Winning strategies for effective
collaboration in the
pharmaceutical industry
Charles Rowlands and Amy Morgan
are founding partners of RM Consulting (now Parioforma), an international business consultancy focused on providing management
support services to the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, chemical and healthcare sectors. Contact: [email protected].
Gary Hawksworth
is BTs head of marketing for the pharmaceutical sector. He has 25 years' experience of communications technologies with 7 years exclusive
experience in supplying solutions to the pharmaceutical industry.
Keywords collaboration, collaborative tools, communication, e-tools,
information technology, pharmaceutical industry
Abstract This paper examines key success factors for effective collaboration in the
pharmaceutical industry. In an industry where speed to market is critical and where informed
and timely decisions can have large financial implications, collaboration is a key factor to
ensure value is delivered. Consequently, considerable investment is being made by
pharmaceutical companies to enable project teams to work more effectively together across
departmental, functional, company and geographic boundaries. Investment in collaboration has
varied tremendously across companies - both in the level of investment and in the degree of
success. It is against this background that British Telecom (BT) commissioned RM Consulting
(RM) to research the key strategies for effective collaboration. A major finding of the research
was that while technology is a strong enabler to better collaboration it must be intuitive, easy to
use and enable natural people interaction for widespread adoption. The correct technology can
allow richer social collaboration and more intuitive usability. Journal of Medical Marketing (2006)
6, 83-93. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jmm.5050027
INTRODUCTION
As a leading provider of collaborative
solutions for many years, BT has
developed a deep understanding of
the particular collaboration issues
faced by the pharmaceutical industry
— and how they may be overcome to
generate business improvements,
improve cost management and deliver
increased shareholder value. BT are
acutely aware that the answer to
improved collaboration not only lies
in technological solutions but also
in areas including corporate
culture, social networks and trust
between individuals.
The objective of the research
conducted by RM was to review how
well collaborative practice is
embedded in today's pharmaceutical
industry. The study focused on the use
of tools in normal working practice
and their relation to the culture and
behaviour within the
© 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1745-7904
Vol. 6, 2 83-93 Journal of Medical Marketing
www.palgrave-journals.com/jmm
Rowlands et al.
organisation. Research was based on
30 in-depth interviews conducted with
a representative sample of executives
from a wide range of functional areas
across 11 of the top 20 pharmaceutical
companies.
WHAT IS COLLABORATION?
The definition of collaborative working
varies greatly from person to person
and from company to company, but in
its simplest form, secure collaborative
working uses information systems to
enable individuals or groups of
individuals to work concurrently on
information, no matter whether they
are dispersed or co-located. The result
is that the working environment
behaves in the same way regardless of
geographical location, communication
channel or device.
Collaboration is already integral to
corporate life in the pharmaceutical
industry — employees rely on e-mail,
telephone and videoconferencing; they
are also leveraging the capabilities of
the digital workplace to share
knowledge and information with people
across the enterprise and with external
networks. Despite heavy technology
investment in this area however, not all
pharmaceutical companies have
realised the true potential of their
collaborative tools — much money has
been spent but crucially, many
companies have omitted to invest in
encouraging personal interaction, the
result being poor uptake and severe
limitations on true collaborative
working.
WHY COLLABORATE?
In an environment of rising costs and
increasing demands on productivity
and innovation, the challenge for
today's pharmaceutical company is to
do more with less. Having sought
economies of scale and product
pipeline boosts through mergers and
acquisitions, pharmaceutical
companies are being forced to look
internally to seek the improvements
needed to meet the expectations of
financial investors. Productivity gains at
each phase, however small, have an
amplifying effect — they do not just add
up, they multiply.
Companies have invested heavily in
new discovery technologies
characterised by the convergence of
life sciences and information
technology. We are entering a period
where the promise of these 'new
sciences' will begin to deliver, but the
application of new technology has
created an added problem in terms of
the vast amounts of new data that
now need to be organised and
managed.
