INDUSTRY-BASED RESULTS

OUR PERSPECTIVE

Pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies face formidable challenges throughout the processes of developing, manufacturing, launching, selling and distributing their products. Braving a daunting array of risks and inefficiencies, executives must also confront the mounting pressures of escalating R&D costs, decreasing output and depleted pipelines. Moreover, industry price controls, reference pricing, and issues involving recruiting and retaining essential intellectual capital further complicate the translation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices into safe, effective and affordable treatments.

To succeed in spite of these obstacles, Life Sciences executives are seeking coherent and comprehensive strategies, solutions and operational practices. Accordingly, many are turning to The Highland Group for assistance in increasing manufacturing agility and flexibility, minimizing risk, enhancing performance on a sustained basis and continuing the globalization of clinical development, supply chain operations and commercial activities. As Life Sciences leaders look for continuous operational improvements across the value chain, we’re here to help.

OUR PRACTICE

The Highland Group has worked with leading Life Sciences companies around the world for more than two decades. We operate with specific knowledge and experience in addressing operational issues in the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and diagnostics sectors. Across the value chain, our company’s Senior Model helps us rapidly achieve results: all of our consultants bring a minimum of 15 years of successful industry and consulting experience.

Our Life Sciences Practice consists of more than 60 experienced consulting professionals, most of whom have held senior management positions in FDA-regulated environments. We solve problems in critical operational areas starting with the product pipeline – where R&D cycle time and productivity are major challenges – through to procurement, manufacturing, quality, compliance and validation, supply chain, distribution and sales force effectiveness. Furthermore, our firm’s cross-sector collaborations empower us to bring the most innovative ideas from related industries to serve our Life Sciences clients.

Life Sciences executives choose The Highland Group as their partner in delivering sustainable operational change and performance improvements because we:

• Operate a global team ready to deploy anywhere in the world
• Offer complete focus and clarity in targeting our clients’ business Driver Goals
• Employ a robust, hands-on approach that leverages only senior consultants who have front-line, domain experience and credibility within the Life Sciences sector
• Deliver significant, measurable results via our proven, proprietary project methodology
• Ensure sustainable change by delivering operational insight to client senior management while engaging employees and contractors at the front-line operations level

OUR RESULTS

Our Life Sciences Practice has yielded success for our clients in the areas of performance improvement, supply chain management optimization, increased throughput, customer satisfaction, delivery and service enhancement, market share retention, sales and marketing effectiveness, product analysis and lean implementations.

Some of our recent results include:

• For a pharmaceuticals company: Designed and implemented a flexible distribution strategy enabling superior customer service levels of 97+% and reducing costs by US$25M
• For a medical device company: Designed and implemented a flexible supply chain structure and reduced European and North American distribution costs by a 10%; achieved product completion and on-time delivery service levels of 98+% while reducing inventory levels by 20%; identified US$13M in savings from improvements to planning, forecasting, supplier management and distribution practices
• For a pharmaceuticals company: Designed and implemented a growth-oriented sales capability focused on margin-effective growth in North America and Europe; reduced sales cost-to-serve by more than 10% and delivered annualized financial benefits of $17M
• For a biotech firm: Delivered operational improvements and optimized organizational performance to better manage rapid demand growth for its services and products; reduced operating costs by 8%; improved customer retention by 40%; reduced financial closing time by 80% and reduced internal organizational layers from 10 to 6

Our unique combination of sector experience and implementation focus makes us ideally suited to help our Life Sciences clients thrive amidst intensifying challenges and increasingly competitive markets.