Top 5 Imperatives for Successfully Managing Pharmaceutical Alliances

As more and more life sciences companies continue to form alliances in order to augment their pipelines, how do you ensure that alliances succeed?

By Anonymous (not verified) on Apr 30, 2008

As more and more life sciences companies continue to form alliances in order to augment their pipelines, how do you ensure that alliances succeed? A recent study cited in the Harvard Business Review found that current alliance failure rates hover at 70%. With that staggering figure in mind, getting alliance partners to collaborate, manage internal resources and define measurable milestones is critical to the success of alliances.

Organizations that do not have a system for ensuring that internal and external members of the team work as one are more likely to fail at delivering maximum value to their organization and their partners. Another study published by the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals found that teamwork is an important factor in achieving alliance success and that organizations that can create clear, mutual goals, coordinate actions and monitor results, and maintain high levels of motivation, trust and the commitment to resolve conflict, appear to be in the best position to realize their intended alliance outcomes. The key determiner here is the ability to foster these processes at the team level.

So, how does a company go about fostering these processes at a team level?

1. First, both organizations will need to clearly define the goals of the organization and communicate those goals to all stakeholders.

2. Alliance strategies must be aligned with those goals and metrics that measure the performance of the alliance need to be clearly articulated, measured and reported on a regular basis.

3. Alliance commitments, milestones and any associated payments must be communicated to the team and tracked.

4. As the alliance members begin to work together and learn from each other, these learnings should be documented and shared so that best practices can be captured and shared across both organizations.

5. Finally, a shared neutral platform that incorporates communication and collaboration tools is an integral part of the solution since it enables both partners to truly work as one team.

Following these imperatives will ensure that your alliances are successful. How well equipped is your company to maximize the value of its alliances?

Sara Melo-Pereira
Skila
www.skila.com