Evolving Alliance Management

As a leading, global vaccine company, sanofi pasteur is keenly aware of the importance of partnerships and alliances in the successful development of its product pipeline. Currently, the company has partnerships ongoing with a wide range of companies, including biotech companies, strategic suppliers, and large pharmaceutical and vaccine companies. Utilizing partnerships helps to broaden our company’s scientific capabilities while at the same time lowering the demand for internal resources, which contributes to an increase in the efficiency of product development; particularly in today’s challenging economic environment. In addition to this, partnerships add both breadth and depth to our pipeline, as external collaborations continue to play a more important role in the development of new products.

Partnerships place additional responsibility on a company, since alliances do—and should--not manage themselves. All product development programs have their own strengths and weaknesses, each of which needs to be managed for success; adding an external partner to these dynamics often times significantly increases the demand for the successful management of the alliance. Companies that are aware of the increased management demands of partnerships are able to offer more to their partners in many ways and, in particular, through the use of Alliance Management, a function and a capability that if successfully implemented and applied, can create a partnership mind set within a company, which will have a positive effect on the development of partnered products. Alliance Management is a term that is often times defined differently across companies, but in general it is a group or function that manages joint project expectations and the relationship between the two partners. How this is done can differ between companies, which is one of the factors that leads to the different levels of alliance management.

At sanofi pasteur, our Alliance Management function was created in 2005 with the objective to successfully manage the relationship side of alliances through a robust process and toolset designed specifically to function optimally within the vaccine industry and within our company. We began with an analysis of industry, obtaining best practices from companies and organizations that were already heavily involved in Alliance Management. We then vetted these practices against the specific needs of our company, taking into account our pre-existing business processes and company culture. What developed from that was the start of both the Alliance Management function and capability of sanofi pasteur.

sanofi pasteur Alliance Management

Figure 1 - Alliance Management Capability

An Alliance Management function needs to be viewed somewhat differently from a corporate Alliance Management capability. The function is embodied in a dedicated group of professionals who manage several alliances directly (have direct contact with the partner to help ensure the success of that particular alliance). The corporate capability is embodied in the approach that the organization as a whole takes to successfully managing alliances. When a corporate alliance management capability is in place within an organization, the Alliance Management professionals--as well as the other key functions involved in the alliance--all display the proper alliance management competencies and demonstrate an organizational alliance mindset, with various groups utilizing alliance-centric tools and processes. Sanofi pasteur’s Alliance Management program began as a function, with one of its primary goals being to expand it in order to deliver a full alliance capability.

Figure 2 - Sanofi Pasteur AM Value Cycle

Sanofi pasteur’s Alliance Management approach is based on a robust and adaptable process that utilizes Alliance Management across the lifecycle of the product development program. From the negotiation phase, through the management of the alliance, and on to completion of the program, Alliance Management is integrated into the program activities to ensure that clear expectations are set and that a strong relationship is maintained with the partner. Along with the Alliance Management process, we employ a specifically designed toolset, currently consisting of 17 related tools that the Alliance Managers apply on an ‘as needed’ basis, adapting them to fit the situation defined by each particular alliance. Among these tools is a powerful survey that helps to establish and maintain positive expectations and perceptions during the life of the alliance. This survey, which we refer to as the Voice of the Partnership, or VoP, measures the perceptions of both partners relative to 16 key relational metrics, including communication, transparency, decision making, flexibility, and others. Other versions of the survey are also utilized to ‘drill-down’ on a particular metric in order to help identify root causes of identified issues. Once issues in a partnership or alliance are identified, we employ what we term the AM Value Cycle; an iterative process consisting of:

1. Identifying issues
2. Recommending actions, including vetting the recommendations with the key stakeholders
3. Implementing agreed-upon actions to resolve the issues

Sanofi pasteur’s Alliance Management function is composed of four global Alliance Managers who report into the Corporate Development group. The Alliance Managers also report quarterly to a governing body; the Alliance Management Committee, which is composed of the global heads of R&D, Commercial Operations, Industrial Operations, Legal, Intellectual Property, and Corporate Development. This committee meets on a quarterly basis to discuss the “health” of the alliances, to develop an understanding of the issues and the recommended actions, and to help ensure a continuous foundation with the critical stakeholder groups.

