Successful collaboration in healthcare and life sciences

Alliances and partnership spectrum

The healthcare and life sciences sector employs a wide spectrum of partnership arrangements and models. These range from simple, contractual arrangements to mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and increasingly, more complex collaboration models are being utilised.

Each model requires a different level of relationship management. As the degree of integration increases, the complexity and level of partner commitment is dialled up.

Examples of partnerships our team has supported in recent years, which inform our commentary, include:

• Outsourcing and transfer of medical device legacy product manufacturing facilities.
• Engaging multiple Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisations (CDMOs) alongside in-house facilities in the development and delivery of cell and gene therapies.
• Using third parties to support data provision to enhance real-world evidence.
• A life science company partnering with an NHS health authority to transform population health by focusing on early intervention and prevention.
• Using new patient engagement channels for clinical trials.
• Healthcare operators and providers collaborating with technology suppliers to provide digitally-enabled solutions and services to patients.

Planning for success 

While partnerships can be complex with many things to consider, in our experience, there are some commonly recurring themes that can ultimately determine success or failure in third-party collaborations:

1. Searching and selecting your collaboration partner

It is essential to choose wisely, ensuring that your partner has the right attributes, understands and shares your objectives, has proven capability, track record and resilience, and shares common culture and values. Too often, a rushed selection, or poorly understood or incompatible selection criteria or objectives, leads to selecting the wrong partner.

2. Agreeing the scope of the collaboration

The move to more strategic relationship partnering places an even bigger emphasis on the need for establishing common purpose, clear objectives and managing the inevitable tensions between the competing aspirations of parties in an open and transparent way. A well-designed, performance-driven commercial foundation is critical to driving the right behaviours. We recommend an agreed, clear set of “hard” KPIs/metrics with outcomes aligned to the strategic rationale for the partnership, combined in a wider scorecard that also covers “soft” factors such as communication and engagement. This can then be used to regularly monitor the overall health of the partnership.

Two areas that often get overlooked are the need for future flexibility, and what happens when the partnership ends. Discuss early on how scope and roles and responsibilities might evolve and allow for flexibility in contracting. Also, consider the exit strategy and what happens when the agreement ends, in terms of handover responsibilities and needs, including document and data ownership and migration.

3. Undertaking comprehensive planning and risk management

Rather than relying on informal or ad-hoc implementation, successful partnership implementation uses comprehensive project management to get the collaboration up and running. Being clear about goals, milestones and benefits, and designing the program around the delivery of these benefits, enables rapid establishment and control of the new organisation construct. The plan should also include sufficient time for knowledge exchange/transfer and onboarding. A successful kick-off will set the right tone by ensuring all stakeholders are clear on goals/objectives. Risks should be identified, and ownership of contingency plans agreed upon.

4. Recognising the importance of people and culture integration

A wide range of business transformations fail due to insufficient focus on “soft factors”, and partnership arrangements are no exception. Issues can be caused by inattention to people and organisational issues, underestimating cultural differences, and insufficient senior leadership attention and engagement. Communication and change management is often under-prioritised, so establishing and executing a well-thought-out communication and change plan from the outset can help drive success. The plan should address initial and ongoing communications and leadership engagement, aiming to build trust rather than adversarial relationships.

5. Ensuring governance and operational clarity

The successful management of the partnership will depend on having the right people involved in leading the collaboration and sharing the information needed to make effective decisions. All parties should be involved in co-creating the operating model for the collaboration, including processes, decision-making protocols, overall governance and escalation processes, and any tools and trackers to be used, such as for cost and revenue/benefits monitoring. The aim should be to promote joint working, recognising that healthy conflict will always exist and should be managed via governance. Before going live, ensure that teams are ready to move forward swiftly and capably on a set of shared objectives.

Companies should also consider how to best utilise the knowledge and experience they have gained. We recommend and have helped clients put together “Alliance Playbooks” which incorporate and codify lessons learned (including best practices) to better enable future partnerships.

6. Actively managing the arrangement

Once the partnership is in place, regularly monitor the performance and overall health of the partnership at tactical, operational, and strategic levels. Build in opportunities for continuous improvement, recognising that there will be inevitable “teething” issues.

How we can help

Every partnership arrangement is different and will have specific challenges. Our team works with healthcare and life sciences organisations on their transformation journey, including implementing complex partnering and alliance arrangements. Our experts can provide hands-on practical experience across all dimensions of setting up a successful partnership, covering people, organisation, processes, legal, risk, tax, business and operations.

If you would like to discuss the impact for your life sciences business, please contact Mohi Khan or Graham Bond.

Mohi Khan, Partner, Business Transformation, mohi.khan@rsmuk.com
Graham Bond, Co-Head of Life Sciences, graham.bond@rsmuk.com