Client Successes
Augmenting Pharma Staff to Guide a Post-Acquisition Integration
The Challenge
When a mature, global pharmaceutical company acquired an innovative biopharma company that complemented its portfolio of brands, integrating the two US training organizations was one of many major post-acquisition undertakings. The incoming and legacy training teams used entirely different technology systems, platforms, processes, policies, vendors, and training content. In addition, identifying appropriate roles and responsibilities across the two merging training organizations proved challenging. It quickly became clear that significant inefficiencies and redundancies existed, with no standardized approach to enhancing skills and capabilities. And with duplicate systems and platforms in use, budgets and other resources were not being used wisely. The training organization was eager to overcome these challenges while integrating the best of both worlds for the brands involved in the acquisition.
The Solution
This massive, long-term project went beyond the scope of the organization’s available internal resources. Based on a fruitful long-term relationship, the client tapped iQue Group to provide additional staffing to ensure the project’s success. iQue responded by providing a full-time program manager who previously served in various in-house training and compliance roles at several leading pharmaceutical companies. The iQue program manager leveraged her deep pharmaceutical experience to serve as a key member of an 11-person core team charged with integrating the people, technology, financials, and leadership of the two training organizations. Throughout the 18-month project, she worked closely with the strategy and operations team as she managed four major workstreams, identified risks and roadblocks, helped determine how to mitigate them, kept timelines on track, and ensured that training leadership was always informed on the project’s progress. All this work occurred amidst both leadership and culture change, requiring extra attention to appropriate change management.
What our client had to say...
“The integration effort has resulted in synergies, economies of scale, and a more cohesive culture within the now-merged US training organization, while helping to ensure alignment with the broader worldwide training group. The project team’s work laid a strong foundation for the unified US training group to support the adoption of a new commercial market model and ultimately reduce time to market with new therapeutics.”
