November 2005  -  Michael N. Abrams, M.A., Managing Partner, and Lisa P. Bevilacqua, M.B.A., Research Analyst, look at how to reinforce the value proposition of the training function and of management development activity in Writing the Correct Management Development Prescription, published in HR Voice, November 2005.

Training needs assessment, done as guidance to determine which content should be provided to deliver the most value to the greatest number is a necessary, but not sufficient step towards resource optimization. What's often missing, however, is the next step - a way to deliver specific content only to those who need it. The authors describe how to use Job Charters as a platform for training content development and deployment. The solution outlined enables more effective use of training resources, and provides an objective approach for demonstrating impact. This competency-based methodology replaces the "sheep dip" approach with a "just-in-time" prescription that makes training more cost effective and its value proposition more compelling.

October 2005  -  Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D., President, and Jack Nightingale, M.P.A., Consultant, make the case for a more disciplined and strategically oriented business development function and provide guidance for making that happen in Growing Biz Development, published in Biopartnerships Supplement to Pharmaceutical Executive and Biopharm International, October 2005.

The article highlights the increasing importance of the business development function to growth oriented pharmas, and the need to take a strategic perspective on what is often a loose and freewheeling activity. Based on extensive consulting experience, the authors detail seven principles for successfully optimizing the function, including: maximizing generation of opportunities, knowing when to accelerate promising projects and kill unpromising projects, asking and answering the right questions, accessing the right internal resources, getting senior-level support without losing the ability to kill bad projects, maintaining appropriate levels of process control for a fast-moving environment, and managing risk intelligently.

October 2005  -  Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D., President, and Jack Nightingale, M.P.A., Consultant, look at strategies for shortening time-to-market at major pharmaceutical companies in Time to Remove the Shackles, published in Scrip, October 2005.

The article details some of the challenges slowing time-to-market, including the imperative to make smart decisions on high risk investments, the slow decisions characteristic of large, complex organizations, the intricacy of global launches, increasing regulation, and the time required to optimize a continuous stream of new discovery and development platforms. The article details strategies for overcoming these obstacles, like reducing the number of decisions necessary to move a product forward, out-licensing stalled projects, and engaging a broader set of business functions to work in parallel on promising early-stage products.

September 2005  -  Michael N. Abrams, M.A, Managing Partner, and Lisa P. Bevilacqua, M.B.A., look at investments in leadership infrastructure from the perspective of a healthcare system CFO in The Business Case for Leadership Infrastructure, published in HFMA's Managing the Margins, September 2005.

Investments in processes to support leadership planning and enhance managerial effectiveness are regarded by some as hard to quantify, and consequently discretionary. The authors counter this perspective with a data-based approach to the return on such investments. They explain how building a leadership infrastructure can reduce overhead and improve quality of care in healthcare delivery, and show that management bench strength translates to dollars and cents. They make the case that given ever-greater pressure on margins, healthcare systems can't afford not to invest in processes to ensure management continuity and effectiveness.

August 2005  -  Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D., President, and Jack Nightingale, M.P.A., Consultant, explore the challenges of deciding how to allocate funds among R&D contenders and propose a novel approach to the process in R&D Prioritization -- Going Beyond Decision Analysis, published in Eye for Pharma, August 17, 2005.

While many companies use sophisticated techniques to rank their candidate products before making critical financial decisions, the R&D prioritization process still tends to be sub-optimized. In the article, the authors describe practical ways to build a more comprehensive set of strategic considerations into the process and the information to support them.