IMS expands KPO offering to meet demands of complex drug market
Donald Otterbein, recently appointed general manager of business transformation services, explained that while IMS has been providing knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) to clients for some years, current market conditions mean that the time is now right to expand.
Otterbein told Outsourcing-Pharma that: “The pharmaceutical industry is facing unprecedented market complexities and challenges that require companies to change their cost structure and rethink how they analyze and manage their business.
“They need to make better and faster evidence-based decisions, yet still achieve greater staffing flexibility and cost variability. All of these points demonstrate a compelling need for outsourcing.”
IMS’ KPO offering covers three broad areas: sales reporting and analytics; research; and analysis of managed markets all of which, Otterbein added, “leverage on our core competency of providing healthcare market intelligence, consulting and services, particularly in the sales force/commercial effectiveness space.”
He went on to explain that TCS’ track record in global resource management, technology infrastructure and established outsourcing methodologies had been key in IMS decision to partner.
“We wanted to be able to leverage and deploy our existing capabilities to deliver them to our clients very quickly in the near-term and TCS enabled us to do this.”
IMS also unveiled plans to set up a delivery centre in Bangalore, leveraging TCS’ local assets, outsourcing infrastructure and analytics capabilities and increasing its presence in India’s thriving pharmaceutical market and outsourcing sector.
