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Pharma Marketing in India: 10 Chain Events to Catalyze a Paradigm Shift

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In the matured markets of the world pharmaceutical marketing is quite different in many respect as compared to India. Besides doctors, different sets of customer groups like, healthcare providers, patient advocacy groups, pharmacy benefit managers, clinical assessment authorities play various critical roles for use and consumption of branded or generic pharmaceutical products and related healthcare services.

Quite in contrast, even today, individual doctors have continued to remain almost the sole target customers for the pharmaceutical players in India. This is mainly because, by and large, they are the only decision makers for usage of medicines and other healthcare facilities for most of the patients in the country.

Heralding a new paradigm:

As indicated above, though the current pharmaceutical marketing strategies continue to revolve mostly around the doctors, a distinct change, albeit slowly though, is now anticipated within the pharmaceutical marketing space in India.

Gradual emergence of healthcare providers with medical insurance and other related products, patient advocacy groups and standard treatment guidelines, just to name a few, are expected to facilitate heralding a new paradigm in the strategy dynamics of the Indian Pharmaceuticals Market (IPM) in the coming years. These changes will not be incremental in any way, but disruptive and radical in nature, as they will fully evolve.

This process of transformation, mainly driven by Government policy reform measures like, ‘Universal Health Coverage (UHC)’, ‘Free distribution of medicines’, mandatory prescriptions in generic names, could make the current pharmaceutical business strategy models of majority of companies irrelevant and obsolete, in not too distant future.

It is worth noting that the Government will spend around Rs.14,000 Crores (US$ 2.60 billion, approximately) from the year 2014 to 2017 just on medicine purchases at highly negotiated/discounted prices for free distribution to all through Government hospitals and dispensaries.

10 Chain events envisaged: 


In the evolving scenario, following chain events, taking place almost in tandem, in my view, will gradually usher in a new pharmaceutical marketing paradigm in India:

1. In addition to ‘Universal Health Coverage’, there will be a rapid increase in the number of other healthcare providers with innovative, tailor-made and value added schemes for various strata of the society.

2. This will trigger emergence of very powerful groups of negotiators for adopting treatment guidelines, pharmaceutical products usage and other healthcare related services.

3. These groups will have the wherewithal to strongly and significantly influence the doctors in their prescription and other treatment choices.

4. A significant proportion of the products that the pharmaceutical companies will market, a tough price negotiation with the healthcare providers/ medical insurance companies will be inevitable.

5. Consequently, doctors will no longer be the sole decision makers for prescribing drugs and also the way they will treat the common diseases.

6. Pharmaco-economics or Health Technology Assessment (HTA) or outcome based pricing will gradually play an important role in pricing a healthcare products. Drug Price Control Order (DPCO 2013) has already signaled to this direction for a class of products.

7. An integrated approach towards disease prevention will emerge as equally important as treating diseases.

8. A shift from just product marketing to marketing a bundle of value added comprehensive disease management processes along with the product would be the order of the day.

9. More regulatory control measures on pharmaceutical sales and marketing are expected to be put in place by the Government to prevent alleged widespread sales and marketing malpractices in the country.

10. Over the counter (OTC) medicines, especially those originated from natural products to treat common and less serious illnesses, will carve out a sizable share of the market, as appropriate regulations would be put in place, adequately supported by AYUSH. This will be fueled by overall increase in general health awareness of the population.

Trapped in an ‘Archaic Strategy Cocoon’:

Over a long period of time, Indian pharmaceutical industry seems to have trapped itself in a difficult to explain ‘Archaic  Strategy Cocoon’. No holds bar sales promotion activities, with very little of marketing, continue to dominate the ball game of hitting the month-end numbers, even today.

It is high time to come out of this cocoon and confront the ‘writing on the wall’ upfront, if not try to hasten the process of the evolving changes, boldly and squarely. This will require a strategic long term vision to be implemented in an orderly way to effectively convert all these challenges into possible high growth business opportunities.

A differentiated composite value delivery system:

Moreover, in today’s post product patent regime in the country, product pipelines of the domestic Indian companies with new ‘copycat’ versions of patented products have almost dwindled into nothing, making price competition in the market place even more ‘cut throat’.

In such type of changing environment, all pharmaceutical companies will be under tremendous pressure to create and deliver additional, well differentiated and composite value offerings, beyond physical products, to attract more patients, doctors, healthcare providers and others, in and around related disease areas, for business excellence.

Thus, ability to create and effectively deliver well-differentiated composite value offerings, along with the physical products, will separate men from the boys in the high growth pharmaceutical market of India, in the long run.

This could also possibly create an ‘Alibaba Effect’ for the successful ones in search of pots of gold in the pharmaceutical space of India.

New leadership and managerial skill set requirements:

In the new environment, required skill sets for both the leaders and the managers of Indian pharmaceutical companies will be quite different from what they are today. This will not happen overnight though, but surely will unfold gradually.

New skills:

Leaders and managers with knowledge in just one functional area like, R&D, manufacturing, marketing, regulatory, finance are unlikely to be successful without a broad-based knowledge in the new paradigm. To really understand and handle new types and groups of customers, they will need to break the operational silos and be proficient in other key areas of business too.

These professionals will require ensuring:

• Multi-functional expertise by rotating right people across the key functional areas, as far as possible, even with a stretch.

• Ability to fathom and correctly interpret patients’ clinical benefits against cost incurred to achieve the targeted clinical outcomes, especially in areas of new products.

• Insight into the trend of thought pattern of healthcare providers and other customers or influencers groups.

• Speed in decision-making and delivery…more importantly ability to take ‘first time right’ decisions, which can make or mar an important initiative or a commercial deal.

IPM growing fast, can grow even faster: 

India is now one of fastest growing emerging pharmaceutical markets of the world with 3rd global ranking in the volume of production and 13th in value terms. Domestic turnover of the industry is over US$ 13.1 billion in 2012 (IMS) representing around 1 percent of the global pharmaceutical industry turnover of US$ 956 billion (IMS 2011).

Since 1970, Indian pharmaceutical Industry has rapidly evolved from almost a non-entity to meeting around 20 percent of the global requirements of high quality and low cost generic medicines.

Financial reforms in the health insurance sector and more public investments (2.5% of the GDP) in the healthcare space during the 12th Five Year Plan Period will have significant catalytic effect to further boost the growth of the industry.

