In the decade or more it takes to move a promising candidate from the lab to the clinic it can easy for firms to become focus on the complexities of the development process and push back the creation a commercialisation strategy until launch time looms.
This phenomenon, coupled with the recent trend among pharmaceutical firms to shed in-house sales teams, has created significant demand for specialist marketeers who can work with drug firms earlier in the development process.
New Jersey-based inVentiv said its new contract service is designed to cater for this need, leveraging the experience the firm has built up through the launch of more than 800 products worldwide in the last 10 years.
The firm explained that FlightPath is an “organising platform” on which clients can identify business opportunities and develop strategies for both developmental candidates for products that are being re-launched.
Keeping with the aeronautical theme, inVentiv will provide customers with “co-pilots,” to help co-ordinate all aspects of drug commercialisation, ranging from timelines and budgets to sales reporting and analysis.
Norman Stalsberg, president of inVentiv’s Advanced Insights unit which will run the service suggested that detailed, analysis-based strategies are critical to the performance of pharmaceutical products.
"Launching new products in today's complex market can be extremely daunting. Even the most innovative compounds can fail to achieve commercial success without well developed strategies, aligned tactics, and carefully coordinated execution."
Stalsberg also claimed that FlightPath is the only fully customizable service of its kind on the market and said that this adaptability would be a particular advantage for “smaller and emerging companies that have limited in-house resources."