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Improving a Product’s Market Potential with Stakeholders
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This issue of Consultant Connection discusses how understanding stakeholder needs and concerns can help your client recognize the full value of their product and deploy it in the most commercially advantageous way, maximizing their chances of market success.
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Stakeholder Research Resources 
Learn more about key stakeholder research and how Covance can help your clients overcome economic barriers.
Such insight can be gained from identifying and seeking feedback from strategic stakeholders (key thought leaders, clinicians, health economists, hospital payers, third-party payers and health technology assessors). Combine that with real-world data to illuminate stakeholder concerns and you are armed with critical knowledge that can steer your strategic recommendations to ensure success.

While stakeholder research can be performed at any point during development, greater benefits are realized when companies take the initiative to assess market issues early in the process. A proactive approach that provides your client with the confidence to move forward with their product is absolutely critical and should include
  • Accurate determination of commercial potential. Evaluate whether the product can compete with existing treatments, whether a sufficient unmet need exists and which niche the treatment can fill in the marketplace.
  • Development strategy guidance. Identify the differentiating features that will be needed to set the product apart from its competitors, and refine your client’s clinical development program to satisfy complex reimbursement requirements.
  • Anticipation of market barriers. Avoid potential pitfalls that could derail product uptake by assessing market access hurdles well in advance and integrating compelling endpoints into your client’s clinical plan.
  • Proper product value conveyance. Position the product so that your client can capitalize on market needs, and develop a communications strategy that will resonate with stakeholders who make purchasing and prescribing decisions.
Many developers delay stakeholder research until the treatment approaches launch, but they risk missing opportunities to adapt their development to market conditions. Having a partner who is experienced in stakeholder research and application can help uncover early real-world intelligence that will give your client a critical advantage.

Case Study: Assessing A Product’s Therapy Landscape
In 2015, a European company was considering the acquisition of an early-stage ovarian cancer therapy product and needed to fully understand the treatment’s potential value.

Following an extensive search with our comprehensive stakeholder database, we identified leading clinicians in Germany, Italy and the UK for interviews that would allow us to gather information about:
  • The current and future market for ovarian cancer therapy, including patient management pathways, treatment paradigms, potential competitors and expected developments such as label expansions.
  • The product’s proposed indications, including prospective subgroup positioning, market-specific restrictions and the need for a companion diagnostic.
  • The product’s planned clinical trials, including the clinical value expected from trial results and relevant comparators and endpoints.
Having these critical insights enabled the client to shape their clinical trial protocol accordingly and assess the potential future revenue from the acquisition.

As a consultant, you can guide your clients to the wealth of insight that can be gained from identifying and seeking feedback from strategic stakeholders (key thought leaders, clinicians, health economists, hospital payers, third-party payers and health technology assessors). Combine that with real-world data to illuminate stakeholder concerns and you are armed with critical knowledge that can steer your strategic recommendations to ensure success.

With access to thousands of stakeholders around the world, Covance can help you identify important endpoints that matter to payers, prescribers and patients and build a solid foundation for communicating the product’s true value. Learn more.
One of the biggest risks your clients face is developing a safe, effective treatment that ultimately fails to gain a foothold in the marketplace. With ever-increasing price pressures and access barriers, biopharmaceutical sponsors need the crucial insights provided through stakeholder research to understand where a product fits in a competitive healthcare landscape. 

As a consultant, you can guide your clients’ understanding of what the market really wants, what value messages resonate in the market, and what data end points are needed to support such claims. 
Lecia Johnson and her team are standing by to provide consultants with seamless access to Covance global solutions—nonclinical through clinical.  Contact us today—we look forward to helping you succeed