Stringent regulations and guidelines of the Government in various areas of pharmaceutical business in India are expected to be in place soon. Ability to ensure system-based rigid organizational compliance to those changing business demands in a sustainable way. will determine the degree of success for the pharma players in India.

One such area, out of many others, is the professional interaction of the Medical Representatives with the doctors and other customer groups.

Require a ‘National Regulatory Standard’ for Medical Representatives in India:

Medical Representatives (MRs) currently form the bedrock of business success, especially for the pharmaceutical industry in India. The Job of MRs is a tough and high voltage one, laced with moments of both elation and frustration, while generating prescription demand for selected products in an assigned business territory.

Though educational qualifications, relevant product and disease knowledge, professional conduct and ethical standards vary widely among them, they are usually friendly, mostly wearing a smile even while working in an environment of long and flexible working hours.

There is a huge challenge in India to strike a right balance between the level and quality of sales pitch generated for a brand by the MRs, at times even without being armed with required scientific knowledge and following professional conduct/ ethical standards, while doing their job.

Straying from the right course:

A recent media report highlighted that ‘Indian subsidiary of a Swiss pharma major has run into trouble with some executives allegedly found to be inflating and presenting fabricated sales data for an anti-diabetic drug.’

The report also indicated that officials from mid-management ranks to sales representatives were allegedly involved in those unethical practices. The company has responded to this incidence by saying that the matter is still under investigation.

It is critical for the MRs not just to understand scientific details of the products, their mode of action in disease conditions, precautions and side effects, but also to have a thorough training on how to ‘walk the line’, in order to be fair to the job and be successful.

As MRs are not just salesmen, they must always be properly educated in their respective fields and given opportunities to constantly hone their knowledge and skills to remain competitive. The role of MRs is expected to remain important even in the changing scenario, though with additional specialized skill sets.

Unfortunately, India still does not have a ‘National Code of Conduct or Regulatory Standards’ applicable to the MRs.

Only the clause 4 of ‘The Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act, 1954’ deals with misleading advertisements. It is about time to formulate not only a ‘National Code on Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices’, but also a mandatory ‘Accreditation program’ and transparent qualifying criteria for the MRs for the entire pharmaceutical industry in India, just like many other countries of the world.

‘Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO)’ of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of India in its website lists the “Laws Pertaining to Manufacture and Sale of Drugs in India”. However, it does not specify any regulation for the MRs nor does it recommend any standard of qualification and training for them, which is so critical for all concerned.

There are currently no comprehensive national standards for educational qualification, knowledge, ethics and professional conduct for the MRs. In the absence of all these, it is difficult to fathom, whether they are receiving right and uniform inputs to appropriately interact with the medical profession and others in a manner that will benefit the patients and at the same remain within the boundary of professional ethics and conduct.

Thus, a ‘National Regulatory Standard’ for MRs, I reckon, is absolutely necessary in India… sooner the better.

Global pharmaceutical players:

Facing a huge patent cliff, global pharmaceutical companies are now fast gaining expertise in the ball game of generic pharmaceuticals, especially in the developing markets of the world.

In the emerging markets like India, where branded generic business dominates, global pharmaceutical players seem to be increasingly finding it lucrative enough for a sustainable all round business growth.

However, to outpace competition, they too will need to capture the changing dynamics of the market and strategize accordingly without moaning much about the business environment in the country.

On the other hand, if majority of Indian pharmaceutical companies, who are not yet used to handling such changes, are caught unaware of this evolving scenario, the tsunami of changes, as they will come, could spell a commercial disaster, endangering even very survival of their business.

Managing transition:

During ensuing phase of transition in India, pharmaceutical companies would require to:

• Clearly identify, acquire and continuously hone the new skill sets to effectively manage the evolving challenge of change.

• Get engaged, having clarity in the strategic content and intent, with the existing public/private healthcare providers and health insurance companies like, Mediclaim, ICICI Lombard, large corporate hospital chains, retail chain chemists and others, proactively.

• Drive the change, instead of waiting for the change to take place.

• Ensure that appropriate balance is maintained between different types of marketing strategies with innovative ways and means.

Conclusion:

It may not be easy for the local Indian players to adapt to the new paradigm sooner and compete with the global players on equal footing, even in the branded generic space, with strategies not innovative enough and lacking required cutting edges.

In my view, those Indian Pharmaceutical companies, who are already global players in their own rights and relatively well versed with the nuances of this new ball game in other markets, will have a significant competitive edge over most other domestic players.

If it happens, the global-local companies will offer a tough competition to the local-global players, especially, in the branded generic space with greater cost efficiency.

So far as other domestic players are concerned, the fast changing environment could throw a new challenge to many, accelerating the consolidation process further within the Indian pharmaceutical industry.

As the new paradigm will herald, catalyzed by the above 10 chain events, there will be a metamorphosis in the way pharmaceutical marketing is practiced in India. A well-differentiated composite value delivery system would then, in all probability, be the name of the winning game.

By: Tapan J. Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

 

Arresting continuous job losses in the global pharma industry call for innovation across the value chain

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In not too distant past, the stocks of the global pharmaceutical companies, by and large, used to be categorized as ‘blue-chips’ for their high return to investors, as compared to many other sectors.

Unfortunately, the situation has changed significantly since then. Most of those large players now appear to be under tremendous pressure for excellence in performance.

The issues of ‘Patent Cliff’, coupled with patent expiries, price and margin pressures from payors’ group in the developed world, have already started haunting the research based pharmaceutical companies and are assuming larger proportions day by day.

The situation continues to be grim:

Collective impact of all the above factors has prompted the major pharma players to resort to huge cost cutting exercises leading to employee layoffs, quite often, in a massive scale.

According to a study done by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., which was also quoted in the Forbes Magazine, April 13, 2011, 297,650 employees were laid off by the global pharma industry between the years 2000 and 2011.

Year

Number of Job cuts

2000

2,453

2001

4,736

2002

11,488

2003

28,519

2004

15,640

2005

26,300

2006

15,638

2007

31,732

2008

43,014

2009

61,109

2010

53,636

Total

297,650


Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. ©/Forbes Magazine, April 13, 2011

Top of the list layoffs:

Forbes, Pharma and Healthcare, June 10, 2011 reported ‘top of the list layoffs’ in the Global Pharmaceutical Industry from 2004 to 2011. This number reported to be comparable to as many people working at the three largest drug companies combined namely, Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline GSK in 2011.

