Pharma & Healthcare

We cover the complete value chain in the pharmaceuticals and healthcare sector

We offer customized approaches that take account of our clients' specific business model. We do not stop at concepts – we help implement them successfully.

Healthcare

Shrinking budgets and more stringent political requirements are putting pressure on the European healthcare sector. We advise private and public players in the healthcare market and provide solutions for the demands of a rapidly changing market. We work for federal and state ministries, reform commissions, private and statutory health insurance companies, hospitals (in particular university hospitals), elderly care centers and welfare organizations.

Pharmaceuticals

Discovering promising innovations is getting more difficult, expensive and risky – and hard for individual Rx suppliers to finance on their own. Establishing a well-organized and competitive network is crucial for success. We support our clients in discovering new opportunities in emerging markets, finding suitable partners and managing cooperative ventures. We provide a fresh perspective on aligning our clients' operations along the entire value chain: improving R&D performance, launching blockbuster products efficiently, increasing the clients' sales force performance as well as implementing new supply chain capabilities.

To hold their own, generics suppliers must achieve cost leadership, as governments and health insurers increasingly favor cheap products to reduce overall spending. Aspiring cost leaders develop and implement supply chain management, optimize production sites and design innovative competitive strategies.

OTC suppliers can successfully position themselves through appropriate customer relationship management, multilateral sales channels management and by exploiting the opportunities of direct mail and e-commerce.

Medical devices

Innovative medical devices and procedures can considerably improve diagnostics and shorten treatment cycles. We support our clients in the segment with studies that highlight the overall economic benefit of innovations. Quality marketing, targeted branding and customized service can also help providers stand out from the competition. We show you how.

Service providers

Our integrated and customized approach provides specific advice to distributors and logistics providers, CROs, IT and CT providers, as well as associations, institutions and financial services companies.

In China

Discovering promising innovations is getting more difficult, expensive and risky. It is also hard for individual Rx suppliers to finance their growth on their own. With rapid growth in the pharmaceutical industries, Chinese manufacturers have a strong position in traditional medicine but are still quite weak when competing with global players. Roland Berger serves international and Chinese clients to:

• Discover opportunities in new and emerging markets
• Find suitable partners and manage cooperative ventures
• Improve R&D performance
• Build action-oriented consumer segmentation and marketing strategies
• Improve sales force performance and design sales channel strategies
• Implement new supply chain capabilities

Our project examples:

Client Issue

Our client had experienced fast growth and became mid-size traditional Chinese medicine producer. It had established leading position in tier two and tier three markets. Being fairly ambitious, it expected to realize further aggressive expansion and become top tier company nationwide. It also intended to diversify along the value chain and ultimately grow into high profile healthcare conglomerate. Roland Berger Strategy Consultants was invited to give advice on how the company should grow from current standing as well as how to build up core competence and improve key functional capabilities to ensure the realization of its vision.

Project Approach

Text of paragraphThe assignment was divided into 3 phases. In Phase one, the project team interviewed government officials and industry experts, and studied the growth potential of traditional Chinese medicine sector and its key success factors. The team also performed a thorough evaluation of client company's operation and understand its competitive advantages. Taking a comprehensive view on all the research, the team finally recommended and persuaded client to adopt focused strategy. In Phase two, the team went on to examine client company's current sales system and benchmarked against industry leaders. By leveraging our expertise in sales and marketing, the team developed recommendation on both regional expansion and product line extension, and validated through financial projection. In Phase three, based on the business strategy and sales strategy, the team worked with client to design or adjust the organization structure and some business processes. Along the project, the team also delivered several training to ensure key client employees understand project deliverables and have the capabilities to implement them.

Impact

Following our advice on focused growth strategy, the client company closed certain losing business, which contributed to further improvement on financial status. Our recommendation on the sales and channel strategy also helped client greatly boost the efficiency of sales organization and clarify the road map of market expansion, which set healthy basis for further improvement on market share and nationwide sales coverage.

Contact

Yan Kang
Partner, Head of Pharma & Healthcare Competence Center