At a Glance
Challenges
- Regulatory restrictions
- Resource optimization
- Visibility on effective initiatives
Benefits
- 360-degree view of initiatives mapped against ease of implementation, impact, and transformational potential
- Enhancing organizational communication and alignment at every level of the ideation process
The Catalyst
A global, highly regulated Fortune 500 company seeks to modernize its digital interactions with healthcare professionals and other stakeholders.
The Challenge
A paradox of choice: As an organization with considerable resources and reach, it is difficult to choose not only which strategic initiatives to pursue—whether existing, proposed, or some combination of the two—but also to rank those initiatives in an order of priority that is supported by available budget, resources, and team bandwidth.
Due to the strict regulatory environment, the Global Medical Affairs team spearheading the efforts cannot measure success in terms of revenue impact or sales increases—leaving the digital path to clients, as well as success of new programs, unclear. The company essentially entered a holding pattern, without a clear grasp of whether current strategic choices remained valid or how to achieve an elusive breakthrough.
Resolution
To help the client achieve actionable clarity, the OZ team employed OZ Launchpad, a strategic modeler designed to drive objective planning and decision-making—in this case, focusing in on the non-financial criteria.
To build toward internal consensus and a single source of truth, the OZ team conducted…
- Stakeholder interviews across all levels of the organization.
- In-depth, collaborative guided workshops to establish a current landscape and strategic drivers while refining the client’s vision and mission.
- Review of existing team research.
- Supplemental research and review of the landscape of initiatives.
- Exploration of digital trends, both inside and outside of their industry.
- Competitor analysis.
- Research into the relevant roles, needs, and responsibilities of HCPs.
- Testing specific attributes/characteristics of programs to determine cross-department importance.
Based upon this information, fifty-two criteria for the LaunchPad model were created, in ten different categories. Each of these criteria was subsequently mapped to one of three axes, representing ease of implementation, impact, and transformational potential, allowing management at all levels to view how alternative programs compare to one another. The data is then visually represented in Launchpad to highlight programs that would have a higher impact with an easier implementation.
The flexibility of Launchpad—as well as the expanded scope of criteria uncovered and utilized during the process—allowed the client to formulate a plan that broke the “holding pattern” and nurtured a more holistic, powerful, and directed purpose moving forward.
This, in turn, ensured KPIs were directly aligned with the company’s goals—and measurable without running afoul of regulatory requirements.
Enhancements
The benefits of the Launchpad experience to the client include…
- A reinvigorated culture of consensus: By engaging a proven modeling process and publishing the criteria through which alternative programs would be evaluated, the internal turf-protecting
and silo-ing that can stymie decision-making and consensus are replaced with a sense that everyone has been heard and everyone is working from the same “factbook.” - Gaps bridge: A more direct line traced from the client’s vision and mission to the medical teams and patients allows for more efficient solutions to pain points and unaddressed needs.
- Expanded perspective: As the Launchpad framework streamlines processes, the collective brainpower and innate creativity of the entire ecosystem is freed up to improve existing programs, ideate new solutions, and tap into a synergy that supercharges competitive advantage.
- Consensus and Prioritization: Once consensus was reached on which of the many alternative programs would be pursued, a 12-month plan and 36-month roadmap are presented to executive management, with underpinnings aggregated and plotted, to keep the entire roadmap on track to achieve clear KPIs as well as short- and long-term goals.
Conclusion
Good strategy is about making choices. And the quality of our choices is often determined not only by our goals and resources, but by the quality of our working information and the degree of perspective we have on a question (or series of questions) as a whole. OZ Launchpad provides both even as it fosters greater internal integration and encourages proponents of initiatives to consider all relevant criteria from the beginning so that in the end better initiatives are created.
The future success of your enterprise revealed and mapped.