CI Excellence: Developing Balanced Operating Guidelines to Mitigate Risk

STUDY OVERVIEW

Guidelines that establish ethical and legal boundaries, spell out standard operating procedures and detail codes of conduct for CI practitioners increasingly are necessary to protect companies from financial and corporate risk. CI guidelines also help practitioners to manage end-user expectations regarding what kind of information can be collected. However, rigorous guidelines and policies intended to mitigate risk sometimes can be too restrictive, preventing or hindering practitioners from doing their jobs. Effective organizations operate under balanced guidelines that are neither too limiting nor too loose.

This study examines how CI teams at top pharmaceutical companies optimize their CI operations while working within defined guidelines and corporate policies. CI leaders can use the industry benchmarks and executive narratives from this research to develop and sustain long-term organizational success with minimal corporate risk.

NOTE: The data in this research are segmented into two parts: a Large Pharma and Small Pharma Segment.

KEY TOPICS

• Development of CI Guidelines
• Using Operating Guidelines to Balance the Risks Involved with CI
• Formalizing Guidelines to Adhere to Organization's Code of Ethics
• Working with Legal to Protect Company
• Utilizing Resources Effectively and in Appropriate Manner
• Best Practices and Advice for Building a Successful CI Function

• Competitive Intelligence FTEs, Small and Large Pharma Segment
• CI Guidelines and Rating Whether they Loosely Direct or are Prescribed Policies, Small and Large Pharma Segment
• Functions that Drive Guideline Development, Small and Large Pharma Segment
• Information Included in CI Guidelines, Small and Large Pharma Segment
• Rating for Certain Risky CI Practices, Benchmark Class

CI Guidelines Enable Success: Work collaboratively with Legal to protect the company and to obtain Legal’s buy-in and support. All large and many small pharma companies have formalized guidelines in place to govern CI operations; many explicitly define policies for primary data collection.

Formalize Guidelines: Formalize guidelines to adhere to pre-existing legislation within the organization's individual code of ethics in order to avoid legal and ethical discrepancy in performance.

METHODOLOGY

Best Practices, LLC employed a two-pronged approach to this research: 24 competitive intelligence leaders at 23 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies participated in a detailed benchmarking survey. Selected respondents from eight of these companies also participated in deep dive interviews. The surveys collected quantitative data, while the in-depth follow-up interviews captured executive insights, process descriptions and best practices.

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