As Head of Life Sciences at The Smart Cube, I have been a first-hand witness of the advances across the sector in recent years, and have played a leading role in helping our Life Sciences clients make better use of intelligence, data and technology.
We have seen the influx in usage of data at all stages of drug launches – pre-launch (clinical trials), launch, and post-launch (adherence); we have seen the launch of biosimilars in Europe and the USA; and we have also seen some technological advancements NOT working out (like Pfizer’s Exubera – the needle-free insulin). As a specialist in Life Sciences, we have supported our clients in adapting to these paradigm shifts with custom intelligence and analytics, to give them an edge.
One such paradigm shift has been in the increasing importance of patient support programmes (PSPs) of pharmaceutical companies. Large sums of money have been invested in supporting all stages of a patient journey – including medication access, start of treatment and dosage adherence – and this is only going to grow: according to a recent Accenture report, 85% of pharmas plan to raise their investments in patient-centric capabilities.
The Smart Cube’s talented minds, armed with tools and technology, deliver insights to many pharmaceutical businesses – in fact 9 out of the top 10 global pharma companies – to improve their strategies in this area. We were recently engaged by a global pharma client to support the development of a new Patient Support Programme (PSP) strategy across North America, the EU and APAC. Our subject matter experts, with rich experience in the pharma space, identified relevant suppliers and advised on best practices around contract structure, engagement models and KPIs – critical inputs which laid the foundations of their PSP strategy.
With the long timescales involved in clinical trials and drug development – an average drug takes more than 10 years to reach the market – a trusted long-term partner can be enormously beneficial, adding value by driving better understanding for all stakeholders across the value chain. We have been playing that role for our clients for more than 15 years, delivering solutions from procurement and supply chain to strategy and marketing.
We have recently strengthened and focused our extensive Life Sciences expertise with a set of new procurement and supply chain solutions: Category Intelligence, Commodity Intelligence, Supplier Risk Intelligence, Procurement Analytics and Supplier Engagement. Underpinning these solutions is Amplifi, our proprietary organisational intelligence platform, containing a wealth of enabling assets, from knowledge capital to cutting-edge tools and advanced analytics technology.
This combination is helping us to re-think intelligence and deliver even more value to Life Sciences companies. Our procurement expertise includes negotiation support, contract management support, RFP analytics, inflation modelling, demand management, due diligence support, and supplier identification and consolidation. We have recently helped one client secure a 20% discount during contract renegotiations, and another client used our intelligence to reduce a proposed contract price increase of $4,000 per month to only $400 per month.
We have also used analytics capabilities to reduce overheads for many clients. One of the world’s largest pharmas accrued annual cost saving opportunities of $20 million thanks to our transport spend analytics, and using our insights, also managed to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions in its fleet by 18g/km per vehicle.
We are proud of our client retention rate of more than 90% year on year, and our new sector-specific solutions and Amplifi will only add to our core strengths and capabilities. Integrated into our clients’ teams, we do the heavy lifting to help them deliver even more.
Read some examples of how we have supported our Life Sciences clients with intelligence and analytics to deliver actionable insights: