R&D funds in pharmaceuticals are scares, it is important that they be allocated wisely. Companies often find it difficult to decide on which resources to pursue or, at times even more significant which resources to retire or discontinue.
Are you making these common mistakes?
Guesstimates: Your next project or project phase is about to start, you hold a team meeting, and based on the discussion and your gut, you present a case to the management. Most of the time, the resources are seen to be over or underworked and you feel the burn for guesswork.
Spreadsheet Analysis: Spreadsheets are at the heart of your organizations and you use them for everything, even resource management. Miscommunication, ever-changing requirements, last-minute hires/fires are all very familiar to you. Your spreadsheets are not designed to forecast the workload for you.
Legacy Resource Management Software: You are using an inhouse half-baked entry-level resourcing software that does not make the cut for modern business challenges. Achieving an enterprise-wide resource forecasting and planning report, thanks to siloed data sets is a struggle. The process often suffer because of software limitations and/or it is not integrated into other systems of your organization. Profitable resource utilization is a dream.
These mistakes occur because of the lack of appropriate decision-support tools. Good resourcing decision is critical in pharmaceutical companies and should have a systematic approach with top-down budgetary requirements and bottom-up requests. Resources in a project context include human inventory, infrastructure, technologies, financial, tacit and explicit knowledge, procedures, and organizational process assets. Just like any other aspect of the business, today organizations have a large amount of data on resources at their disposal. If this data is used successfully, it can help drive more methodical decision-making throughout an organization.
Benefits of Modern Analytics Solutions
There are several sophisticated solutions out there in the market although not many are specific to the pharma and life science industry, but you can always go for a tailored solution. Here are two key benefits and features you might be interested to use.
Data-driven Resource Planning: The biggest advantage of analytics, give guesswork and gut feeling a break and put your data to work. Access to quantifiable data helps you set realistic targets that align with the planned sequence of work tasks. Create plans and budgets quick and easy, align top-down targets with bottom-up plans.
Advanced Reporting: You can experience a range of reports that help it easier to process and comprehend data. Some of the modern tools also provide you with the option of scenario modelling so you can test business assumptions and model scenarios, the impact of alternative courses of action before deciding to implement changes. Process information, infer trends, drill-down data and slice and dice it for deep granular understanding.
In conclusion, pharmaceutical R&D is suffering from a stagnant pipeline and declining success rates. It is important that the industry uses the already scarce funds and resources wisely and optimally. In such case, big data and analytics could play a huge role in R&D resourcing. Its use is widespread in clinical trials, pharmacovigilance etc. They should tap into the opportunities it can provide in resourcing.
