Strategic Alliance Magazine - Q4 2013 - Non-ASAP-Member Edition

960 Turnpike St, Canton, MA 02021 USA | Tel: +1-781-562-1630 | strategic-alliances.org | [email protected]

ALLIANCEMANAGEMENTCERTIFICATION

There Are Now More Ways to Earn CA-AM

and CSAP Certification Points Than Ever!

ASAP members have more avenues to secure and register qualification points toward CA-AM renewal or CSAP exam eligibility. Unveiled on July 1, our new point system provides 15 categories for earning points spread across four larger groupings:

n Presentations (ASAP conferences, chapter events, and webinars as well as approved ASAP and non-ASAP courses)

nWriting (Member Resource Library, Strategic Alliance Magazine, Best Practices Bulletin, or other approved publication)

nAttendance/Participation (ASAP conferences, chapter events, and webinars as well as approved ASAP courses and pre-approved continuing education programs)

nService to ASAP (chapter leadership, Board/special task force/committee membership)

To review the new certification point categories in greater detail, go to the Renewals & Eligibility page under the Career Building section of www.strategic-alliances.org.

Renewing your certification is more than just keeping up a title; it ensures continued success in your practice and the advancement of your career.

For questions about submitting points under the new system, please contact ASAP’s Certification Coordinator, Jennifer Silver, at 781-562-1630 ext. 205 or [email protected].

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Become an ASAP Member Today!ASAP off ers two membership types, Individual and Corporate. To become an ASAP Individual Member today visit www.strategic-alliances.org/individuals.

To become a Corporate Member contact ASAP’s director of membership services Lori Gold at+1-781-562-1630 ext. 203 or [email protected].

“…For anyone interested in learning ‘how to do alliances right,’ this is the organization to belong to!”– Joost Allard, Allinnova

How ASAP Leads to SuccessASAP membership aids Individual, Corporate, and Global Members in improving their business collaborations and furthering their professional development in several ways.

n Apply state-of-the-art tools, practices, and processes for alliance planning and execution

n Engage with a community of highly accomplished alliance management professionals who not only share your challenges but also have the blueprints to overcome them

n Design and build their company’s alliance management function

n Promote their organization as “partner of choice” within their industry

n Infl uence all pertinent stakeholders to contribute to making alliances fl ourish

n Network with professionals from a variety of industries to fi nd their next job, partner, or employee

n Obtain the requisite training in the discipline’s hard and soft skills

n Illustrate to C-level executives and other stakeholders the value generated by an alliance portfolio and the Alliance Management practice

n Keep current with the latest high-level collaboration strategies

Key Benefi ts of MembershipKnowledge and Resourcesn ASAP Member Directory n ASAP Member Resource Library n Strategic Alliance Magazine n ASAP Netcast Webinars n ASAP eNews n ASAP Handbook of

Alliance Management n Best Practices Bulletin

Events and Communityn ASAP Global Alliance

Summit n ASAP BioPharma

Conference n ASAP Chapter Eventsn ASAP Alliance

Excellence Awards

Education and Professional Developmentn Certifi cation n Education Provider

Partner Program (EPPP) n ASAP Career Centern ASAP Professional Development Guide

For most companies, the question is no longer whether to ally, but how to do it right. The answer starts with the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

Partnerships are all about mutual benefi t and ASAP can help you advance your initiatives.


OUR HEART IS ALWAYS IN OUR WORK BECAUSE OUR PATIENTS ARE ALWAYS ON OUR MIND.

The remarkable impact we make on people’s lives comes from a relentless focus on what each patient needs and how to deliver it. We are a biopharmaceutical company that combines science, passion, and expertise to bring new solutions to health and healthcare. We measure our success by the impact we make on patients’ lives.

abbvie.com

©2013 AbbVie.

5Quarter 4, 2013

Raising the Bar–Once Again

As the C-Suite Starts to Buy into Alliances, a New

but Familiar ASAP CEO Will Help “Close the Deal” in 2014

By Russ Buchanan

WHEN AUTUMN TURNS to winter and we suddenly realize the New Year is fast upon us, it is usually a good time to take a step back, evaluate the big picture, and see where we are heading. As is the case with most years, 2014 appears poised to bring plenty of change, and for ASAP and the profession it is fi lled with promise.

