Problem:
Many of our clients have the skills and experience to identify and evaluate potential external Marketing partners – they simply can’t find the time to do it well. One of our clients who was new to her role needed to understand the point-of-care (PoC) landscape and solution options in specialists’ offices as part of her planning for an upcoming Rx product launch.
Approach:
The Health Accelerators team conducted a systematic landscape assessment through desk research of current US PoC offerings and news articles; interviewed brand managers at other biopharmas promoting products in the same category; and consulted with a private equity firm focused on life sciences and making investments in the PoC space.
We helped our client and her Procurement colleague write a request for proposal (RFP) based on her target segments and launch goals, and recommended a handful of PoC suppliers to receive it. We reviewed the RFP responses, conducted screener calls with the top three suppliers, and coordinated supplier presentations at our client’s headquarters. Following that we collaborated with her and her team, as well as Procurement and the internal Media team, to make a final recommendation to use two suppliers to increase reach among specialty offices since none of the suppliers had a large enough network on their own.
Results:
The client moved forward with our recommendation, and her branded program was Medical-Legal-Regulatory (MLR) approved and ready in time for launch. A few months into the launch of the product, the suppliers’ combined reach helped to quickly build brand awareness among target patients making treatment decisions, as well as the specialists who cared for them.
Having led Rx product teams ourselves, we believe that outsourcing the identification, initial vetting and RFP logistics to a partner like Health Accelerators not only frees up product managers to do more strategic work, but it adds a level of objectivity that many agencies-of-record (AOR) are unable to provide because of their business model, i.e., they generally recommend only tactics for which they can make the most money.