Pharma and Diagnostics Competitive Intelligence: How to Anticipate Future
Competitive intelligence (CI) is a commonly used decision-making tool in the pharmaceutical industry for seeking competitive advantage. It is often forward-looking i.e., provides foresights, and several pharma companies leverage competitive intelligence to anticipate the future, which is indeed a pragmatic approach to future-proof strategy. Most competitive intelligence programs in the pharmaceutical and diagnostics industry involve gathering intelligence via third-party vendors and assessing implications. In the vast majority of cases, the level of threat is determined via the obligatory so-what analysis, aka implications. Generally, implication assessments are often done in a rudimentary manner, however, a robust implications assessment certainly increases the value added by CI engagements and justifies investment in competitive intelligence activities. Once the stakeholders are made aware of the implications, the pharma and diagnostics competitive intelligence engagement reaches a cul-de-sac. Effectively, with the current modus operandi, CI stakeholders get a snapshot of the status of the play akin to the balance sheet of a company.
Telltale of Foresights-lacking Competitive Intelligence
Following are the key questions that users need to ask and review to make competitive intelligence forward-looking:
- Are vendors primarily documenting competitors’ activities in the intelligence-gathering exercises?
- Do the vendors help stakeholders to see the wood from the trees?
- Do the vendors have an understanding of corporate decision-making?
- Are the vendors aware of various strategic management frameworks?
- Can they connect the dots to decode competitors’ strategies?
If these questions are not answered satisfactorily, then your competitive intelligence is either a collation of information or lacks a forward-looking facet. It is crucial for pharma and diagnostics companies to objectively evaluate their current competitive intelligence activities. We have described in detail the primary indicators of subpar competitive intelligence, which undermines the value addition accruing from competitive intelligence
Enabling Foresights in Competitive Intelligence
Short-term foresights are usually obtained by conducting rigorous forward-looking primary research. However, smart competitive intelligence vendors can take it to the next level wherein the engagement endows the stakeholders with predictive power about the competitors. The key to this is to understand the underlying strategy of the peers or competitors rather than to focus exclusively on the external manifestations of those strategies, which happens in a multitude of cases. Combined with the intelligence and knowledge of the strategic decision-making frameworks, pharma, and diagnostics competitive intelligence users can effectively understand competitors, and anticipate their future course of actions and events, which helps to reduce unwanted surprises, refine strategy and tactics dynamically, and future-proof one’s strategy.
Convergence of Pharma and Diagnostics
The pharmaceutical industry has experienced significant changes over the years. One of the most important changes is the shift towards a combination of pharma and diagnostics via so-called personalized medicine which substantially increases the value of the asset to patients, prescribers, payors and of course to the company. Personalized medicine involves the development of diagnostics (often companion or complementary) that can identify the specific genetic and molecular characteristics of an individual’s disease. This shift towards precision medicine has created dual domain intelligence needs, i.e. expertise in both pharma and diagnostics competitive intelligence – judicious use of such combined intelligence helps companies guess the future move of other players in the market.
BiopharmaVantage specializes in providing premium quality competitive intelligence services for personalized medicine and diagnostics. If you would like to explore how we can assist, then please get in touch.