We have the enviable task of maintaining an upward trajectory. Our eff orts in the early part of this decade to create a dialogue with the C-Suite have paid off . Senior leadership understands how important business collab-oration is today in increasing revenue, spur-ring innovation, and successfully completing the organization’s most important objectives.

Of course, with great opportunity come great challenges. Great expectations accom-pany the gaze of a company’s top executives (see “Th e Spotlight Intensifi es” on page 28), and although alliances are recognized for their strategic value, there is still work to do in demonstrating the role alliance manage-ment professionals play in attaining it. We as professionals need to constantly explore our partner base and assess where our al-lies can add revenue, fi ll product gaps, and help expand into new markets. We have to keep an eye on trends in our own industry so that we can search for new partners that can help achieve our goals in this ever-shift ing business landscape. All the while, we must proactively walk C-Suite executives through how each current and prospective alliance fi ts into the overall context of the company’s alliance portfolio and broader company

strategy. In short, to realize the possibilities that await us in 2014, we have to leverage the intimate knowledge of our partners to bring unique and insightful business thinking.

Similarly, as we in alliance management continue to push ourselves closer to the center of the business world’s radar, ASAP will have a new but familiar leader, one who has previously led an alliance management practice and ASAP itself to success. Michael Leonetti, the man who pioneered and built out Boehringer Ingelheim’s alliance manage-ment practice, took the reins as ASAP’s CEO in November. Leonetti was at the forefront in establishing the dialogue with senior lead-ership last decade (see “A Place in the Con-versation,” Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q4 2012), and Boehringer Ingelheim was one of the business world’s fi rst alliance manage-ment success stories—the company added $3 billion–plus in annual sales of drugs as-sociated with its Pfi zer, Abbott, Eli Lilly and Company, and Astellas alliances under Le-onetti’s watch.

Meanwhile, he is also the perfect man to con-tinue to grow the ASAP community because he has already done it once. Leonetti raised

the bar for the association and the profession in his tenure as ASAP board chairman from 2006 to 2009. In that time, ASAP founded several signifi cant initiatives, including cer-tifi cation and the ASAP BioPharma Confer-ence. We saw a large increase in Individual, Corporate, and Global Membership, expand-ed our member base in several continents, and added fi ve new chapters. In addition, the organization itself became a more profes-sional operation, hiring a full-time staff and acquiring new offi ces.

ASAP and the alliance management pro-fession have taken an important leap once before under Leonetti’s direction. Now, col-lectively, we’re in a great position to make the next big jump this coming year. We welcome Mike on board as he takes the helm at ASAP, and as always, we invite your thoughts and feedback. n

Russ Buchanan is ASAP’s board chairman. He is also vice president of worldwide alli-ances at Xerox.

up front

Quarter 4, 2013

The magazine of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals

AN ASAP MEDIA PUBLICATION www.ASAPmedia.org

www.strategic-alliances.org

EDITORIAL TEAM Michael Leonetti,

Executive Publisher +1-781-562-1630 ext. 201

[email protected] W. DeWitt,

Publisher +1-978-544-1866

[email protected] Jon Lavietes,

Editorial Director +1-415-572-4408

[email protected] Burke, Editor-in-Chief

+1-413-665-4958 [email protected]

Greg Caulton, Creative Director +1-413-461-7096

[email protected] Lee,

Online Media Manager +1-978-544-1866

[email protected] Rolski,

Sponsorship Sales Director +1-978-544-1866

[email protected] Duga,

Sponsorship Coordinator +1-978-544-1866

[email protected] Bayard,

Image Researcher +1-413-461-7096

[email protected] Ruocco,

Graphic Designer +1-978-544-1866

[email protected]

ASAP STAFF Michael Leonetti,

President and CEO +1-781-562-1630 ext. 201

[email protected] Gold,

Director of Membership Services +1-781-562-1630 ext. 203

[email protected] Shannon, CA-AM, CMP

Senior Meeting & Event Manager +1-781-562-1630 ext. 204

[email protected] T. Miller,

Marketing Manager +1-781-562-1630 ext. 208

[email protected] Ward,

Administrative Support +1-781-562-1630 ext. 200

[email protected] Diane Lemkin,

Accounting Manager +1-781-562-1630 ext. 206

[email protected] Silver,

Certification Coordinator +1-781-562-1630 ext. 205

[email protected] Michele Yudysky,

Membership Coordinator +1-781-562-1630 ext. 209

[email protected]

© Copyright 2013 Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. All Rights Reserved.