Company No of layoffs
Pfizer 58,071
Merck 44,400
Johnson & Johnson 9,900
Eli Lilly 5,500
Bristol-Myers Squibb 4,600

More recently ‘Mail online’ dated February 3, 2012 reported that ‘Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announces 7,300 job losses as it pares back staff to save money’. Immediately, thereafter, on February 24, 2012 Reuters reported that ‘German drugs and chemicals group Merck KGaA has announced plans for a cost-cutting program across all its businesses that may include job cuts’.

The old paradigm is no longer relevant:

To get insight into the future challenges of the pharmaceutical industry in general ‘Complete Medical Group’ of U.K had conducted a study with a sizable number of senior participants from the pharmaceutical companies of various sizes and involving many countries. The survey covered participants from various functional expertise like, marketing, product development, commercial, pricing and other important areas. The report highlighted that a paradigm shift has taken place in the global pharmaceutical industry, where continuation with the business strategies of the old paradigm will no longer be a pragmatic option.

Learning from the results of the above study, which brought out several big challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry in the new paradigm, my submissions are as follows:

Collaborative Research to overcome R&D productivity crisis: The cost of each new drug approval has now reached a humongous proportion and is still increasing. This spiraling R&D cost does not seem to be sustainable any longer. Thus there emerges a need to re-evaluate the R&D model of the pharmaceutical companies to make it cost effective with lesser built-in risk factors. Could there be a collaborative model for R&D, where multiple stakeholders will join hands to discover new patented molecules? In this model all involved parties would be in agreement on what will be considered as important innovations and share the ‘risk and reward’ of R&D as the collaborative initiative progresses. The Translational Medicine Research Collaboration (TMRC) partnering with Pfizer and others, ‘Patent Pool’ initiative for tropical diseases of GSK and OSDD for Tuberculosis by CSIR in India are examples of steps taken towards this direction. Surely such collaborative initiatives are not easy and perhaps may also not be acceptable to many large global players as on date, but they are not absolutely uncommon either. The world has already witnessed such collaborative research, especially in the sectors, like Information Technology (IT). Thus, it remains quite possible, as the industry moves on, that the world will have opportunities to take note of initiation of various cost effective collaborative R&D projects to create a win-win situation for all stakeholders in the global healthcare space. Greater access to fast growing markets: The increasing power of payors in the developed world and the interventions of the Government on the ground of ‘affordability of medicines’ in the developing countries are creating an all pervasive pricing/margin pressure for the pharmaceutical players.

These critical emerging developments can be effectively negotiated with significant increase in market access, especially in the emerging economies of the world, with each country specific business strategies. ‘One size fits all’ type of standardized approach, currently adopted by some large global players in the markets like India, may not be able to fetch significant dividend in the years ahead.

Better understanding of the new and differential value offerings that the payors, doctors and patients will increasingly look for, much beyond the physical products/brands, would prove to be the cutting edge for the winners for greater market access in the emerging economies.

Current business processes need significant re-engineering: Top management teams of many global pharma companies have already started evaluating the relevance of sole dependance on the current R&D based pharmaceutical business model. They will now need to include in their strategy wider areas of healthcare value delivery system with a holistic disease management focus.

Only treatment of diseases may no longer be considered enough with an offering of just various types of medications. Added value with effective non-therapeutic/incremental disease management/prevention initiatives and appropriately improving quality of life of the patients, especially in case of chronic ailments, will assume increasing importance in the pharmaceutical business process in the emerging markets. Continuous innovation required not just in R&D, but across the value chain: Continuous innovation across the pharmaceutical value chain, beyond pharmaceutical R&D, is the most critical success factor. The ability to harness new technologies, rather than just recognize their potential, and the flexibility to adapt to the fast changing and demanding regulatory environment together with patients’ newer value requirements, should be a critical part of the business strategy of  the pharmaceutical companies in the new paradigm. Avoidance of silos, integrating decision making processes: More complex, highly fragmented and cut throat competition have created a need for better, more aligned and integrated decision making process across various functional areas of the pharmaceutical business. Creation of silos, duplication of processes and empire building have long been a significant trend, especially, in the larger pharmaceutical companies. Part of a better decision making will include more pragmatic and efficient deployment of investments and other resources  for organizational value creation and jettisoning all those activities, which are duplications, organizational flab producing and will no longer deliver differential value to the stakeholders. Finding newer ways of customer engagement: Growing complexity of the business environment is making meaningful interactions with the customers and decision makers increasingly challenging. There is a greater need for better management of the pharmaceutical communication channels to strike a right balance between ‘pushing’ information to the doctors, patients and other stakeholders and helping them ‘pull’ the relevant information whenever required. Questioning perceived ‘fundamentals’ of the old paradigm:

Despite a paradigm shift in the business environment, fundamental way the pharmaceutical industry appears to have been attempting to address these critical issues over a decade, has not changed much.

In their attempt to unleash the future growth potential, the pharmaceutical players are still moving around the same old dictums like, innovative new product development, scientific sales and marketing, satisfying customer needs, application of information technology (IT) in all areas of strategy making process including supply chain, building blockbuster brands, continuing medical education, greater market penetration skills, to name just a few. Unfortunately, despite all such resource intensive initiatives, over a period of time, nothing seems to have changed fundamentally, excepting, probably, some sort of arrest in the rate of declining process.

Conclusion:

Such incremental focus over a long period of time on the same areas, far from being able to ride the tide of change effectively, does ring an alarm bell to some experts. More so, when all these initiatives continue to remain their prime catalysts for change even today to meet new challenges of a different paradigm altogether.

The moot question therefore remains: what are the companies achieving from all heavy investments being continuously made in these areas since long…and why have they not been able to address the needs of the new ball game for business excellence, effectively, thus far?

When results are not forthcoming despite having taken all such measures, many of them have no options but to resort to heavy cost cutting measures including job losses to protect the profit margin, as much as one possibly can.

If the issues related to declining rate of global pharmaceutical business performance is not addressed sooner moving ‘outside the box’ and with ‘lateral thinking’, one can well imagine what would its implication be, in the endeavor towards arresting continuous job losses through business excellence, in the years ahead.