Enterprises that fail to use modern
communication technologies and who
do not leverage their intellectual capital
and knowledge-base of their workers,
limit the potential for collaboration and
run the very real risk of falling behind
the competition. The knowledgeintensive nature of pharmaceutical
R&D makes the ability to capture,
communicate and exploit knowledge a
key determinant for success.
INCREASING COMPLEXITY
The research-based pharmaceutical
industry has long been one of the
most complex and resource-intensive
in the world — but complexity is now
increasing at a spectacular rate. In
order to maximise the quality and
speed of the discovery and
development process, companies are
dramatically increasing the
collaboration within the different parts
of R&D as well as their reliance on
external partners.
This collaborative approach is the
right way to do business, but it adds a
level of complexity to both intra- and
inter-functional interactions. Multiple
units within an organisation must
collaborate across the extended
enterprise, ie not only with each other,
but also with external partners.
Winning strategies for effective collaboration
Exacerbating these complexities is
the challenge of size. Consolidation
within the industry as well as organic
growth, have created extremely large,
global and decentralised organisations.
Consequently, infrastructures are
stretched to the limits, inefficiencies are
amplified and simple tasks such as
access to data, become cumbersome.
Paradoxically, these very large
organisations still rely on highinnovation work and intensive small
group collaboration. A serious and
growing challenge for today's
pharmaceutical company is therefore
to re-create a small-company
environment within the larger
organisation without harbouring
'knowledge silos'.
THE VIRTUAL TREND
Team working has become the
predominant way of working at all
levels — and teams are becoming
increasingly 'virtual' with members
often dispersed across multiple
geographical locations. Increased
decentralisation has significantly
changed the nature of project working.
Previously, organising and tracking
project work could easily be done by
physically moving around on site to
see all team members — individuals
could simply exchange information and
brainstorm together in the same room.
Nowadays, with team members highly
distributed, managers have to visit
project resources virtually — project
working and management is therefore
becoming increasingly focused around
internet-based collaborative tools.
A virtual project is a collaborative
effort towards a specific goal or
accomplishment which is based on
collective yet remote performance.
This need to work both together and
apart has driven the need for
management tools that enable
communication and coordination at a
distance. The global structure of teams
has grown to support the 'virtual
© 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1745-7904
Vol. 6, 2 83-93
project concept' that now dominates
the way R&D is progressed on a
worldwide scale.
CURRENT COLLABORATIVE
PRACTICE
Pharmacos have organised their
collaborative technology platforms
around an intranet and groupware
model. An intranet offers the best and
fastest solution for information to be
dispersed and permits workers to
interact, connecting them and their
ideas across organisational
boundaries. Groupware is software
that groups or teams use together
over computer networks and the
internet. The study examined the use
of collaborative tools in normal
working practice and Table 1
summarises current opinion based on
interview responses.
Study results confirmed the fact
that we are inherently visual beings —
we want to see as much as we want
to hear. Combining verbal and visual
exchange of information was found to
increase the 'richness' and add value
to the collaborative experience (Figure
1).
When it comes to sharing
information, there is much variation
across organisations. Limited
connections between current
asynchronous tools such as e-mail,
shared workspaces and knowledge
portals result in information silos.
Some organisations have carried out
an integration of knowledge bases
and added complex search engines;
however, little attention has been paid
to the user 'front end' creating a
barrier to use.
BARRIERS TO
COLLABORATION
As companies grow and as the
amount of information generated
increases, fewer
Journal of Medical Marketing
Rowlands et al.
Table 1: Attributes and issues surrounding the use of current collaborative tools
Mode of
collaboration
Attributes
Issues
Phone/Mobile
Telephone has become the gold standard
by which other communication services are measured
Mobile phones make individuals too accessible and
impact negatively on the 'life-work' balance.
Teleconferencing
Most common form of conferencing Easy access - no
dedicated room required
Participants multitask during audio meetings,
even leave the room Unable to share non-verbal
cues Prior introduction helps build relationships
among participants
Instant messaging
Real time messages
Bridges the gap between voice and e-mail
Requires response
Lack of archiving facilities on current systems
E-mail
Affords users the ability to communicate,
coordinate activities and share information. Easy
access - part of the desktop environment
Lack of discipline leads to inappropriate and over-use. Email overload. E-mails often 'dumped' without action.
