Management Consulting
An ever-changing marketplace forces companies in the Life Sciences and Consumer Products industries to continuously reshape and reassess corporate strategies. Consumer Products organizations find it increasingly difficult to anticipate consumer behavior, to drive innovative new products, and to forecast future sales. They continue to be faced with issues such as how to drive more effective promotions, how to manage SKU proliferation, and how to better realize efficiencies throughout their supply chain. For Consumer Products companies facing new consumer realities, pricing pressures, and challenges associated with capturing emerging markets, redefining a winning strategy becomes imperative.
With general opinion of the industry down on both Wall Street and Main Street, Life Sciences companies face an especially tough road. Wall Street is worried about the “patent cliff” and a potential lack of replacement revenue leading to increased pressure on profits. Ironically, the public commonly views Life Sciences companies as too focused on profits instead of the safety and integrity of their products. In the past, Life Sciences companies were able to serve both these groups by offering innovative products that both improved patients’ lives and demanded premium prices. Those days are gone, but the challenges that created the situation – increased regulatory scrutiny, pricing pressures from governments, and diminishing pipelines – remain. There is no clear path to future success as companies make tough decisions about keeping development in-house versus looking outside company walls for pipeline boosts, ways to expand markets, and how to balance the demands of regulatory bodies with the expectations of shareholders.
The speed at which companies can assess and adapt to new industry realities and external forces within each competitive market, while leveraging strengths to take advantage of opportunities, determines the likelihood of success. And the ability to define a winning strategy aligned with internal capabilities and external forces becomes a competitive differentiator.
