The first ASAP BioPharma in-person conference since 2019 returned to Boston last week with a record-breaking 250 delegates from all around the globe. ASAP BioPharma 2022 was jam-packed full of content designed to encourage collaboration, learning and discussion. A fantastic opportunity to meet with peers and old friends that we haven’t seen in a while and to make new acquaintances.
allianceboard would like to extend a big thank you to the entire ASAP team for having put together this wonderful event.
The opening keynote address by Alex Waldron, CEO of Wellinks, set the agenda rolling with a look at how interconnected healthcare and technology have become too rapidly accelerate adoption – initially necessitated by Covid and now established as the means for moving forward, for the entire biotech industry.
allianceboard was out in force, with our stand becoming our meeting point for many conversations. Louis Rinfret, our Founder and CEO, Michael Roch, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Kathrine Kendrick of Jazz Pharmaceuticals explored how alliance managers can contribute to driving better business decisions through alliance management intelligence. We are very grateful to Katherine who provided a stellar real-world perspective on the issues and on how she has evolved how senior stakeholders use alliance management information at Jazz.
Most of the other sessions were excellent, too. Nearly all sessions had a growth and innovation theme ranging from creating alliance management value, to the establishment of an alliance management community of excellence, to retaining and recruiting talent from outside the profession, to leveraging ASAP best practices to optimize an alliance management-centric organisation.
Key learnings:
1. Growth continues. The future of alliance management in the BioPharma sector is looking strong and essential to organisational growth. With the ASAP BioPharma conference growing to record numbers, the importance of alliance management and indeed the role that ASAP takes in supporting those within the sector, signals both significant growth in the numbers of employees specialising in alliance management and the growing importance of ASAP’s delivery of a respected industry benchmark in best practice.
2. Demonstrating value-add. While the value of alliance management is starting to be recognised at board level, the C-Suite in general remains largely unaware of the depth of work carried out by the alliance management team – or that it takes more than to “just execute a contract” to achieve the great partnerships associated with the organisation and its business growth. Alliance managers need to get better at taking credit for not just the wins, but also for the near misses and crises averted that are a demonstrable part of the role, often unseen, that support successful strategic partnerships.
3. Minimizing turnover risk. Employee turnover in alliance management is still high and ensuring consistency between employee handovers is crucial to ensuring intended partnership values are realized. We heard from many delegates about the difficulties of accessing notes and milestone records once an employee had moved on, potentially leaving the alliance – and the organization relying on its success – in a very vulnerable position.
For every challenge, we know that technology always will be only part of the answer. Yet allianceboard is proud to offer a cloud-based solution that makes alliance management better across the partnering life cycle, provides a completely new basis for engaging stakeholders internally and externally, and provides a central system of record to ensure the partnership delivers despite people changing organizations.
To find out more about allianceboard, get in touch with our team. https://www.allianceboard.com/contact-us