By: Tapan J Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Does branding of generic drugs offer value to the patients in India?

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It appears that the government has accepted the submission of the ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee for Health and Family Welfare’ made to the ‘Rajya Sabha’ of the Indian Parliament on August 4, 2010, recommending prescription of medicines by their generic names.

It has now been reported that the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) has already considered the proposal to amend the rules of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of India for approval of all drug formulations containing single active ingredient only in the generic names by the State Licensing Authorities. The proposal to publish the draft rules has been forwarded to the Ministry of Health for necessary approval. The Fixed Dose Combinations (FDC) will be kept out of the purview of this amendment.

This recommendation of the  ‘Parliamentary Standing Committee for Health and Family Welfare’  appears to be based on the premises that the ‘Brand Building’ exercise of the generic drugs in India, includes ‘very high sales and marketing expenditure’, which  can easily be eliminated to make medicines available to the common man at much cheaper prices. ‘Jan Aushadhi’ scheme of the Government is often cited as an example to drive home this point.

This recommendation, on the face of it, makes immense sense. However, the moot question remains, “Is it a practical proposition to implement in India?”

The generics and the branded-generic drugs and their value proposition: As we know generic name is the actual chemical name of a drug. The brand name is selected by the producer of a formulation and is built on various differential value parameters for its proper position in the minds of health professionals as well as the patients. Thus, brand names offer a specific identity to a chemical name in their value proposition.

Some other countries are also taking similar steps:

Just to cite an example, as reported by ‘The Guardian” on August 23, 2011, the Spanish government recently enacted a law compelling the doctors of Spain to prescribe generic drugs rather than more expensive patented and branded pharmaceuticals, wherever available. This move is expected to help the Spanish government to save €2.4 billion (£2.1billion) a year, as in Spain the drugs are partly reimbursed by the government.

As a result, the doctors in Spain will now have to prescribe only in the generic or chemical names of the respective drugs. Consequently the pharmacies will be obliged to dispense ‘the cheapest available versions of drugs, which will frequently mean not the better-known brand names sold by the big drugs firms’.

Quality standards of both generic and branded generic drugs are no different:

Drugs and Cosmetics Act of India requires all generic or branded generic drugs to have the same quality and performance. Thus when a generic drug is approved by the drug regulator, one should logically accept that it has met the required standards with respect to identity, strength, quality, purity and potency. It is not uncommon that there could be some variability taking place during manufacturing process for both branded generic and generic drugs and for that matter it is applicable to all drugs. However, all formulations of both types of these drugs manufactured by different manufacturers do not need to contain the same inactive ingredients.

In any case, all formulations of both generic and branded drugs must be shown to be bioequivalent to the reference drugs with similar blood levels to the respective reference products. Regulators even in the USA believe that if blood levels are the same, the therapeutic effect will be the same.

A recent study:

As reported by the US FDA, ‘A recent study evaluated the results of 38 published clinical trials that compared cardiovascular generic drugs to their brand-name counterparts. There was no evidence that brand-name heart drugs worked any better than generic heart drugs. [Kesselheim et al. Clinical equivalence of generic and brand-name drugs used in cardiovascular disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA. 2008;300(21)2514-2526]‘.

Prescriptions for generic medicines were a record high in America in 2010:

As per published reports, last year i.e in 2010, generic medicines accounted for more than 78%  of the total prescriptions dispensed by retail chemists and long-term care facilities in the US. This is a record high and is four percentage points more than what it was in 2009 and came up from 63% as recorded in 2006.

Points to ponder and resolve in the current Indian situation:

While the intention of the Government is indeed good, some practical issues must be considered before its implementation, which are as follows:

1. Increased chances of error while dispensing:

Chemical names of medicines are complex. In case of any mistake of dispensing the wrong drug by the chemist inadvertently, the patients could face serious consequences.

2. There could be differences even within single ingredient formulations:

Different brands of even single ingredient medicines may have inherent differences in their formulations like, in the drug delivery systems (controlled/sustained release), kind of coatings allowing dissolution in different parts of alimentary canal, dispersible or non-dispersible tablets, chewable or non-chewable tablets etc. Since doctors are best aware of their patients’ conditions, they may wish to prescribe a specific type of formulation based on specific conditions of the patients, which may not be possible by prescribing only in generic names.

3. Price differences between branded generics and generic generics may not exist:

It is intriguing to fathom, just for a switch over from the brand name to the generic name how will the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) of a single ingredient formulation, bearing only the generic name, come down. Currently, MRPs printed on the product packs of generic formulations without any brand name, as available in the retail outlets, are similar to comparable branded generic formulations. In that case, what benefits that Government will expect a patient to get out of this well hyped change?

4. Manufacturers may switch from single ingredient formulations to FDCs:

There is a theoretical possibility that to retain brand names, the pharmaceutical companies may be encouraged to change their formulations from single ingredient to FDCs. In that situation, single ingredient formulations may not be available and comparable FDCs could cost more to the patients.

5. The key decision will shift from physicians to retail chemists:

The major issue with prescriptions by the chemical/generic names is that retail chemists will then be the sole decision makers to choose the prescribed product from within a whole lot of over 30 to 40 manufacturers for a particular product.

What then will prompt the retailers to buy, store and sell different generic formulations of various companies and what could possibly be the key selection criteria for such drugs by them?

I reckon, there could only be one criterion for the choice of such medicines by a chemist i.e. to select only those which will give them highest margin of profits.

In such a case, the ultimate decision making authority for the prescription medicines shifts from the physicians to the chemists. This could make the situation far worse for the patients.

In interest of the patients, it is, therefore, extremely important that the government, regulators, physicians, chemists and even the patients’ groups are aware of such risks and ensure that patients are not adversely impacted in any way.

Conclusion: Viewing purely from the Indian perspective, while the generic drugs per se are not bad for the patients, weighing all the above issues and possible risk factors against expected benefits, I reckon, without effectively addressing the above issues to start with, if the prescriptions of single ingredient formulations are made mandatory only in generic names, it could seriously jeopardize patients’ safety and interest.

In any case, when single ingredient formulations contribute just around 30% of the total prescriptions in India, how could then prescriptions of all single ingredient formulations only in generic names address the stated concern of the government, in a holistic way?

