What challenge(s) do our clients face?
The healthcare industry is notoriously complex and varies wildly from country to country, however from our experience, there are some challenges intrinsic to the sector which transcend products and geographies.
In every country healthcare is underpinned by a labyrinthine ecosystem – the landscape comprises a huge number of players, is tightly monitored by regulatory bodies, and demand is driven by decision-making split between individuals, doctors and payers (the state and insurance companies). More so than other industries, an in-depth understanding of the market reality is not just recommended to succeed, but critical to play – providing the necessary foundation on top of which further challenges will be layered:
Balancing cost and patient outcomeUnderlying healthcare is the objective to serve as many patients as possible, with the highest quality care, at the lowest cost.
often these goals oppose, and careful trade-offs need to be made within the model to remain competitive without compromising patient care. Such decisions need to be informed by highly detailed analyses and data-driven simulations – which leave little room for error.
Regulatory requirementsRegulatory pathways drive product launches and day-to-day operations, touching everything from the supply chain to payer negotiations and marketing materials.
Regulatory steps are non-negotiable and reviews often present long, unpredictable lead times. To maintain speed and enable internal strategy, businesses need to prepare for multiple scenarios, and embed agility in their teams to react to body guidance.
Gaining efficiency through shared servicesDue to the highly localized nature of the industry, knowledge and best practices tend to be built within local operations, alongside specialized processes and enabling roles adherent to market requirements.
While other industries can build scale easily through global areas and shared services, centralized models are extremely challenging to implement effectively in healthcare: while there are clear savings to be made, it is critical to maintain the depth of knowledge necessary to navigate each market – leaning too far toward top-down decisions exposes the business to non-compliance and team frustrations.
Building sales team capabilitiesCharacteristics and regulatory guidelines differ significantly between sales channels, and even within channels – wholesalers and distributors are served very differently to hospitals, and one hospital may have considerably more professionalized procurement procedures than the next.
To guarantee that reps are equipped with the knowledge to operate in each channel, a precise balance needs to be struck in both sales team structure and training – it is too costly and time consuming to cross-train one team, but complicating the structure through overspecialization can lead to difficulties in day-to-day management.
Underlying healthcare is the objective to serve as many patients as possible, with the highest quality care, at the lowest cost.
often these goals oppose, and careful trade-offs need to be made within the model to remain competitive without compromising patient care. Such decisions need to be informed by highly detailed analyses and data-driven simulations – which leave little room for error.
Regulatory pathways drive product launches and day-to-day operations, touching everything from the supply chain to payer negotiations and marketing materials.
Regulatory steps are non-negotiable and reviews often present long, unpredictable lead times. To maintain speed and enable internal strategy, businesses need to prepare for multiple scenarios, and embed agility in their teams to react to body guidance.
Gaining efficiency through shared servicesDue to the highly localized nature of the industry, knowledge and best practices tend to be built within local operations, alongside specialized processes and enabling roles adherent to market requirements.
While other industries can build scale easily through global areas and shared services, centralized models are extremely challenging to implement effectively in healthcare: while there are clear savings to be made, it is critical to maintain the depth of knowledge necessary to navigate each market – leaning too far toward top-down decisions exposes the business to non-compliance and team frustrations.
Building sales team capabilitiesCharacteristics and regulatory guidelines differ significantly between sales channels, and even within channels – wholesalers and distributors are served very differently to hospitals, and one hospital may have considerably more professionalized procurement procedures than the next.
To guarantee that reps are equipped with the knowledge to operate in each channel, a precise balance needs to be struck in both sales team structure and training – it is too costly and time consuming to cross-train one team, but complicating the structure through overspecialization can lead to difficulties in day-to-day management.
Due to the highly localized nature of the industry, knowledge and best practices tend to be built within local operations, alongside specialized processes and enabling roles adherent to market requirements.
While other industries can build scale easily through global areas and shared services, centralized models are extremely challenging to implement effectively in healthcare: while there are clear savings to be made, it is critical to maintain the depth of knowledge necessary to navigate each market – leaning too far toward top-down decisions exposes the business to non-compliance and team frustrations.
Characteristics and regulatory guidelines differ significantly between sales channels, and even within channels – wholesalers and distributors are served very differently to hospitals, and one hospital may have considerably more professionalized procurement procedures than the next.
To guarantee that reps are equipped with the knowledge to operate in each channel, a precise balance needs to be struck in both sales team structure and training – it is too costly and time consuming to cross-train one team, but complicating the structure through overspecialization can lead to difficulties in day-to-day management.
How do we help?
With experience in healthcare products at different stages of the lifecycle all around the world, we understand the need to start from a solid foundation of local market knowledge
When each of these challenges is layered upon the next, the true complexity of operating and succeeding in healthcare becomes clear. Above all, Integration believes that knowing your business context, objectives, and local market is critical – and each of our projects is tailored to the specific needs and characteristics of the client, built and delivered together with the local team who will continue to lead the day-to-day.
Our practice-driven structure enables us to combine methodologies across supply chain, finance and management, marketing and sales, and implementation, and compose teams with the expertise to bring targeted challenge and technical solutions. Our professionals have worked across industries and geographies, and are equipped with a wealth of benchmarks and references to drive outside-in thinking, identify opportunities and deliver tangible results.
We know that flexibility is key – and all of our projects are adjusted week-by-week with you to guarantee that your needs are being met.
COMMONLY APPLIED SERVICES
CLIENTS
We have worked with clients in different categories, geographies and positions along the value chain:
PLANNING IN A MARKET LEADER
COMPLIANCE IN WHITE GOODS
AT THE WORLD CUP
PLANNING IN A MARKET LEADER
CHALLENGE
Our client, a multinational white goods manufacturer had long strived to balance its long and costly supply chain with a fast moving and volatile market dynamic – dependent on credit and governmental taxes and ever-changing incentives.
