Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (BI): Best Practices for Reducing Risk

Competitive Intelligence (CI) groups play an important part in helping organizations compete in a complex and ever-changing marketplace by providing insights that help set strategic and tactical direction for commercial operations. In the biopharma sector in particular, companies improve their chances for success in a volatile business environment by using both primary and secondary Competitive Intelligence research to help them anticipate and respond strategically to external change. This makes it critical for organizations to have policies and guidelines in place for conducting CI that reduce corporate risk - and yet enable gathering of critical information - in a closely regulated pharmaceutical industry.

Best Practices, LLC undertook this timely study to identify the key benchmarks of world-class companies for optimizing CI operations and working with the Legal department to develop policies. The research also delivers insights into the best practices for collection, use and sources of primary data - including employment of third party vendors for primary data collection. It also provides benchmarks around CI resources, staffing and structure. CI leaders can use this research to help create or maintain policies and guidelines regarding CI operations as well as to compare their data collection practices and resource/structural benchmarks with those of leading organizations.

Industries Profiled:
Pharmaceutical; Biotech; Consumer Products; Medical Device; Research; Health Care


Companies Profiled:
Abbott Laboratories; Amgen; Astellas; Bausch & Lomb; Baxter International; Boehringer Ingelheim; Biovail; Covance; Covidien; Daiichi Sankyo; Eisai; EMD Serono; Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc.; Inspire Pharmaceuticals; MedImmune; Merck; Novo Nordisk; Pfizer; Sanofi-aventis; Takeda Pharmaceuticals; Xanodyne Pharmaceuticals

Study Snapshot

Twenty-seven leaders of Competitive Intelligence and related functions at 22 leading pharmaceutical companies participated. Field interviews and study analysis produced many observations and benchmarks for organization growth and profitability from effective CI operations.

Key topics include:

• CI data sources & activities
• Developing effective CI guidelines & policies
• Structure of CI organizations
• Best practices in CI management

Sample Key Findings

Primary research helps CI groups fill information gaps: 92% of the benchmark participants do primary research as part of their CI programs. The top three uses of primary data collected by CI are competitors’ product profiling, competitors’ company profiling and scenario development and planning.

• Internal groups also contribute intelligence to CI: The marketing, business analytics and medical affairs are the leading internal sources of CI. However, those sources for primary CI are neither as frequently used nor as highly valued as the top external sources. Top three most valued internal sources include employees who previously worked for competitors, market research and business analytics.

If you purchase Best Practice Database document(s), you will have 30 days from the date of purchase to apply some or all of the cost of the document(s) toward the cost of a Full Access Individual, Pharma, Group or University Membership. Write us at DatabaseTeam@bestpracticesllc.com or call David Guinn at 919-767-9179 if you have any questions.