Difficult to manage version control Legal ramifications of
wording
Shared workspace/
A mechanism to share and distribute
information, documents and/or objects. Promotes
concurrent team working and facilitates decisionmaking. Access can be controlled. Can be extended to
third party users
Changes working processes
Users need to 'buy-into' concept of sharing information.
Information requires management throughout lifecycle to
maintain its value
Users lack training and confidence to maximise utility
M&A activity brings together different technology
implementations
Forces information and knowledge to be captured in
standardised format -'future proofing
Can be mined, visualised and the results published for
others to use
Data suitable for validation purposes
Conversion of legacy data
Fragmented and 'siloed' systems
Lack of 'metadata '
Huge amounts of data generated daily in the post
genomic era. Relies on proactive user pull - search
tools not intuitive
Highly effective for sharing information and
knowledge with a large, dispersed audience
Best place to house tools
Portals provide a single point of access and can be
tailored to audience requirements
Security, sensitivity and confidentiality
Most intranets do not yet facilitate the creation of
vibrant communities and have not succeeded in
decreasing the friction of information transfer
between different groups
Allows users to work from the same document in
real-time
Easy access - users sit at own workstations
Multiple party participation
Commonly used in conjunction with videoconferencing
In the absence of visual link, there is a lack of
interpersonal cues for building trust between team
members
Language barriers - poor English skills lead to some participants being hesitant to raise questions
Excellent vehicle for bringing geographically
dispersed teams together. Ability to share both
verbal and non-verbal cues Visual cues allow
foreign language speakers to be better understood
Participants on camera cannot multitask or leave
the room
Time wasted in set-up
Imperfect visual image
Time delays can lead to misinterpretation of verbal
communication and body language
Not easily accessible - need to coordinate the booking of
suites across participating sites
Expensive - notably higher bandwidth applications
Technical tools cannot substitute the traditional human
face-to-face way of sharing information around a table
Best way to build relationships and team moral Full
range of communication skills
Geographical distribution means that face-to-face is
expensive - in cost and in time
Co-location required for routine face-to-face
Coordination of travel around other commitments
E-Rooms
Data repositories
Intranet
Net meeting
Videoconferencing
Face-to-face
people have time to read the
literature or are able to personally
interact with those outside their
particular programme. This leads to
isolated projects, the inability to stay
current and the repetition of effort.
One study respondent claimed that
despite
all collaborative efforts within their
company, only 10—15 per cent of
intellectual capital has been captured
in any structured format and that the
rest resides on paper, in lab
notebooks and in researcher's heads.
Winning strategies for effective collaboration
Face-to-Face
“Richness”
Audio + Video + Web
video conferencing +
web meeting
Audio + Video
video streaming
video conferencing
Audio + Web
Web
net meetings
email, instant
messaging, e-rooms,
white boards,
Audio
telephone, discussion groups
mobile
Connectivity
Figure 1: Combination of verbal and visual information exchange
Collaborative tools on the market
today make it easy to coordinate large
groups by enabling team members to
post questions, work jointly on
documents, schedule meetings and
track progress toward goals. But not
every company is positioned to take
advantage of these tools. The danger
for many is overspending on
technology implementations without
making the cultural and organisational
adjustments necessary to derive any
benefit from them. Major barriers to
collaborative working embedded in
current behaviour include:
• Inherent dislike of sharing information
- 'knowledge is power'
• Low perceived 'value' in sharing
information
• Mistrust of those who individuals have not
met in person
• Concerns over who will have access to
shared
information
• Geographical distribution of workers
• Resistance to change
• Effort required — an added burden to daily
routine
• Corporate culture leading to competitive
rather than collaborative working styles
• Poor team working skills and lack of
leadership
• Lack of training
© 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1745-7904
Vol. 6, 2 83-93
Respondents to the study reported
that all too often the selection and
introduction of collaborative tools
failed to take into account the practical
business needs of their work function.