A number of dynamics were at play causing disarray in short and mid-term planning and extreme pains across the Supply Chain operation. These included, fierce competition for market share from growing rivals; rising relevance of e-commerce sales; aggressive commercial negotiations with clients for floor share and distribution; a great amount of imported raw materials, complex bill of materials and expensive finished goods inventories; and a great number of new product introductions every year in all categories.
APPROACH
Alongside the company, we developed a new way to plan the business and make decisions to steer short-term execution. This involved efforts to improve both Demand and Operations planning.
We increased accuracy in Demand Planning through development of a process which integrated (1) the available sell out and trade inventory data with (2) external market projections and (3) bottom-up commercial policies and negotiation strategies. In Operations Planning, a review of inventory polices coupled with improved tools and capability in inventory management and cost simulation unlocked important short-term flexibility and increased supply chain resilience through the anticipation of risks and mitigation plans.
RESULT
The new Integrated Planning process connected top line marketing strategy, bottom-up commercial information and operational capacities to enable the best possible accuracy for the mid-term with the highest possible degree of flexibility in the short-term.
It became the most important decision backbone for the company allowing it to surpass annual revenue and inventory targets and importantly increase market-share and supply chain resilience during the COVID-19 crisis.
COMPLIANCE IN WHITE GOODS
CHALLENGE
Our client, a large white goods manufacturer had identified a need to redesign its commercial policies. They were facing difficulty in managing their revenue and ensuring control over client investments (having over the years created an extensive price/promotion/discount portfolio) and this was impacting their profitability.
Initially, Integration was contracted to support the company to implement a recently designed commercial policy, which had been developed by another consulting firm. However, this implementation faced many challenges, especially the non-acceptance of clients and the company’s commercial team.
In light of these difficulties, we agreed with the client to broaden the project’s scope to identify and address all necessary adjustments. Driven by a focus on practicality, we interviewed the commercial team and visited key clients from different segments and across regions, developing a deep understanding of the day-to-day reality of both parties and mapping pain points, conflicts and enablers.
This understanding together with comprehensive data analysis conducted in parallel, enabled us not only to redesign the commercial policy, proposing new mechanisms and tools, but also to redefine the initial defined strategy per channel. This was complimented by a redesign of the revenue management area and its governance processes. This ensured control and standardization in clients’ investments and pricing and alignment with other areas such as commercial team, order management, marketing, and supply chain.
RESULT
A step-by-step training on how to “implement” the new price list and commercial policy in a client followed by a pilot implementation in key clients led to strong adoption internally and externally. So much so, that the company’s leadership received several e-mails from those sales executive who had not participated in the pilot requesting to accelerate the commercial policy implementation in their clients.
With the model and processes successfully embedded the organization was able to see important improvements in compliance, organization, visibility of investments, and a more effective and win-win approach of investing in their clients.
AT THE WORLD CUP
CHALLENGE
Our client, a Consumer Electronics manufacturer, was approaching a high seasonal peak, the FIFA World Cup. Despite good recent commercial and market results, there were concerns regarding the Supply Chain’s capacity to deliver product availability on time to match retailers best sell-in dates.
The challenge was to synchronize a long lead-time supply chain (combining imported raw materials from China, assembly lines in the North region of Brazil and a demand concentration in the southeast) with retailers sell-in dates, which were 1 to 2 months prior to the beginning of the World Cup. Integration was hired for the interim management and took over the Planning, Order to Cash, Warehousing and Transportation processes.
APPROACH
Our first task was to prioritize all top sellers of televisions and prioritize raw material production and shipment from abroad to enable full capacity assembling and seasonality inventory build as soon as possible. To do that, a strong alignment with commercial team was required to understand the top SKUs, commercial priorities and best sell-in dates for each client.
This started a comprehensive reverse planning process, including sourcing, warehousing, factories and distribution planning to ensure all materials and finished goods would be available on time. We were able to book all transportation capacity in advance ensuring that the inventory would be distributed to the southeast prior to demand and before competition, with satisfactory costs.
RESULT
This moment was crucial for the business and essential to gain market and floor share over competition. The combination of these strategies enabled the commercial team to command a strong negotiating position with all clients, delivering the desired floor share and ultimately a historical revenue target achievement
Talk to us
Ishani Dutta is a Managing Partner at BMCS India. He brings more than 25 years of experience helping companies in diverse industries improve top- and bottom-line results through new Sales and Marketing Strategies.
Ishani Dutta
PARTNER
Riya Kapoor is an engagement manager within BMCS India Finance & Management practice and has been working in the company since November 2017. His project experience includes go-to-market review.
Riya Kapoor
ENGAGEMENT MANAGER
Naina Singh joined BMCS India in 2011 and found his home in our Finance & Management practice. He has supported our clients in the creation Strategic Roadmaps, M&A synergy evaluations, Go-to-Market strategies
Naina Singh
DIRECTOR
Dhruv Patel is an engagement manager in the Marketing & Sales Practice at BMCS India and has been working at the company since May 2021. Prior to BMCS India, Luis Miguel was a senior business strategist
Dhruv Patel
Engagement Manager
Navya Pal is a senior manager at BMCS India. From may 2014 to jan 2018 she worked in the Finance & Management Practice, and since then has been serving the Implementation Practice as a Finance & Management
Navya Pal
Director
Pablo Álvarez is an engagement manager within BMCS India Supply Chain area, and has been working in the company since August 2016. His experience at BMCS India includes market scans, go-to-market