Launch Strategy & Planning

Pharmaceutical companies have only one opportunity to launch a product – they must make the most of that opportunity. Without strong planning and strategy, a successful launch can only be the result of luck. Assuring launch success requires executing both strategy and planning, yet many companies reaching the end of long clinical journeys for their assets fail to prioritize launches.

Our experience suggests that proper launch planning results in launches with an increased success rate. Key tactics employed by successful launches include developing a detailed and explicit multi-functional launch roadmap, monitoring the progress of activities, monitoring launch progress against objective KPIs and choosing a handful of critical factors on which to focus.

Successful launches focus on three major areas:

Strategy: Define the market, develop assumptions, and create strategic imperatives to lay a foundation for planning and management
Planning: Develop a launch blueprint that identifies functional teams, deliverable, and activities combined into an agenda, allowing team leads to best manage a launch.
Management: Monitor and assist the progress of an asset before, during, and after a launch, allowing the team to generate reports on progress

EVERSANA’s launch solutions use our proven launch framework to integrate business strategy, project management, automation technology and analytics to support our clients through the entire launch planning process from designing the blueprint to supporting launch plan implementation.

Our Case Studies

Development of a Comprehensive Market Access Launch Roadmap and Pricing & Market Access Strategy for a Novel Treatment

Our client was launching an innovative CNS product and contacted us 16 months ahead of launch. We developed a detailed launch roadmap to use as a guide for all launch planning efforts. This roadmap itemized all market access launch deliverables and activities associated with completing them, along with timelines for completion, dependencies, and responsibilities.

We also developed a market access strategy, including value proposition with payers, positioning strategy, pricing, contracting, and plans to win in key channels based on findings from primary and secondary research with all relevant stakeholder groups.

Development of a Well-Informed and Differentiated Strategy and Launch Plan for an Emerging Biotech Player

Our client was 24 months from launching its first asset targeting patients who already had multiple treatment options.

We developed a company fact base outlining key market assumptions and researched market access, key account landscape, treatment patterns and behaviors and unmet needs. We then helped define the launch strategy based on the fact base and directional corporate guidance.

We worked with functional teams to develop and refine launch plans across the organization. To align the organization, we facilitated cross-functional meetings.

Finally, we developed a launch tracking tool to ensure all plans would be monitored and updated. Using this tool, we followed up with the client several months into the plans to evaluate progress, discuss interdependencies and issues, and provide feedback on the path forward.

Development of a Cross-Functional, Comprehensive Launch Plan in Breast Cancer

Our client was developing a lead therapy in breast cancer and needed support to develop a launch roadmap with market assumptions, launch objectives and strategies, tactics, interdependencies, milestones, and risks.

We identified and collected data to synthesize a market fact base and aligned with our client on in-going assumptions and initial launch strategy considerations.

We leveraged internal expertise and client understanding to create a launch plan template with function-specific draft launch plans. We reviewed and revised the plans in a client workshop, synthesizing outputs and incorporating additional information into a final launch plan.

A Second-Generation Asset Undergoing Phase II Trials Desired Assistance with Cross-Functional Commercial Product Planning

We began with a cross-functional meeting including disease background, market landscape, product situation assessment and a review of product strategy and plans.

We evaluated and prioritized gaps and uncertainties, followed by defining steps to close gaps.

We worked with each cross-functional team to map planning activities as inputs to a Phase III go/no-go decision together with Phase II data readouts. With positive Phase II data, we worked with the client teams to create a commercial plan and forecast that enabled them to proceed with Phase III investment.