Consequently, there was a mismatch
between expectations and reality. A
further point raised, was that many of
the tools were complicated or
cumbersome requiring users to switch
between multiple applications resulting in limited uptake. Finally,
implementation of new packages was
more often than not poorly managed
with little follow-up to initial training
programmes. Unsurprisingly
widespread adoption of collaborative
tools has to date, not met with the
expectations of IT departments or top
management.
IMPACT OF CORPORATE
CULTURE
Corporate culture plays a critical role
in ensuring greater collaboration, yet
the fact remains that in today's large
pharmacos, there are too many
people, too much information and too
little time devoted to overcoming the
barriers to information sharing in
order to create a true collaborative
environment. Compounding
Journal of Medical Marketing
Rowlands et al.
this issue has been M&A activity which
often brings together two culturally
diverse organisations with conflicting
working practices and different
technology implementations.
The typical hierarchical nature of
pharmaceutical companies also hinders
collaborative efforts. Senior executives
can be territorial, defensive and even
closed — team collaboration can
therefore become difficult as individuals
have to work around managerial 'egos'
and sensitivities. In addition,
information hoarders will always exist
and with a lack of incentives that
encourage joint working, personnel
often feel that it is not within their
interests to collaborate — they become
economical \vith information, thus
impeding collaborative efforts.
In many cases, collaboration is at
odds with the company's corporate
culture so implementation will be
disruptive. Shifting a corporate culture
from being competitive to being
cooperative is not easy, it requires
leadership from top management and
changes at all levels of the
organisation. This remains a big leap
for many companies where individuals
are still rewarded for controlling
knowledge and highlighting their own
achievements, rather than for sharing
knowledge and focusing on team
accomplishments.
FUTURE COLLABORATIVE
PRACTICE
Since the 1990s, collaboration
strategies have revolved around tools
with little attention being paid to user
needs and behaviour. Simply giving
users the perfect tool for each situation
is not always the correct strategy —
this just leads to the proliferation of
tools for each situation and results in
higher levels of IT complexity (and
costs). Today the focus is on how
people work within processes — it is no
longer a personal productivity
endeavour (e.g. saving time or making
individual
tasks more efficient), the goal now is
to enable processes to perform at a
higher level.
We are in the midst of a fundamental
paradigm shift as new technologies
bring integrated voice, video and web
solutions to the pharmaceutical
desktop. Emerging collaborative
solutions now offer the user the ability to
coordinate seamlessly between tools
without the need to switch between
systems. Information can be shared in
an integrated and synchronised manner
allowing decisions to be made on the
most up-to-date information (Figure 2).
This so-called 'contextual
collaboration' represents an integration
of tools into a unified interface allowing teams to communicate
quickly and instantly from a single
environment. The goal of contextual
collaboration is to make online
collaboration as simple and as intuitive
as possible allowing more proactive
goal management and more focused
work processes. The technological key
will be the adoption of a converged
infrastructure which delivers the ability
for voice and other collaborative tools
to work seamlessly together.
WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM
THE STUDY?
Study findings highlighted the fact that
collaboration is primarily about
behaviour and not technology.
Collaboration strategists must
overcome organisational, cultural and
behavioural issues such as persuading
people to work differently, establishing
incentives and performance measures
that foster greater information sharing
and cooperation. Additionally,
community building efforts are valuable
to create synergies across processes
and functions. This approach provides
users with peripheral vision of what
else is going on that might influence
their own work practices. In this
respect,
Winning strategies for effective collaboration
Object
Sharing
Conversation
(VoIP)
Presence
Awareness
e.g. Documents,
Databases
CONTEXTUAL
COLLABORATION
Shared
Workspace
Aggregation of
shared objects
& tools
Figure 2: Unification of tools
collaboration becomes a
cornerstone of knowledge
management and enterprise
learning strategies.
re-distributes the information.
Effective collaboration requires the
right mix of both synchronous and
asynchronous tools used in an
appropriate and linked manner.
