Award-Winning Questions: "Who Are We?" And "Who Are They?"

By Louis Garguilo, Chief Editor, Outsourced Pharma

Two fundamental questions of outsourcing are: “Who are we?” and “Who are they?”

The “we” is each person involved in your biopharma organization. Answering this initial question starts by obtaining insight into investors and advisers, executive leadership, your scientists, analysts, and engineers. This “we” then rolls up to a collective understanding of what you can achieve as a functioning business. Questions arise as to the objectives and mission of your enterprise: What programs, modes of operation, strategies, and tactics will you employ to advance your grand intentions? No one outside your company can help you with understanding this “we.” It’s up to you.

However, as that evolving internal insight inevitably leads you to the search for partners to help you develop and manufacture your drugs and therapies, Life Science Leader can help you answer the associated second question: “Who are they?” A big component of that answer arrives in this annual CMO Leadership Awards publication.

Here, you will discover evaluations of CMOs in the categories you have told us are most critical to your success: capabilities, compatibility, expertise, quality, reliability, and service. My colleagues at Industry Standard Research (ISR), who manage our survey and data for these awards, also include the “individual attributes” biopharma companies tell us are of vital importance: accessibility to management, innovation, on-time delivery, reputation, getting it “right the first time,” state-of-the-art, and strength of science. An award in any of these categories is a global recognition of excellence for CMOs.

So let’s extend our congratulations to the first CMO Leadership Awards winners of this new decade. You’ll learn a lot about them in these pages – information you’ll be able to act on. Because today, more than ever, the assortment of services and partnership models that CDMOs/CMOs provide biopharma companies is a critical component of the entire drug development and manufacturing industry — and of advancing the health of patients around the world.

Also, within this issue are articles by some of the most effective consultants in our industry. They have written about many of the challenges you’ll confront as you go about your external supply chain deliberations and, more importantly, how to consider or overcome them. Drawing on just two examples, articles such as “Strategic Outsourcing For Virtual Companies” and “What’s Wrong With Having A Transactional Relationship With Your Contractor?” are certain to both answer and raise new inquiries into all your activities.

I’d like to extend a special thank you to Jana Spes, who collaborated with me on this year’s feature editorial. Her embodiment of the “all-in-one” outsourcing resource is sure to get you thinking more deeply about who should lead your outsourcing activities and what types of individuals should be at your CMOs, as well.

Which leads me to a final point: These CMO awards are most meaningful because recipients are evaluated only by customers with whom they are working currently or have worked with recently. Therefore, some readers have already come to know these organizations as your trusted partners and extensions of your company. And outsourcing never works better than when “we” and “they” become “us.” Thank you to those of you at the global biopharma companies who responded to our survey and who, each year, make these the most meaningful awards in our outsourcing industry.