Pharmaceuticals & Medical Products

We are the leading consultancy for pharmaceutical and medical product companies. We have supported our clients on hundreds of projects over almost three decades. Among other accomplishments, we have helped build prescription brands and have supported largest M&A transactions in the industry.

We are the industry’s leading consultancy on strategy, but that accounts for less than one-third of our work. We are also the leading consultancy on R&D, operations, and commercial topics. Our broad range of work gives us a comprehensive perspective on many of the issues our clients face:

• How to achieve growth, both locally and abroad

• How to prioritize R&D investment

• How to create distinctive products in a crowded marketplace

• How to maintain profitability in the face of pricing pressures

• How to navigate healthcare reform

Our projects are done for clients who have asked us to come back to do more work. We help them connect the dots, linking facts to uncover insights and opportunities. Our clients appreciate the way we challenge them and push their thinking. We work side-by-side with them, believing that great ideas can come from anyone, that mentoring and collaboration matter, and that everyone at the table should have the obligation to dissent.

Helping clients maximize commercial value by assisting with product launch, marketing, sales, and market access

Our extensive experience serving pharmaceutical and medical products firms in all therapeutic areas has given us a deep knowledge of global commercial trends affecting the industry, including reimbursement issues.

In helping clients navigate through this turbulence, we focus on four areas:

Product launch: We have helped drive product launches for the most successful drugs on the market and have expertise in all therapeutic areas. Although launches are often complex, with products entering the market in multiple countries simultaneously, we can keep development on track.

Marketing: We support clients in creating high-impact strategies that maximize value, using customized tools, which benchmarks commercial functions and identifies areas for improvement in the US and European markets. We also have detailed market data for all major geographic regions, including emerging markets (e.g., information on trends in India and China).

Sales: We help clients reach their full sales potential while maintaining efficiency. Our efforts span the entire organization—we can help train and restructure sales forces, work directly in the field to provide coaching, maximize value from back-office services, develop strategies to accelerate short-term sales, and assist with company-wide commercial transformations.

Market access: We have a deep knowledge of global market access issues. Many payors are now reluctant to pay for new products, especially if they are more expensive than existing therapies. To overcome this challenge, we work with clients to develop compelling real-world evidence in support of their drugs. We also assist clients with payor negotiations, helping them build trust-based relationships while simultaneously obtaining optimal reimbursement terms. In addition, we have supported several clients in the design and implementation of value-added services for patients, such as patient loyalty programs and medication co-pay cards.

Helping companies capture opportunities across the value chain for generics, branded generics, and biosimilars, and forging connections among industry stakeholders.

We work with all participants in the generics industry, including independent companies, the generics divisions of large corporations, active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturers, specialty pharmaceutical companies, private-equity players, wholesalers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and payors. Our work has covered a wide range of topics, including R&D, strategy, operations, marketing, organization, post-merger management, and due diligence. For instance, we offer a benchmarking and diagnostic tool to assess R&D performance.

We work with most of the top ten medical products companies, and many smaller firms, using our cross-functional, global insights to help clients navigate rapid changes in the business system.

We serve medical products companies in all geographies and sectors, including medical supplies, capital equipment, implantable devices, and healthcare IT. In developed markets, our experience working with leading payors, providers, and regulators allows us to provide a unique perspective on the rapidly changing value chain. In emerging markets, we have medical products experts in all key locations, including China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and the Middle East, to help companies capture growth.

Our expertise extends across all functional areas:

Strategy: We help companies address issues ranging from business unit strategy to overall corporate strategy. Among other topics, we can assist with mergers and acquisitions, including post-merger management, market entry and growth, business unit turnaround, and development of a new business.

Commercial: Our work focuses on four areas: product launch, marketing, sales, and market access. For instance, we can assist with growth strategies, pricing, market development, promotional campaigns, customer segmentation and targeting, sales force effectiveness, and payor reimbursement. We also support clients in developing innovative commercial models and executing commercial strategies.

Research and Development: We strive to help clients drive innovation, improve productivity and performance, and develop successful portfolio and asset strategies. We can assist clients in enhancing development of new products, reducing costs and development timelines. In all cases, we help companies evaluate the value proposition for each product in development, considering both clinical and economic benefits.

Organization: We support businesses with all types of organizational challenges, including global expansion and entry into emerging markets. In addition to providing advice on structure and governance, we assist with issues related to a company’s culture and its overall “health,” such as mindset and behaviour problems that hinder performance. We have experience with organizational issues in all departments, including medical, clinical, and regulatory.