Expanding to Provide Greater Capability: Tiering of Alliances

Our alliance management function, when first established in 2005, focused on partnerships of both high complexity and high interdependence. In 2007 we expanded this program and cascaded the alliance management capability deeper into the organization, something that was facilitated by moving to a tiered program. To prepare for the movement to a tiered program, the Alliance Managers first reviewed the entire sanofi pasteur alliance portfolio and then allocated the alliances into one of three tiers, based on the degree of complexity, interdependence, and strategic priority, as well as the relative presence or absence of current issues. Under this tiered program, Tier 1 alliances are those of the highest complexity, interdependence and strategic value; Tier 2 are those of lower complexity, etc.; and Tier 3 are those of still lower complexity, etc., but which are still important contributors to the overall success of the company’s portfolio. There is also a set of alliances that are active but that are not tiered. However, they are maintained on the radar screen and are included in the annual Tiering Review, so that if a need for alliance management is identified in any one of them, they can be added to the appropriate tier.

The primary driver behind this alliance management program expansion, particularly as it relates to Tier 3, was the observation and resultant understanding that in order to have a successful alliance management program, multiple functions within the organization needed to apply alliance management practices in order to maximize the probability of success for each of our partnered product development programs. However, we viewed the asking of each of the key stakeholders of a particular alliance to employ the entire spectrum of alliance management processes and tools as being unrealistic. Because of this, those key stakeholders who manage one or more Tier 3 alliances were first assigned to one of the sanofi pasteur Alliance Manager professionals. These professionals then provided each of the Tier 3 alliance managers with alliance management training, lighter versions of tools, which we refer to as “AM Lite,” and a simplified annual survey for each of them to employ with their Tier 3 alliances. Now being in the second year of this Tier 3 program, we have found that the annual trainings provide a useful opportunity to review the behavioral and relational demands of each particular alliance, while the lighter versions of tools and the survey harmonize the logistics of managing these alliances and also provide a means to collect critical data on the perceptions of sanofi pasteur as a partner.

Further Evolution: Transversal Alliance Management

In 2008, after three years of building the Alliance Management function and working towards the establishment of a corporate alliance management capability, several of the lessons learned began to point us into a new direction for the management of alliances--one that had an internal focus. By becoming more efficient and effective at managing the relationships between our company and its partners, we began to recognize a certain degree of parallelism between managing external relationships and managing internal relationships. Our initial observation in this area was that some of the issues and resolutions that had been applied to external alliances could also be applied internally.

Out of this observation has come another alliance management program expansion, which we refer to as “Transversal Alliance Management.” Using the same cyclical process of issue identification, solution option generation, internal review and resolution implementation--elements of the Alliance Management Value Cycle--we mapped the internal hand-offs that were part of the normal product development process flow for a series of alliances that we considered as pilot alliances to test the value of the Transversal Alliance Management expansion program. Considering that Project Teams are often times composed of cross-functional matrix members, including departments outside of the key project group, the presence of internal operational “pinch points” is not uncommon. Transversal Alliance Management is meant to apply many of the key elements of the alliance management process, as well as the tools, in order to develop solutions to internal issues that have a positive impact on the flow of products within the company. Although this new expansion is now only in a pilot mode, it has already shown itself to be useful and has provided yet another opportunity to develop a true alliance management capability within sanofi pasteur.

Electronic Capability – Adding Strength to “How” AM Works

One of the key facets of managing alliances, in addition to the direct management provided by the expanded Alliance Management program, is the answer to the question, “How do you do this electronically?” Everything mentioned above can be performed manually, using verbal or written formats, but to gain additional alliance management traction with our partners, a certain level of electronic information storage and flow is needed. After researching several electronic software applications, one was found which is both flexible and well suited to our needs. This application provides a two-way portal with the partner, an electronic interface with other existing e-systems, and a solution that is highly configurable and has been designed around our specific alliance management process. We are currently in the process of implementing this system, something that we believe will add strength to how sanofi pasteur manages its alliances going forward, and something that will add value to both ourselves and our partners.

Alliance Managers: Continuously Increasing Knowledge

One of the strengths of sanofi pasteur’s Alliance Management program is that individual Alliance Managers have development plans that are aligned with the competencies that are relevant to Alliance Management as a profession. In addition, our Alliance Managers are also members of ASAP (Association for Strategic Alliance Professionals, www.strategic-alliances.org) and ADALEC (Association Nationale des Directeurs de Partenariats, www.adalec.com), both groups being designed for the benefit of Alliance Managers and both providing conferences, resources, and references on best practices in order to continue to strengthen an organization’s alliance management capability.

In Summary

Over the past several years, sanofi pasteur has implemented an Alliance Management program that is aligned with our corporate objectives and is flexible enough to adapt to meet the needs of all partners involved. By starting out with a simple program and subsequently expanding it around recognized opportunities, we continue to move in the direction of establishing a company-wide alliance management capability and to position ourselves as a partner of choice.

This article was printed in the March/April 2010 issue of Pharmaceutical Outsourcing, Volume 11, Issue 2. Copyright rests with the publisher. For more information about Pharmaceutical Outsourcing and to read similar articles, visit www.pharmoutsourcing.com and subscribe for free.