About
Ferring is a multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in St Prex, Switzerland. They specialize in reproductive health and develop medicines in the field of urology, gastroenterology, endocrinology, and osteoarthritis. With almost 7,000 employees, Ferring is one of the top mid-sized biopharmaceutical company with revenues amounting to almost €2 billion.
The challenge
As a 68-year old company, Ferring has undergone a lot of transformation — from a small family business focused primarily in Europe, to a mid-sized global player in the Top 50, with strong presence in the US and Asia. Since 2015, Ferring has been using Inpart as its unique partnering solution for managing all external opportunities, which led to the R&D, BD and Alliance Management teams working more in synergy. In 2016, the company decided to create a central function for scouting drug delivery technology, which was done previously in a more unstructured way. That was when the External
Technology team came about. As a newly established team, the team looked for solutions that would help them be more efficient on a daily basis and that would be well integrated in Ferring’s overall processes.
As part of the Global Pharmaceutical R&D division, the External Technology department drives the scouting and evaluation of drug delivery technology. Before the transition, this was managed by the Business Development team who were looking at it on a project basis, more than on a technical level.
To properly launch the department, External Technology Vice-President spearheaded workshops that led them to agree on the following priority initiatives:
- Decide on a process on how to gather and screen for technologies
- Ensure the capture of partnering information effectively
- Communicate on their department’s expertise and know-how
When Ferring knew how they needed their new business process to work, they started looking for solutions that could address these initiatives. They looked at 5 different solutions, including Inpart.
However, other tools didn’t fit their unique needs for several reasons. These solutions either required a lot of customization to meet their specific tech scouting needs or demanded a lot of time spent on infrastructure set-up and deployment.
The solution
The External Technology team selected Inpart’s Partnering CRM among five providers due to its user-friendliness, customizability, minimal implementation, and reporting capabilities. Together with Inpart, the team has created a workflow perfectly adapted to their external technologies scouting process.
Inpart was clearly the best choice for Ferring. Inpart was already being used by the R&D, Business Development and Alliance Management teams at Ferring. This not only minimized implementation and infrastructure set-up, but it also gave the External Technologies team a good overview of projects the BD and R&D teams were working on.
“I wanted a solution for my Technology Scouting team that required minimal IT involvement. The BD and AM teams were already using Inpart and happy with it. I am very glad we also chose Inpart, it’s intuitive and easy-to-use.”
AVAssociate Vice President, FCT & External TechnologiesFerring Pharmaceuticals
The result
Inpart’s knowledge of the industry made it easier for Ferring’s Technology Scouting team to develop a workflow that they could easily implement in the team that is very well adapted to the process her team created.
It has also given them a good reporting mechanism, as they are able to track the team’s performance through the system. This proved to be really helpful for senior management to gain insights on a project’s progress.
Some of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they track using Inpart are as follows:
- Time to process leads
- Time to decide on an opportunity
- Time to carry out further work on an opportunity
- Conversion time from opportunity to contract
They then extract insights that are useful not only for the assessment of technologies but also throughout product development.
Overall, Ferring considers Inpart as a partner not just in implementing a solution, but in ensuring there is compliance in their process. The Associate Vice President of FCT & External Technologies mentioned that,
“Inpart is not an IT project, it is a ‘process’ project. We worked with Inpart on a workflow that is integrated in our actual process. The system adapted to our process and not the other way around, as is the case with other providers. I would highly recommend Inpart to other businesses who do Technology Scouting.”
AVAssociate Vice President, FCT & External TechnologiesFerring Pharmaceuticals
