A global pharmaceutical company – creating the foundations for an effective and efficient R&D function to serve the needs of a growing company

The company recognised that sustained growth would require improved global business processes. In particular the R&D Management wanted processes, frameworks and supporting tools to ensure R&D was aligned and equipped to meet the requirements of the company.

Their first question was – “Are we effective, efficient and do we incorporate best practice in our daily operations?” To address this, PA Consulting Group worked with the R&D client team to map out the current ‘As Is’ business processes.

Through a systematic process of interviews and workshops PA identified many areas where R&D best practice operation was indeed routine. PA also identified specific areas within the Development function where some focussed effort could generate significant improvement. This ‘As Is’ assessment led to two specific opportunities:

• areas where there was an opportunity to further implement best practice

• areas where improvement would result in significant business benefit.

Improvement opportunities were subsequently prioritised on the basis of three key criteria -

• impact of the improvement,

• ease of implementation within the organisation,

• ‘business as usual’ could not be jeopardised.

Four key initiatives resulted from this assessment these were the “Pillars for Growth”. The workstreams supporting these key initiatives would subsequently redefine the way our client undertook development.

PA worked with the individual client R&D subteams to define the processes that would drive success in these key areas.

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