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Could M&As in Pharma create significant stakeholder value?

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At the very outset, I pay my homage to the departed soul of our industry colleague respected Amar Lulla, former joint managing director of Cipla, who passed away on Friday, April 22, 2011 after a prolonged battle against cancer.

As we know, “Merger and Acquisition (M&A)” is an inorganic growth tool of any business. In this model growth in business operations arise from value creation through mergers or takeovers of other companies, rather than from increase in the company’s own existing business activities.

On April 13, 2011, quoting a study released by Burrill & Co, a noted life sciences investment firm, ‘Fierce Pharma’ reported that “drug makers’ deal making over the past 10 years has utterly and completely failed to build value in the industry. Big Pharma has actually lost almost $1 trillion in value during the past decade.”

Big Pharmas lost value in the past decade through deal making:

Burrill argued: “The drug industry’s 17 most active buyers had a combined market value of $1.57 trillion at the end of 2000. By the end of 2010, that value had shrunk to $1.04 trillion–notwithstanding the $425 billion in acquisitions these companies made during the decade with a total loss of $955 billion.”

The report commented that global pharma majors could not make up non-delivery of innovative products through these acquisitions.

M&As triggered by in-market blockbuster products, were successful in the past:

It was observed that those M&As, which were triggered by in-market blockbuster products were successful in the past. Like for example:

Year M&A Product/Products
2000 Pfizer and Warner Lambert Lipitor
2006 Eli Lilly-ICOS Cialis
2008 Eli Lilly- ImClone Erbitux

However, when a company was acquired for products in development or R&D pipelines, it was observed that acquirer could not derive full benefits of their respective inorganic growth plans, as many of those projects did not fructify or could not be continued in the long run for various different reasons. I am not trying to go into those details in this article.

It is usually believed that healthcare companies with diversified interests along with pharmaceuticals and biotech business, like, diagnostic, devices and generic pharmaceuticals encountered much lesser growth pangs in the past. I reckon, it is for this reason, companies like, Abbott, J&J, Roche and Novartis registered overall better business performance than their pure pharmaceutical business counterparts like, Merck, Pfizer etc.

Only future will tell us whether high takeover prices, such as US$ 68 bn paid by Pfizer for Wyeth or US$ 46 bn of Roche for Genentech or US$ 41 bn of Merck for Schering-Plough, mainly to acquire the drug pipelines of the respective companies, can ultimately be justified or not. At this stage, it is indeed extremely difficult to quantify the transaction value of phase III drugs that Pfizer, Roche and Merck acquired with these mega deals.

However, about a couple of years ago ‘Forbes’ in its article titled, “Will Pfizer’s Merger Hurt Innovation?” published in January 26, 2009 commented as follows:

“Between 1998 and now, Pfizer has launched only one medicine with annual sales surpassing $1 billion, despite ploughing more than $60 billion into research and development. That drug, the pain med Lyrica, was already in development at Warner-Lambert when Pfizer bought it.” 

Other significant global M&A initiatives in 2010 were as follows:

Global Companies Value (US $ billion)
Sepracor by Dainippon Sumitomo 2.6
77% of Alcon (the eye care unit of Nestle) by Novartis 50
Millipore by Merck KGA 6
OSI Pharma by Astellas 4
King Pharma by Pfizer 3.6
BioVex by Amgen 1
Ratiopharm by Teva 5

In addition, work is in progress for some more M&A initiatives, like the hostile bid of US $ 20 billion of Sanofi Aventis for Genzyme in 2011. J&J’s offer of US $2.3 billion for vaccines of Crucell; Valeant’s hostile bid for Cephalon of US $ 5.7 billion, and J&J’s talk with Synthes for an acquisition with US $20 billion.

Emerging markets: the Eldorado:

At the same time, IMS Health reports that emerging markets will register a growth rate of 14% to 17% by 2014, significantly driven by generic pharmaceuticals, when the developed markets will be growing by 3% to 6% during this period. It is forecasted that the global pharmaceutical industry will record a turnover of US$1.1 trillion by this time.

Probably prompted by this overall market scenario, the global pharmaceutical majors are still trying to keep their heads above water through deal making and various collaborative initiatives. India, being one of the fastest growing global pharmaceutical markets, has also started experiencing this consolidation process.

Real consolidation process in India commenced in 2006: The consolidation process in India started gaining momentum from the year 2006 with the acquisition of Matrix Lab by Mylan, although 2009 witnessed the biggest merger in the Pharmaceutical Industry of India, thus far, in value terms, when the third largest drug maker of Japan, Daiichi Sankyo acquired 63.9% stake of Ranbaxy Laboratories of India for US $4.6 billion.
This was widely believed to be a win-win deal for both the companies with Daiichi Sankyo leveraging the cost arbitrage of Ranbaxy effectively, while Ranbaxy benefiting from the innovative products range of Daiichi Sankyo. This deal also established Daiichi Sankyo as one of the leading pharmaceutical generic manufacturers of the world, making the merged company a force to reckon with, in the space of both innovative and generic pharmaceuticals business.
Another mega acquisition soon followed:
In May 2010, the Pharma major in the US Abbott catapulted itself to number one position in the Indian Pharmaceutical Market (IPM) by acquiring the branded generics business of Piramal Healthcare with whopping US$3.72 billion. Abbott acquired Piramal Healthcare at around 9 times of its sales multiple against around 4 times of the same paid by Daiichi Sankyo.

According to Michael Warmuth, senior vice-president, established products of Abbott the sales turnover of Abbott in India, after this acquisition, will grow from its current around US$ 480 million to US$2.5 billion by the next decade. 

Was the valuation right for the acquired companies?
Abbott had valued formulations business of Piramal Healthcare at about eight times of sales, which is almost twice of what Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo paid for its US$4.6 billion purchase of a controlling stake in India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories in June 2008.

On the valuation, Warmuth of Abbott has reportedly commented “If you want the best companies you will pay a premium; however, we feel it was the right price.”

This is not surprising at all, as we all remember Daiichi Sankyo commented that the valuation was right for Ranbaxy, even when they wrote off US$3.5 billion on its acquisition.
In my opinion, considering the fact that not too many attractive acquisition targets are available within the domestic pharmaceutical industry, the valuation of any well performed Indian Pharmaceutical Company will continue to remain high, at least in the short to medium term… and why not, when the domestic pharmaceutical industry is growing so well, consistently?

