The Keys to R&D: The Rise of Enterprise Asset Management in the Pharma Industry

The pharmaceutical industry has proven to be a somewhat fortunate anomaly over the past few years. To its left and its right - in the financial sector, the manufacturing sector and the technology sector - an increasingly demoralising war has been waged against costs. Looking to every corner of infrastructure and operations, the world seemed to hinge on streamlining processes and fighting to gain an edge that would enable another quarter of survival, however fiscally static.

For many pharma companies, however the success of science and investors' faith in new blockbuster products has set a different stage. The focus on research, development and riding new drugs across successful European distribution and into the sunset of FDA approval was full steam ahead. The 'back office' was a non-factor, just as it was for financial companies of the 1990s. Inefficient processes may have caused muted losses, but the temporary setbacks of revamping operations were too daunting for wholesale changes to warrant much consideration.

As a result, the pharma industry finds itself in jeopardy of falling prey to the same scramble necessitated when responding to market-dictated cost pressure experienced in those other industries. Pharma's R&D and marketing approaches are languishing in the past, working off procedures that were brilliant a decade ago, but are now slowly being rendered ineffective. There is a general reluctance among pharma companies to view the end-user (the patient) as a customer, and instead they look directly to doctors and health care organisations - just as they did 10 years ago.