Marcus Evans 6th Annual Pharma Resource Planning and Portfolio Management
February 07, 2013 -- Investments into the biotechnology space reached record highs in 2012. Mike Shires, Vice President for Project and Portfolio Management for Baxter’s BioScience organization says that in the biotech industry, “It’s not good enough to execute well just in R&D, or just in development. In biologics, the operations/manufacturing and development tasks are of similar complexity. Therefore, a coordinated approach across these functions is essential to ensure that you are ready to deliver what has been developed.”
Talking from his experience, Shires, who will be speaking at the marcus evans 6th Annual Pharma Resource Planning and Portfolio Management Conference, said: “We work to ensure that the project management activities span across the organization, not just R&D. It is not enough to simply have all the development pieces connected and integrated. They have to connect to manufacturing, the quality organization, the supply chain structure and the commercial launch teams, to make sure we execute the delivery of the therapy and launch it as effectively as possible.”
“This is upping the level of complexity for project and resource management and the organization, as some of these elements have considerable lead times and represent considerable investment. You have to make those decisions in time to deliver on your expected pipeline. This is a connection to portfolio management, as it is a matter of probabilities, estimates of success and resource allocations, where you are making decisions on a portfolio that in our business is never certain,” Shires said.
Your portfolio management is only as good as the project management work that it is based on. Likewise, functional expertise is an essential foundation for project management, according to Shires. “They all depend on each other and work together to guide the organization’s planning and execution. The key is to reach into those areas of expertise, that functional excellence, and connect the dots in an integrated way, in order to make the best decisions possible. This is where the art of project management comes into play. We cannot replace functional expertise; we fully rely upon it. Our job is to connect the threads that need to be in place, to execute and deliver the pipeline,” he concluded.
The Marcus Evans 6th Annual Pharma Resource Planning and Portfolio Management will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 26-28, 2013.
For more information, contact Michele Westergaard, Senior Marketing Manager, 312-540-3000 ext. 6625 or Michelew@marcusevansch.com.