M&As in India from 2006 to 2010:

Year

Indian Companies

Multinational Companies

Value ($Mn)

 Type
2006
Matrix Labs Mylan

736

 Acquisition
Dabur Pharma Fresenius Kabi

219

 Acquisition
Ranbaxy Labs Daiichi Sankyo

4,600

 Acquisition
Shantha Biotech Sanofi-aventis

783

 Acquisition
2009
Orchid Chemicals Hospira

400

 Business Buyout
2010
Piramal Healthcare Abbott

3,720

 Business Buyout
Paras Pharma Reckitt Benkiser

726

 Acquisition

Collaborative deals in India from 2009 to 2011:

Year

Multinational Companies

 Indian Companies
2009
GSK Dr. Reddy’s Lab
Pfizer Aurobindo Pharma
2010
AstraZeneca Torrent
Abbott Cadila Healthcare
Pfizer Strides Arcolab
AstraZeneca Aurobindo Pharma
Pfizer Biocon
2011
Bayer Cadila Healthcare
MSD Sun Pharma

The Key driver for acquisition of large Indian companies:
Such strategies highlight the intent of the global players to quickly grab sizeable share of the highly fragmented IPM – the second fastest growing and one of the most important emerging markets of the world.
If there is one most important key driver for such consolidation process in India, I reckon it will undoubtedly be the strategic intent of the global companies to dig their heel deep into the fast growing Indian branded generic market, contributing over 99% of the IPM. The same process is being witnessed in other fast growing emerging pharmaceutical markets, as well, the growth of which is basically driven by the branded generic business.
Important characteristics to target the branded generic companies:
To a global acquirer the following seem to be important requirements while shortlisting its target companies:
• Current sales and profit volume of the domestic branded generic business • Level of market penetration and the rate of growth of this business • Strength, spread and depth of the product portfolio • Quality of the sales and marketing teams • Valuation of the business
Faster speed of consolidation process could slow down the speed of evolution of the ‘generics pharmaceutical industry’ in India: Though quite unlikely, if the moderate valuation of large Indian companies starts attracting more and more global pharmaceutical majors, the speed of evolution of the ‘local generic pharmaceutical industry’ in the country could slow down, despite entry of newer smaller players in the market.

The global companies will then acquire a cutting edge on both sides of the pharmaceutical business, discovering and developing innovative patented medicines while maintaining a dominant presence in the fast growing emerging branded generics market across the world.
An alarm bell in the Indian Market for a different reason:
It has been reported that being alarmed by these developments, some industry insiders feel, “Lack of available funding is the main reason for the recent spurt in the sale of stakes in domestic companies”.
They have reportedly urged the Government to adequately fund the research and development (R&D) initiatives of the local Pharmaceutical Companies to ensure a safeguard against further acquisition of large Indian generic players by the global pharmaceutical majors. It is a fact that the domestic Indian companies do not have adequate capital to fund cost-intensive R&D projects in India even after having a significant cost arbitrage.
Will such consolidation process now gain momentum in India?
In my view, it will take some more time for acquisitions of large domestic Indian pharmaceutical companies by the Global Pharma majors to gain momentum in the country. In the near future, we shall rather witness more strategic collaborations between Indian and Global pharmaceutical companies, especially in the generic space, as indicated above.
The number of high profile M&As of Indian pharma companies will significantly increase, as I mentioned earlier, when the valuation of the domestic companies appears quite attractive to the global pharma majors. This could happen, as the local players face more cut-throat competition both in Indian and international markets, squeezing their profit margin.
It won’t be a cake walk either…not just yet:
Be that as it may, establishing dominance in the highly fragmented and fiercely competitive IPM will not be a ‘cakewalk’ for any company, not even for the global pharmaceutical majors. Many Indian branded generic players are good marketers too. Companies like, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Alkem, Mankind, Dr.Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL) have proven it time and again, over a period of so many years.
The acquisition of Ranbaxy by Daiichi Sankyo did not change anything in the competition front. Currently the market share of Abbott, post M&A, including Solvay and Piramal Healthcare, comes to just around 6.2% followed by Cipla at 5.5% (Source: AIOCD). This situation in no way signifies domination by Abbott in the IPM, far from creating any oligopolistic pharmaceutical market in India.
Thus the pharmaceutical market in the country will continue to remain fragmented with cut-throat competition from the existing and the newer tough minded, innovative and determined local branded generic players having cost arbitrage, cerebral power and untiring spirit of competitiveness with a burning desire to win.
Simultaneously, some of the domestic pharmaceutical companies are in the process of creating a sizeable Contract Research and Manufacturing Services (CRAMS) sector to service the global pharmaceutical market.
Conclusion:
In my view, it does not make long term business sense to pay such unusually high prices for the branded generics business of any Indian company. Besides the report of Burrill & Co., we also have with us examples of some of the Indian pharmaceutical acquisitions in the overseas market are not working satisfactorily as the regulatory requirements for the low cost generics drugs were changed in those countries.
Most glaring example is the acquisition of the German generic company Betapharm by DRL for US$ 570 million in 2006. It was reported that like Piramals, a significant part of the valuation of Betapharm was for its trained sales team. However, being caught in a regulatory quagmire, the ultimate outcome of this deal turned sour for DRL.
Could similar situation arise in India, as well? Who knows? What happens then to such expensive acquisitions, if for example, prescriptions by generic names are made mandatory by the Government within the country, despite intensive lobbying efforts?

Be that as it may, in India also, a study like, ‘Burrill Report” could be quite useful to ascertain whether or not the deal making of global and local drug majors in the country over a ten year period commencing from 2006 onwards, has succeeded to create desired stakeholder value.

By: Tapan J Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

The concept of ‘Value Based Pricing (VBP)’ gaining ground to reduce cost of healthcare and improve access…but India is quite different

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So far as the pharmaceutical pricing and increasing access to healthcare are concerned, year 2010 perhaps will be remembered as one of the very significant years, at least, in the recent times. In this year with new healthcare reform, President Obama expanded access to Health Insurance to additional around 40 million Americans, the Government in Japan brought in, not much talked about, “premium for the development of new drugs and elimination of off-label drug use” and the Governments in UK and European Union, including the largest market in the EU – Germany, introduced stringent cost containment measures for pharmaceutical products.

