Program Management: Project and Resource Planning for Research and Development Labs
A pharmaceutical R&D division with annual spending of over $2 billion engaged MedPharma Partners to support implementation of new business processes and software tools to improve the management of development projects. The client’s objectives were to improve the ability of senior R&D management to make trade-offs between different projects and to improve visibility into the development portfolio status. In addition, project and functional area managers would have a greatly improved system to support their activities.
It is well known that the success rate of R&D projects has fallen sharply in the past 10 years. As a consequence, the cost of developing a New Chemical Entity is now estimated at over $800 million. Falling success rates and rising costs led senior R&D executives to champion improved management methods, including portfolio, project and resource management capabilities.
MedPharma Partners provided overall program management for this transformation and advised on specific program elements including vendor management, communications and change management. MedPharma also implemented specific program management tools, such as issues management cascades and progress tracking tools.
The new capability is now in place and the client organization is realizing significant benefits. In particular, senior management can now make meaningful trade-offs and decisions about approving new trials or entire programs. The impact on existing workloads can be determined and the creation of bottlenecks in the development process can be eliminated.
"MedPharma Partners’ support was critical to successfully implementing our enterprise resource and project management system. Their day-to-day management and strategic advice were major elements of the program’s success." -- Vice President, Central Planning
