Key outcomes
- Reduced time-consuming manual work and boosted ability to react with speed
- Improved quality of engagement with stakeholders and strategic decision making
- Raised visibility and knowledge sharing across the alliance portfolio
- Implemented portfolio-wide risk management with a link to corporate objectives driving value achievement
"Without allianceboard, you don't have visibility across the portfolio, so this system is a win for everyone, especially the Head of Alliances. It allowed me, as the Operations Manager, to gain information more seamlessly as opposed to having to connect with each individual Alliance Manager, I can just go in and obtain specifically or run a report for what I need at any time."
-Lauren Griffey, Senior Manager, Alliance Management Business Operations
Challenge: A square peg for a round hole
Previously, the alliance team relied on a system that wasn’t designed for the unique demands and challenges of managing strategic alliances. The system functioned more like a data repository than a tool enabling optimal use of relevant alliance and portfolio information.
As a result, it was difficult to standardize processes and reporting. Information was kept in different places and in different formats. This setup didn’t provide strong visibility into each alliance or the portfolio overall. At an individual alliance level, it was difficult to understand what was happening at a given time without time-consuming, back-andforth communications.
Everything from reporting information for stakeholders to managing contracts required manual, time-consuming effort which made it difficult to react with speed and support scalable growth across the organization.
– Katherine Kendrick, Executive Director and Head of Alliance Management
At an alliance portfolio level, reporting was often tactical and boiled down to a statement of facts on what is currently going on without sufficient insights.
This made it challenging to provide stakeholders with the information they needed to make informed decisions and did not enable the alliance management team to have the type of impact they were aiming for in driving alliance success.
To be successful, Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ alliance team needs to work with many different stakeholders, including research teams, early development VPs, R&D, and senior leadership. The lack of visibility and standardization hurt the team’s ability to work effectively with stakeholders and reduced visibility into their business impact.
Solution: Elevating strategic alliances with allianceboard
To bring greater visibility and standardization, Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ alliance team implemented allianceboard.
With all information and metrics in allianceboard, the team was able to standardize language and processes and bring greater consistency to the management of alliances.
They also gained visibility and understanding of the entire portfolio, helping to improve strategic decision-making and communication with stakeholders.
"allianceboard is structured in a way that aligns with alliance language in general, and then our customizations allowed us to further align allianceboard with the way that Jazz spoke about alliances"
– Lauren Griffey, Senior Manager, Alliance Management Business Operations
Speaking the same language, sharing practices and knowledge
By managing all alliances in allianceboard, the team was able to standardize terminology and processes across the portfolio. From documenting potential risks and risk management plans to being consistent when tiering alliances and describing the phases of development, the same language is now being used across alliances.
Within the team, this makes it easier to frame challenges and opportunities and share best practices. For example, the team is now able to ensure that alliance risks are being documented with similar information and related mitigation plans are easily clicked into within allianceboard. This consistent, and prioritized understanding of risk coverage makes it possible to create metrics for risks and tie them to corporate objectives.
With stakeholders, using consistent language not only helps to communicate more clearly but also helps educate stakeholders on what these terms mean and how they are used so that the whole organization can be more effective in managing risks and prioritizing decisions and actions to achieve alliance goals.
"allianceboard was helpful in achieving the initial goal that was to standardize the terminology and the way that we capture information, so that there is more consistency and clarity in the information captured."
– Katherine Kendrick, Executive Director and Head of Alliance Management
Improved visibility and reporting
allianceboard provides greater visibility across the entire alliance portfolio. This visibility enables the alliance team and stakeholders to have a deeper understanding of the portfolio at every level.
When working with stakeholders, allianceboard allows the team to create dashboards and reports that are customized easily to each stakeholder. The information a research or finance team needs to complete their specific work is much different than what the CEO needs when meeting with an important partner executive. With allianceboard, it is easy to create custom dashboards and reports that represent meaningful, specific information.
"It’s changing the conversation with a stakeholder from a status update to a strategic business discussion. I use the data out of allianceboard to tell the story of ‘these are our current activities, and this is the business impact for them. But in addition to that, here’s the different overlays of information so that we can connect it all together for a meaningful conversation’"
- Danielle Martinez, Associate Director, Alliance Management
Improved efficiency
allianceboard enables the Alliance Operations Manager and Head of Alliance Management to get information seamlessly. Instead of having to ask each alliance manager “please send me this information”, they can simply look it up and it’s there in a standard format across alliances.
Strategic decision-making and business impact
With greater standardization and visibility, the alliance team has moved away from manual management and status-quo reporting to speaking the same language and communicating more effectively with stakeholders. Now the organization can make better strategic decisions and better understand the impact that the alliance team's efforts are having on the business.
"There’s a lot of value in presenting a standardized and professional approach to alliance management to our stakeholders. allianceboard allows us to elevate the role and professionalism of the alliance management team at every point of the partnership lifecycle."
– Katherine Kendrick, Executive Director, Head of Alliance Management
About Jazz Pharmaceuticals
Jazz Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company with global operations and a broad spectrum of partners. Alliances are key to Jazz Pharmaceutical’s continued growth strategy. The company has a growing portfolio of alliances across the full spectrum of the development lifecycle, from preclinical to global commercial alliances.
Interested to learn more?
Leading alliance management teams leverage allianceboard to manage their alliances strategically and drive alliance success.
Contact us today and learn how you can elevate your alliance management team’s influence and impact with allianceboard.