WINNING STRATEGIES FOR
EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION
Ensure contextual collaboration
The right tool
Selecting the right tool for the right
task is a critical consideration and will
result in a positive collaborative
experience. Important considerations
include the size of the audience, the
intended level of interaction and the
immediacy of the required response
(Tables 2 and 3). Chat and instant
messaging are forms of synchronous
communications where each user
responds to the other in real time. In
contrast, discussion forums and e-mail
for example, are asynchronous
communications. Some amount of
time may pass before a person
responds to a message and/or reuses, re-purposes or
© 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1745-7904
Vol. 6, 2 83-93
The research found virtually no linking
of asynchronous and synchronous
collaboration tools to date — the
convergence of voice, video and data
networks means that technology is no
longer a barrier to prevent this from
happening. The future is 'contextual'
where collaborative tools will exist in a
linked and integrated family allowing
users to switch seamlessly between
systems from a single desktop
environment (Figure 3). This integrated
environment will serve as a managed
repository providing document and
record management combined with
communication tools, e.g. corporate
directories will link to
Journal of Medical Marketing
Rowlands et al.
contact information and with the
additional use of presence information,
individuals can check if people are
available to take calls allowing a strong
link to be forged between data and the
people responsible for creating it.
Contextual collaboration has the
potential to cross the divide between
electronic data and human knowledge
by linking information to people and by
creating an environment for human
interaction. In this respect, contextual
collaboration mimics the richness of
co-located small-team working by
combining process rigour for
compliance
Table 2: Considerations for the selection of
collaborative tools
Criteria
E-mail
Instant
Messaging
Shared
Workspace
Synchronous
No
Yes
No
Asynchronous
Yes
Potential
Yes
Data sharing
Medium Low
High
Ease-of-use
High
High
Medium
Accessibility
High
High
High
Response
required
Yes
Yes
No
Audience size
1-5
Good
Excellent
Excellent
Audience size
5-25
Good
Medium
Excellent
Audience size
>25
Good
Poor
Excellent
with captured ad hoc interaction
and collaboration. The move
towards contextual collaboration
continues to be adopted to improve
productivity, reduce coordination
costs and better connect people to
peers and teams.
Create the culture
Pharmaceutical companies need to
develop and reward a culture of
openness and sharing. Training is
required — users must be familiar with
and comfortable using the tools. Over
time, end-user confidence and
familiarity will evolve and the
sophistication of the workspace will
grow accordingly. With adequate
training and support, the result will be
a constant cycle of positive
reinforcement and continuous
enhancements in productivity.
Employees need an incentive to
contribute to the system; rewards
could be either financial or
psychological (eg peer recognition). In
addition, users must realise a net gain
from the system and the value of
sharing information through
collaboration must be reinforced. A
major failing is that the majority of
pharmaceutical companies do not yet
reward or include collaboration in
personal objectives — and without
incentives, behaviour will not change.
Table 3: Considerations for the selection of collaborative conferencing tools
Criteria
Video-conference
Visual cues
Teleconference
No
Net Meeting
Face-to-face
Yes
No
Yes
Presentation of data
No
Sometimes
Yes
Yes
Collaboration environment
Low
High
High
High
Ease-of-use
High
Medium-Low
Medium
High
Accessibility
High
Low
High
Low
Equipment cost
Low
High
Low
Zero
Network cost
Low
High
Low
Zero
Other expenses (e.g. travel)
Low
Low
Low
High
Meeting size 1-5
Good
Excellent
Good
Excellent
Meeting size 5-25
Medium
Medium
Good
Excellent
Meeting size >25
Poor
Poor
Good
Excellent
Winning strategies for effective collaboration
Figure 3: Potential connectivity from the desktop
Measure the impact
Collaborative tools are likely to be
adopted more widely within
pharmaceutical companies and their
use will become more routine if
employees and executives understand
how much time and money can be
saved.
