Moving the industry towards collaboration

Collaboration has long been considered an effective approach and is employed by many highfunctioning organizations. In business and in communities, the strategic value of aligning yourself with other groups that have a shared vision, where each collaborator brings something to the table and is willing to work together to get there is now seen. Collaboration between different groups - within and outside the enterprise – makes for a changed dynamic. It is a commonly held view that stakeholders in collaboration are at their best, fully invested and engaged, even if conflict situations arise.

Why is collaboration so beneficial

The simple answer is: the breaking of ‘silos’. Much of the modern world functions in silos. Collaboration helps tackle duplication, simplifies processes and widens reach. That brings with it knowledge sharing, greater capacity, more comprehensive offerings, efficiency that comes from greater coordination and better workflows, all leading to the end goal: Innovation.

Driving your industry forward. For the greater good of the industry and its customers. Alan Kennedy, Founder, Team-Up Global, and a speaker at the upcoming 15th Annual Global Forum says, "It is time for pharma-logistics to step outside its comfort zone and take a hard look at developments in other service sectors. Only by adopting a more collaborative approach to pharma logistics can the pharma industry extract the benefits that are being routinely achieved by more progressive sectors."

The BioPharma challenge

“With most pharmaceutical companies’ research and development (R&D) department struggling at the time, 90% of drugs that make it to the clinical testing stage are failing. The inefficiencies of the R&D process have also extended the average time to market for new medicines to anywhere between 10 and 15 years.”

Pharma also faces increasing cost pressures due to several factors. These include: 

• The higher costs of production today,
• An increasingly global world in which there are costs of complex international operations (This means consistency in the way the company connects with people no matter where they are, movement of things across the network and creating the end to end supply chain that delivers the brand’s promise efficiently and cost effectively.)
• As well as drugs coming off patents, which increases generic competition.

A landmark year that brought with it collaboration

In the pharma and life sciences industry, 2015 was a landmark year. Many acquisitions were announced. While companies bought each other out and merged to differing degrees, another smaller trend was born – collaboration. Pharma companies, particularly big Pharma, started working together, sometimes even with competitors. The motivation for this was rooted, as it always is, in innovation.

 Whether done in foundations or as independent partnerships, when pharma companies work together, they advance drug discovery efforts and take things further than any one enterprise might have been able to individually.

Alan says, "Executed correctly, a structured approach to supply chain collaboration can deliver transformational benefits. Technological and strategic challenges such as supply chain visibility, agility, security and patient-centricity can all be delivered more effectively through structured B2B collaboration."

Download the ebook to continue reading: 

• Understanding the opportunity and overcoming challenges
• True collaboration can be powerful
• Tips to move collaboration forward in your cold chains