining, but that’s okay because you’re starting to learn.”

Closing out the discussion, the panel members discussed adjusting to changes and properly communicating those changes to parties outside of the organization.

“I definitely think that you need to keep track of the issues, especially if you spend any length of time on a project,” said Sutton. “This is especially true for smaller companies trying to launch their first product. You make a lot of decisions early on as you go through the mid-stage up until you are ready for product launch, and a lot of those assumptions change. The strategy needs to shift as you go. I think that the alignment is hopefully an easier transition in smaller organizations because there's less players involved in terms of communication and decision making.”

Reference

Agarwal, M Alexander, L, Sutton, S. Conveying Key Goals and Strategies Across the Value Chain. September 24, 2024. LogiPharma USA 2024. Boston.