Operations: Our operations expertise covers six main areas: manufacturing, supply chain management, external supply, quality and compliance, network strategy, and product development and lifecycle strategy. For instance, we can help clients apply lean process improvements to all operational areas, including manufacturing, finance, and back-office functions. We also frequently support clients in investigating offshoring and outsourcing options, as well as possible partnerships with contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs).

Using our operations expertise to drive performance, increase revenue, and enhance the bottom line

As competition intensifies and payors restrict reimbursement, more pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical product companies are trying to maximize profits through operational improvement. But their efforts are often complicated by the increasing complexity of the healthcare landscape, such the shift of manufacturing to low-cost countries and the need for more intricate supply chains to meet growing demand in emerging markets.

LAZAR has decades of experience in all aspects of pharmaceutical operations, allowing us to help clients identify opportunities for revenue enhancement, efficiency improvement, and cost reduction throughout the entire production cycle. We have served pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical product clients in operations engagements, giving us a detailed understanding of all industry trends and challenges. We take a hands-on approach to working with clients, creating practical strategies that generate bottom-line impact. To sustain long-term improvement, we emphasize helping clients build their internal capabilities, providing tailored training programs for all organizational levels.

Our work covers six main areas:

Manufacturing: We improve shop-floor production efficiency through lean manufacturing methods, benchmark manufacturing costs and productivity to comparable peers for many different areas, including multiple fill/finish technologies, synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), and production of biologics.

Supply chain management: We take the customer’s perspective to develop an end-to-end view of the supply chain, working with companies to define strategy, redesign distribution networks, benchmark performance, identify problems, improve service levels, manage risk, reduce backorders, and lower inventory.

External supply: We have a thorough understanding of external suppliers and contract management organizations (CMOs), including their capabilities and typical costs. Through our market knowledge and experience, we have helped clients capture both immediate and sustainable value in multiple projects. Our approach entails working with clients to create a comprehensive external supply strategy, segment suppliers, develop metrics for vendor performance, and establish clear management guidelines to optimize value from third-party suppliers.

Quality and compliance: Our areas of quality expertise include transformational change, risk assessment at the network and site levels, performance management and benchmarking (e.g., development of KPIs), organizational design, and workforce sizing. Our work with quality and compliance organizations helps companies improve their relationships with regulators.

Network strategy: We help clients determine if their networks are aligned with their overall company strategy and goals. We also help clients capture value by optimizing global plant configurations, identifying opportunities to shift production to low-cost countries, assisting with plant closures or transfer of operations, and ramping up production at new sites.

Product development and lifecycle strategy: We support clients throughout the end-to-end product lifecycle. Our areas of expertise include enhancing operations during the development of new product and platform strategies, conducting diagnostics to determine readiness for launch and acceleration, developing strategies for mature products, and optimizing costs. For medical product companies, we also offer tools that enhance quality, improve manufacturing processes, and increase their products’ appeal to customers.

Helping clients build the R&D capabilities needed to drive innovation, improve productivity and performance, and develop successful portfolio and asset strategies.

Our R&D clients include major pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, biotechs, and clinical research organizations. Our work, which spans all major therapeutic areas, focuses on:

Driving innovation: We can help transform a company’s corporate culture and R&D infrastructure to meet changing industry needs, or support efforts to attract, motivate, and mobilize the best talent. We use our insights to help companies develop innovative products that offer substantial benefits over existing therapies, allowing them to overcome hurdles to regulatory approval and payor reimbursement.

Improving productivity and performance: We have multiple strategies for enhancing client’s productivity and performance. For instance, we can help them access new technologies and innovation through various R&D financing and partnership models that minimize cost and risk. We also facilitate approval and reduce development timelines and costs by helping design clinical strategies that maximize the chance for a successful approval with the best possible label. Our efforts often involve assisting companies with organizational issues (e.g., helping them determine the most efficient structure post-merger, etc.). Since we understand the changing vendor landscape and we offer global reach and expertise, we can also assist companies in identifying the right outsourcing/off-shoring opportunities and in capturing greater value from emerging markets.

Developing successful portfolio and asset strategies: For resource allocation, we help clients allocate their clinical research budgets and focus on the most promising products. With existing drugs and devices, we show clients which therapy areas, diseases, or products should receive priority. Most importantly, we apply novel approaches to maximize the value creation potential of each individual pipeline asset. For instance, we can help clients identify compounds that will provide more value in established markets or generate demand in rapidly growing emerging markets. We also help clients identify and execute business development opportunities, including in- and out-licensing deals, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and innovative multi-party transactions that improve productivity.

Optimizing medical and regulatory affairs organization and strategy: we help Medical and Regulatory Affairs divisions to implement best practice organizational set-ups and build the capabilities required to meet the expectations of external shareholders. We also support clients in their pursuit of product safety and clinical quality excellence.