Pharmaceutical pricing model is changing across the world:

Overall scenario for pharmaceutical pricing model has undergone significant changes across the world. The old concept of pharmaceutical price being treated as almost given and usually determined only by the market forces with very less regulatory scrutiny is gradually but surely giving away to a new regime.

It started, especially in the developed world, with the generation and submission of pharmacoeconomics data to the regulators for pharmaceutical pricing, by the pharmaceutical companies. However, shortcomings in that system gradually became subject of a raging debate. The newer concepts of Health Technology Assessment (HTA), Health Outcomes Analysis (HOA) and Value Based Pricing (VBP), have started gaining grounds.

Value Based Pricing (VBP):

Value based pricing is basically offering the best value for the money spent. It ‘is the costs and consequences of one treatment compared with the costs and consequences of alternative treatments’.
For pharmaceutical players, VBP perhaps would mean not charging more than the actual value of the product.

On the other hand, price being a function of value that a product would offer, it is also important for the regulators to understand what value in totality that the product would offer, not just for the patients’ treatment in particular, but for the civil society at large.

However, in India, the regulators are still far behind and groping in the dark to find out an appropriate solution to this critical issue. They seem to be quite contended with taking arbitrary, non-transparent populist decisions.

The concept is gaining ground:

The concept of ‘evidence-based medicine’ , as stated earlier, is gaining ground in the developed markets of the world, prompting the pharmaceutical companies generate requisite ‘health outcomes’ data using similar or equivalent products. Cost of incremental value that a product will deliver is of key significance. Some independent organizations like, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK have taken a leading role in this matter.

VBP could help in ‘freeing-up’ resources to go to front-line healthcare:

On November 11, 2010 ‘Pharma Times’ in a news item titled, “Government (UK) to consult on drug pricing in December’ reported the following:

“Consultation on the government’s plans to introduce value-based pricing (VBP) for medicines will begin next month, the Department of Health has announced.
The consultation will run until next March, the Department reveals in its newly-published business plan for 2011-15. The plan sets out the coalition government’s structural reform priorities for health care, which are to: – create a patient-led NHS; – promote better healthcare outcomes; – revolutionize NHS accountability; – promote public health; and -reform social care.
These reforms ‘will help to create a world-class NHS that saves thousands more lives every year by freeing up resources to go to the front line, giving professionals power and patients choice, and maintaining the principle that healthcare should be delivered to patients on the basis of need, not their ability to pay,’ says the Department”.

Global pharmaceutical companies using more ‘health outcome’ data to set pricing strategies:

Some global pharmaceutical majors have already taken pro-active measures on the subject. In early 2009, reported agreements between Sanofi-Aventis, Procter & Gamble and Health Alliance as well as Merck and Cigna vindicate this point. These agreements signify a major shift in the global pharmaceutical industry’s approach to gathering and using ‘health outcomes’ data

In the Sanofi-Aventis/Procter & Gamble-Health Alliance agreement, the concerned companies agreed to reimburse Health Insurance companies expenses incurred for patients suffering from non-spinal bone fracture while undergoing treatment with their drug Actonel.

In the Merck/Cigna agreement, Cigna will have the flexibility to price two diabetes drugs based on ‘health outcomes’ data.

‘Outcomes-based’ pricing strategies are expected to become the order of the day, in not too distant future, all over the world.

The ground realities in India are very different:

Medicines are very important and constitute a significant cost component of modern healthcare systems, across the world. In India, overall healthcare system is fundamentally different from many other countries, even China. In most of those countries around 80% of expenses towards healthcare including medicines are reimbursed either by the Governments or through Health Insurance or similar mechanisms. However, in India situation is just the reverse, about 80% of overall healthcare costs including medicines are private or out of pocket expenses incurred by the individuals/families.

Since 1970, the Government of India (GoI) has been adopting various regulatory measures like cost based price control and price monitoring to make medicines affordable to the common man. For those products, which are patented in India, it has now been reported that the Government is mulling the approach of price negotiation with the respective companies.

However, we should keep in mind that making drugs just affordable in India, where a large number of population does not have access to modern medicines for non-price related factors, is indeed not a core determinant of either healthcare value or proven health outcomes or both.

Till VBP is considered, cost-effective ‘health outcome’ based medical prescriptions should get priority:

Expenditure towards medicines can be considered as an investment made by the patients to improve their health and productivity at work. Maximizing benefits from such spending will require avoidance of those medicines, which will not be effective together with the use of lowest cost option with comparable ‘health outcomes’.

For this reason, many countries have started engaging the regulatory authorities to come out with head to head clinical comparison of similar or equivalent drugs keeping ultimate ‘health outcomes’ of patients in mind. A day may come in India, as well, when the regulatory authorities will concentrate on ‘outcomes-based’ pricing. However, in the Indian context, it appears, this will take some more time. Till then for ‘health outcome’ based medical prescriptions, working out ‘Standard Treatment Guidelines (STG)’ , especially for those diseases which are most prevalent in India, should assume high importance.

Standard Treatment Guidelines (STG):

STG is usually defined as a systematically developed statement designed to assist practitioners and patients in making decisions about appropriate cost-effective treatment for specific disease areas.

For each disease area, the treatment should include “the name, dosage form, strength, average dose (pediatric and adult), number of doses per day, and number of days of treatment.” STG also includes specific referral criteria from a lower to a higher level of the diagnostic and treatment requirements.

For an emerging economy, like India, formulation of STGs will ensure cost-effective healthcare benefits to a vast majority of population.

In India, STGs have already been developed for some diseases by the experts. These are based on review of current published scientific evidence towards acceptable way forward in diagnosis, management and prevention of various disease conditions. STGs, therefore, will provide:

- Standardized guidance to practitioners.
- Cost-effective ‘health outcomes’ based services.

GoI should encourage the medical professionals/institutions to lay more emphasis and refer to such ‘heath-outcomes’ based evidences, while prescribing medicines. This will ensure more cost effective ‘health outcomes’ for their patients.