Calculation of a hard savings figure
for the return-on-investment (ROI) on
collaborative tools is hampered by the
multitude of budgets and cost centres
involved. Broad estimates from the
study suggest that by avoiding the
need for four people to travel and
meet face-to-face once a month over
the clinical development period, the
saving in terms of man-hours is in
excess of 1 year and around US$0.4
million in terms of costs (costs
included in the calculation: airfare
estimations, hotels, meals, car services,
taxis, salary downtime costs, sundries,
etc.). Similarly, by improving discovery
productivity by 3 per cent through
easier
© 2006 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1745-7904
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access to relevant information and
sources of expertise, could result in 2
months decreased discovery time and
US$6 million saving. One respondent
claimed that researchers within their
company were spending more than
15 per cent of their time searching for
data and information which has led to
bad and slow decision-making.
Promote the benefits
Effective collaboration strategies
enable individuals and teams to be
more productive within processes, with
success being measured via
improvements in process outcomes
and more sustained levels of
innovation. Productivity improvements
can be delivered as both hard,
quantifiable benefits (already
discussed) and as soft benefits. Soft
benefits are perhaps always the most
under-appreciated since they are
difficult,
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Rowlands et al.
Table 4: Critical factors for successful collaboration
Critical Success Factors for Tools
Simplicity - tools developed for large groups of people need to be easy to learn as well as simple and intuitive
to use
Accessibility - tools must fit seamlessly within the desktop environment
Customisation - different groups have different needs for tools and information
Integration - tools should ideally sit within an integrated and linked environment enabling the user to move
seamlessly from one tool to the next
Relevance - tools must be relevant to the context of the user’s work as well as meet specific business
objectives
Connectivity - tools must afford easy access to others (team members and beyond)
Reliability - tools must work in the manner expected and systems must be maintained
Critical Success Factors for Creating a Collaborative Environment
Culture - a corporate culture f sharing and openness
Rewards - for demonstrating effective team working and collaborative behaviour
Training - appropriate and timely
Leadership - team leaders must provide authority and example on collaborative behaviour
Resource - must be allocated at the team level to direct the use and continuous optimisation of the
collaborative workspace
Define roles and responsibilities - at all levels from the implementation team down to project teams
themselves
Reinforce benefits - the impact of collaboration needs to be measured while promoting the benefits at the
same time
if not impossible, to quantify
with precision and include:
• Enhanced creativity and innovation
• Faster and more informed decisionmaking
— 24/7 availability of information means
that
decisions are based on current not
expired
data
• Increased transparency across the
organisation
• Improved management of project teams
• Increased reach — including remote
workers
and multi-geographies
• Minimisation of travel requirements —
improved quality of life for workers
• Elimination of downtime
In short, the soft benefits that accrue
from the use of collaborative tools may
be hard to quantify but they are no
less real than the hard benefits. It
would be difficult to write the business
case for telephone or e-mail systems
but it would be equally
difficult to work in a modern
corporate environment without
them.
CONCLUSION
Collaborative solutions now represent
a core business tool that global
pharmaceutical companies need to
fully embrace in order to compete in
today's global marketplace. The major
finding of the study was that successful
implementation of collaborative
solutions requires a deep
understanding of user needs
combined with the deployment of the
appropriate intuitive tools (Table 4). In
addition, it is crucial that implementation
is supported by an organisation-wide
'change management' programme to
help employees adapt their working
behaviours and styles to fully exploit the
benefits of collaborative working.
Winning strategies for effective collaboration
New tools and communication
infrastructures are now on the horizon
that will enable true contextual
collaboration. With the convergence of
voice, video and data networks, more
pharmaceutical companies will realise
increased value through deploying IP
collaborative solutions — including IP
telephony (VoIP), unified messaging,
voice mail and audio, video, and web
conferencing. These personal tools will
enable workers to communicate
anywhere, anytime, with local and
remote colleagues, without leaving the
comfort and efficiency of their
workspace. Individuals will be able to
work with live information
that is relevant, current and fluid.
Online collaboration will make
significant steps towards being as
simple and as intuitive as working \vith
people in the same room.
To truly embed collaborative working
behaviour however, requires a
fundamental change in corporate
culture and working behaviours and
styles — to succeed the benefits of
collaboration and knowledge sharing
must be continually reinforced from the
top down. A successful collaborative
framework is a driver for cultural
change and is a vehicle for
pharmaceutical companies to realise
the full potential of their greatest asset their people.