Pharmaceutical, Medtech and cosmetics PLM, PPM & Go To Market platform

PLATFLOW

Pharmaceutical Product Lifecycle Software

Pharmaceutical Marketing models are very different from any other industry and depend on the peculiar lifecycle of the pharmaceutical product.

pharmaceutical-plm-software

How easy is it to get trusted, up-to-date data on the progress of all your current projects?
Is ideation a siloed process collected from a limited team?
How rapidly do you convert innovative ideas into commercialized products?
Is each new product investment aligned within your corporate strategies?
Are stakeholders and approvers able to view a single version of the truth for current progress and status of each project?
Can you easily see which resources are needed across all projects versus availability?
Are investment decisions made with a good understanding of the probability of commercial success?
How do you collect learnings from prior innovation and development experiences?

These are important questions that a successful Pharma company should be able to answer using a properly designed system for pharmaceutical product lifecycle management.


A. On-premise PLM software vs Cloud Saas PLM software
 

A company’s existence depends on how quickly it can innovate and commercialize successful, profitable products. Even small incremental improvements can produce significant results in both revenue growth and margin. For example, every day a pharma company can reduce the overall development cycle, is one more day of sales.

Today’s super-fast-paced markets require Pharma companies to have a holistic view of the pharmaceutical product lifecycle from innovation throughout your supply chain. On-premise PLM systems are making it even more difficult to keep this pace.

As a result, more and more Life Science companies are moving to cloud-based PLM solutions that are ready to help them build a resilient value chain that’s more flexible and can respond faster to an ever-changing business landscape.

The walls between PLM, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and customer experience have to be torn down to support the velocity of new business models and continuous innovation.

Platflow PLM as a SaaS offer several benefits, including:

  1. Accessibility: SaaS applications can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it easy for users to work remotely.
  2. Scalability: SaaS applications can be easily scaled up or down to accommodate changing business needs.
  3. Low cost: SaaS applications are typically less expensive than traditional software because they are subscription-based and do not require the same level of infrastructure.
  4. Automatic updates: SaaS providers typically handle all updates, ensuring that users always have access to the latest version of the software.
  5. Security: SaaS providers often have more resources to invest in security, which can lead to a higher level of security for users.
  6. Collaboration: SaaS applications often include built-in collaboration features, making it easy for teams to work together on projects.

  

B. Lifecycle of a Pharmaceutical product

 
Generally, the product life cycle is defined as the pathway of a product from its birth to its death. There are four stages in a generic non-pharma product life cycle:

  1. introduction
  2. growth
  3. maturity
  4. decline

generic product life cycle curve

Pharmaceutical Lifecycle

 
By plotting the revenue on the y-axis and the time on the x-axis the generic product life cycle curve is as shown above.

 
For pharmaceutical product lifecycle the curve is very different.

There are three distinctive stages in the life cycle of a new drug:

1. the research and development stage from the drug discovery up to its launch to the market
2. the period of time between its launch and the loss of market exclusivity
3. the period after the loss of market exclusivity when generics can enter the market

 

Drug test stages

During the Early stage the new drug is submitted to certain intensive clinical and preclinical tests. At this stage the company invests a relevant amount money without generating sales as the drug is not launched yet in the market.

 

Pharmaceuticals market exclusivity

The market exclusivity period is the time period between the market launch of an innovative drug and the launch of its first generic. The company files for a patent soon after the discovery of the drug. From that point, the company has a 20-year patent for the product. The R&D phase takes several years so, by the time the product is approved and available on the market, the patent can be close to running out.
Research by Duke University calculated that the average market exclusivity period of new drugs is 13.5 years.

 

New product launch in pharma industry

During the middle stage, the drug is launched to the market and the company starts making a profit. As soon as the product is introduced to the market the company starts activities like creating awareness and informing current and potential customers about the product.
Once it enters the growth stage the goal is to achieve the largest possible share of the market and maximize turnover.
When growth is no longer possible the product matures and the company focuses on maintaining its market share.
When market share and profits start to decline the company consolidates on the market segments gained and tries to minimize the expenses.

 

Loss of exclusivity (LOE)

When the patent expires companies seek offensive strategies to combat generic competitors and retain market share.


C. The goals of a pharmaceutical product lifecycle software

 
The ultimate objective of any company is to extend the product life cycle over a longer period of time.

A pharma company can obtain this objective in three ways:

  • Reducing the Early stage to the time that is strictly necessary from a development and regulatory perspective. This is obtained by reducing time-to-market to the minimum.
  • Maximizing revenues during the early stage by reaching max growth in a shorter time
  • Extending the Middle stage past the loss of market exclusivity by applying the appropriate marketing strategies like:
    • Evergreening and line extensions
    • Flanking
    • Rx2 OTC switching


Where does the need for a pharmaceutical product lifecycle
Management come?

  • Declining R&D productivity
  • Drought in R&D pipelines
  • Dramatically higher R&D costs
  • Changing industry and customer environment
  • Fierce competition from Generics
  • Increasing Complexity in Product development and production
  • Intense cost pressures
  • Falling prices and profits
  • High-quality products with little differentiation
  • Complex value chain and business processes required in this highly regulated environment
  • Poor R&D investment allocation


What are the key influencers that commonly impact profitability, risk and growth in Pharma:

  • Complexity in managing the entire product lifecycle due to silos of information across the different functional areas
  • No single data source for products and related information leading to disparate, redundant and inaccurate product information
  • R&D processes are viewed as independent of product launch and subsequent commercialization resulting in a fundamental gap

 

D. Key Benefits of Platflow PLM Software

 
Platflow is a collaborative platform with embedded analytics specifically designed to manage the pharmaceutical product lifecycle. Platflow enables organizations to achieve multiple goals according to the product Lifecycle stage:

IDEATION, R&D AND TESTS

  • A disciplined, repeatable and scalable approach to innovation
  • A stronger ideation pipeline to accelerate idea evaluation and selection
  • Early visibility into idea success or failure
  • Savings through the re-use of original data
  • Better alignment of product portfolio to corporate strategy
  • Ability to prioritize investments based on strategic importance
  • Foster cross-functional collaboration and reduce execution time
  • Savings through the complete integration of workflows for product optimization
  • Reduced developmental costs

 

PRODUCT LAUNCH

  • Accelerated time to market
  • Improved product launch performance
  • Increased product success rates
  • Documentation that can assist in proving regulatory compliance

 

COMMERCIALIZATION      

  • Improved decision with real-time analytics
  • Quick identification of potential sales opportunities and cost reductions
  • Optimized resources and higher productivity
  • Minimized waste associated with inefficient processes
  • Increased shareholder satisfaction
  • Improved product quality
  • Improved transparency and communication
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