Steps necessary for ‘Standard Treatment Guidelines (STG):

1. Get Standard Treatment Guidelines (STG) prepared for the diseases more prevalent in India, based on, among other data, ‘health outcomes’ studies.

2. Put the STG in place for all government establishments and private hospitals to start with.

3. Gradually extend STG in private medical practices.

4. Make implementation of STG a regulatory requirement.

Conclusions:

Till VBP concept is considered appropriate for India by the regulators, STG model for drug usage would help both the doctors and the patients equally to contain the cost of treatment in general and the total cost of medicines in particular. Encouraging implementation of STGs in India, as a first step towards VBP, especially for prescription medicines, the country will require, above all, a change in the overall mindset of all concerned. The use of an expensive drug with no significant improvement in ‘health outcome’ should be avoided by the prescribers at any cost, initially through self-regulation and if it does not work, stringent regulatory measures must be strictly enforced for the same… for patients’ sake.

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.

Create, Deliver and Realize maximum value from a new product launch with an innovative Supply Chain Management system

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Like in many other industries, effective supply-chain management (SCM) in the pharmaceutical industry involves a systematic process, spanning from procurement of raw, packaging and other related materials, converting those materials into finished goods stock keeping units (SKUs), inventory management of both raw and packaging material, as well as finished goods and finally the distribution of these SKUs to wholesalers/ stockists/ distributors, C&F Agents.Now a days, with intense cost containment pressure all around, effective SCM is gaining a critical importance in the overall business process of the pharmaceutical companies. Besides all these, SCM also plays a very important role in maintaining regulatory compliance and help preserving product quality and safety standards.Key deliverables of a good SCM system:

The key deliverables of a good SCM system are to ensure availability to the customers:

Of RIGHT Product
At RIGHT Time
In RIGHT Quantity
At RIGHT Place
At RIGHT Price and
Of RIGHT Quality

However, in this article, I shall not dwell on these well known and basic parameters. Instead I shall deliberate on three other very important aspects of the supply chain management for your consideration:

1. What will a great SCM system mean?
2. What is the emerging role of SCM system in launching a new product
3. Innovation and measuring SCM effectiveness

1. What will a great SCM system mean?

In my opinion this will cover three important points:

- The SCM system should have an excellent feel of demand fluctuations and its robust measurement system.
- The cost of running an efficient SCM system should be kept at its minimum.
- The SCM structure should always be without any organizational flab.

I repeat, to be effective, a good SCM System must always be demand driven. Customer demand must be ascertained and quantified first and only then company specific supply chain requirements to be worked out and not the other way.

Various research studies confirm that there are certain common qualities for the demand-driven companies, namely:

- Reaction time to gauge and respond to the customer needs and demand is very quick
- A robust IT infrastructure is in place to facilitate delivery of the key Supply Chain
deliverables

SCM helps in value creation, value delivery and the value realization process:

As we know that value creation is the first step for a demand driven organization, followed by value delivery and value realization.

Pfizer Inc ranked high towards these efforts with Lipitor. If by any chance Lipitor gets out of stock, doctors usually do not switch over to other statins; the patient may possibly come back to the Pharmacy next day and hope he/she will get Lipitor. Such type of value creation for the product had made Lipitor over US$14 billion brand today despite the presence of other newer statins in the market and a very efficient SCM system of Pfizer Inc.

In an ideal scenario there should be an overlap between product management, demand management and the SCM systems.

Need for interaction between SCM and Product Development/Management Teams:

In my view, some sort of close interaction between the Supply Chain with Product Development and Management teams is very important for any innovative company to succeed in the market place. This I reckon will be unavoidable in not so distant future. Currently there could be some such link, as mentioned above, existing in some organization, but certainly not what it ought to be.

A robust IT system is a major requirement:

A robust IT system is a major requirement for such interaction process between Product Management, Demand Management and the SCM. Those companies, which will be unwilling to invest in a robust and rapidly scalable IT infrastructure that provides process integrity, transaction reliability, data visibility and intelligence for decision making may find it difficult to implement such an important business process.

2. The role of SCM System in launching a New Product:

In the twenty first century, as we all are aware that quality of innovation determines the sharpness of the competitive edge of any company in the marketplace. This aspect of competitiveness will be increasingly more and more important. Unfortunately, despite having this cutting edge many highly innovative companies have been experiencing great problems while launching their innovative new products in the market.

As we have seen from the recent media reports, two examples indeed stand out:

- Delays in the launch of Airbus 380 wiped off five billion euros of the value of its parent
company.
- Another important example was the enormous problem that Sony faced to make adequate
number of Play Station 3 consoles for the holiday season.

These illustrations indicate that conceptualizing, developing and finally launching new products is becoming increasingly more and more difficult. It is now widely believed that the key issue is inadequate understanding of the critical role that the supply chain plays in the innovative process of an organization.

SCM – a key success factor for a new product launch:

In most of the companies, the world over, the marketing team decides on the product launch decisions. Fortunately now we have started understanding though gradually but surely that the success of a new product launch very heavily dependent on effective co-ordination on all aspects of the supply chain from design to sourcing to manufacturing to distribution.

Therefore, in order to succeed with a new product launch, concerned company will need to ensure that Product development, Sales and Marketing, operations planning and supply chain work very closely together as a coherent team. Such co-ordination between these functions is now an absolute imperative. Close co-ordination even within the various activities of SCM systems play a critical role on the quality and nature of an innovative product or services and thereafter for an effective logistic support to the finished new products.

3. Innovation and measuring SCM effectiveness:

Quality of innovative ideas implemented in various levels of the SCM process along with the operational excellence will determine the ultimate effectiveness of a SCM system of a company.

Operational excellence is usually measured through the effectiveness of various parameters set for the same like. These parameters may include order fill rate, cost of the SCM process followed and the speed that it adds right from the material procurement process to the delivery of required SKU’s right up to the retail chemists.

Similarly effectiveness of innovative steps taken in the SCM process is measured by many on parameters like, the return on new product development and the speed of launch.

Conclusion:

To make a new product launch successful, companies will increasingly require to work out not only an effective process for launch, but will also need to ensure that marketing, finance, operations and SCM with innovative steps built into it, work very closely together to help create, deliver and realize both tangible and intangible value of a new product, most effectively, to contribute significantly to the stakeholders’ value.

By Tapan Ray

Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion