ASAP Bio Pharm Council: Simulettes for Alliance Management
October 05, 2007
By Lorri Freifeld
If you think getting corporate buy-in for a simulation solution is challenging, try getting eight competing pharmaceutical companies to work together on a suite of alliance management simulettes. "It took some time for those of us practicing in the field to see this as a viable solution," admits Steve Twait, alliance manager at Eli Lilly and Company, which often enters into partnerships with other companies to develop new drugs and technologies.
The project came about after Ken Spero, chief marketing officer of Herndon, VA-based vendor Humentum Corporation, attended the 2005 summit of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), where he heard the issue of alliance management training often was seen as a gap for many of the ASAP Bio Pharm Council participants. The presentation was facilitated by Michael Leonetti, head of HealthCare Partnerships at pharmaceutical manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and chairman of the ASAP Bio Pharm Council (which includes major drug, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology companies such as Amgen, Merck, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Schering-Plough, Eli Lilly and Company, and Wyeth).
"We each identified a need to get better at developing our teams to support alliance management capability," says Leonetti, who has 23 years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry and has spent his last nine years in commercial positions in alliance management, government affairs, and marketing. "We needed a tool to use beyond the tools we each previously were using. Some of us had sophisticated programs, while others did one-to-one real-time coaching to develop key competencies. We all decided more was better."
Humentum proposed to develop an approach that would address the behaviors and skills associated with alliance management best practices by focusing on the best thinking that goes into the practice through simulation.
Once all eight companies were on board, they each determined topics to be included in the 20- to 30-minute simulettes. Spero says factors involved in the decision included current challenges in alliance management, historical issues occurring over the recent past, alliances managed well, alliances that could have been managed differently, and ASAP Best Practice Competencies. The resulting suite of Alliance Management Best Practice Simulettes covered: Resolving Conflict, Aligned Decision Making, Performance Management, Utilizing Influence, Managing the Spirit vs. the Letter of the Agreement, Contingency Planning, Renegotiating the Contract, Dealing With Competition in the Alliance, and Building and Maintaining Trust.
Humentum "started with a 'blank sheet of paper,'" Spero says. "We interviewed key management and subject matter experts." The biggest challenge was to create a suite of simulettes where the participants would feel they are involved in an ongoing story. "While the main topic of each simulette is different, we wanted the participants to be grounded in the culture and environment of one company. That culture had to be close enough to the varied cultures of eight different companies that every participant could identify with the characters and situations presented. To accomplish this, we created a fictitious company and used it as the central alliance partner in all of the simulettes."
Humentum completed a first draft of each simulette after the initial interviews. A second draft included modifications in the environment or storyline and a more in-depth series of decisions and consequences. The third draft incorporated written feedback for decisions made and numeric scores indicating the quality of decision-making as compared to best practices for each decision. The final simulation was delivered as the fourth review. Spero says the total process took, on average, 30 days per simulette. "The length of time it takes to develop/design a Humentum simulation solution is determined by several factors, including the length of the simulation (15-minute simulette vs. 90 minutes of simulation), the familiarity of the author with the subject matter, the work-in-progress review process, and the use of audio and video. On average, development time runs between 30 and 90 days."
All nine alliance management simulettes were delivered within six months. Each company paid $15,000 for the simulette it sponsored and received all nine simulettes in the suite for contributing content and best practices. (Spero notes Humentum can produce shorter simulations for as little as $20,000—delivered cost—and then up from there. "Our typical pricing is built on a baseline of about $35,000 per user hour of simulation.")
Lilly began by offering its specific simulette, Aligned Decision Making (between a large pharmaceutical company and a small biotech), as a two-hour training opportunity eight months ago, followed by the next in the suite, Resolving Conflict, says Twait, who has been an alliance manager since 2000 and is one of more than a dozen alliance team members at Lilly. "The tool can be used at your desk, but we chose to use it in a group session of 14 to 18 people led by a facilitator. We find group interaction at decision points is where the most powerful learning comes."
At the end of the simulette, Twait says the facilitator asks attendees for three positive things about it and three things that can be improved. "So far, feedback has been all positive—people like the fact that it is based on real-life examples from alliances."
BI's Leonetti guesstimates about 10 to 20 percent of the population of 5,000 employees has had exposure to the simulette tool in the eight months it has been available. Feedback to date has been positive, he says, and there is an ongoing plan to develop further simulations and update the company's materials. "Future topics might include a negotiations model where a real-life, pre-deal-through-post-deal model is built highlighting the entry points and key roles of alliance managers."
Lilly's Twait says he is exploring other simulation solutions with Humentum and "trying to understand the value we get from the suite of nine simulettes. It is worth the investment, though."
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