18 n COVER STORY

Connecting the Dots That Can’t Yet Be SeenAlliance Managers Will Have to Reimagine Their Value Chains to Achieve the Next Breakthrough Innovation | By Jon Lavietes The pieces for the solution to your customer’s most vexing challenge are scattered about. Some are likely in your existing partner ecosystem. Some might be elsewhere, and others are as yet unforeseen. With a heavy dose of creativity, forward thinking, and business acumen, the alliance manager’s knowledge of the organization’s partner network puts him or her in a great position to conceive of the next great disrupter.

24 n SPECIAL FOCUS: BIOPHARMA

Comply or Die (or Just Pay Millions of Dollars in Fines)The Alliance Manager Can Play a Major Role in Preventing Costly Instances of Marketing Noncompliance

By Jon LavietesEnsuring marketing compliance in

commercial alliances is becoming more difficult and expensive with each passing

year. The already-confusing guidelines are getting more complex, and regulatory authorities are enforcing them

with more vigor and levying hefty fines more frequently than ever. The alliance manager can help the medical, marketing, and compliance teams

stay on the same page to avoid improprieties.

in this issue

Strategic Alliance Magazine

7Quarter 4, 2013

5 n UP FRONTAs the C-Suite Starts to Buy into Alliances, a New but Familiar ASAP CEO Will Help “Close the Deal” in 2014

11 n COLLABORATIVE BUZZAlliance News Briefs | People in the News ASAP & ASAP Partner Calendar of Events | ASAP Chapter Updates

Regular Features:15 n ASAP MEMBER SPOTLIGHTA Trust That Isn’t Manufactured CMO One 2 One’s Utilization of Alliance Management Principles Has Helped Build Long-Term Relationships with Clients By Jon Lavietes


Adventures in Biopharma FundingAwash in Biotech Start-ups, Venture Capital Investments, and Successful IPOs, Biopharma Is Evolving Before Our Eyes. And What Will Google’s Entry Mean for the Industry—and Immortality? | By Michael BurkeVenture capital funding of biotech start-ups, a wide-open IPO window, and Google’s momentous entry into the industry all add up to a changing landscape for biopharma. But what does it all mean, and where will alliance management fit in?

39 n GOVERNANCE DESIGN

Plan to SucceedHow a Business Plan Drives Continuous Improvement in Alliance Management | By Brent H. Harvey, CA-AM, David S. Thompson, CA-AM, and Steven E. Twait, CSAPA solid business planning process examines the strategic, operational, and financial aspects of your business, the results your alliance management group achieves, and how to continue to review, revise, and improve your methods. Sponsored by Eli Lilly & Co.


The Spotlight IntensifiesOpportunity for Biopharma Alliance Professionals Grows as Companies’ Strategic Focus Sharpens—and the Executive Suite Looks to Alliance Management to Deliver | By Jan Twombly, CSAP, and Jeff Shuman, CSAP, Ph.D.An update on the 2012 Practice of Alliance Management in the Biopharmaceutical Industry Study conducted by The Rhythm of Business finds an intensified focus on alliance management performance in the industry as a whole. The study results show an expansion of alliance management activities in smaller companies, and opportunities for alliance professionals in new corners within industry giants—and with new types of partners.

Quarter 4, 2013

The magazine of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals

8 Strategic Alliance Magazine

ASAP EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Russ Buchanan, CSAP ASAP Chairman of the Board

Vice President, Worldwide Alliances, Xerox Corp.

Harry Atkins, CSAP ASAP Treasurer

Senior Director, Corporate Development, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Inc.

Brian Handley, CA-AM ASAP Secretary

Business Development, Emerson Corp.

Christine Carberry, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Knowledge Base &

Research Committee Vice President, Program & Alliance

Management, EnVivo Pharmaceuticals

Snehal Desai, CA-AM Chairman, ASAP Marketing Committee

Global Marketing Director, The Dow Chemical Company

Grif Morrel, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Chapter Presidents’ Council Senior Manager, Sales Business Development

and Operations, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Alistair Pim, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Professional

Development Committee Vice President, Global Strategic Alliances,

Schneider Electric

Jan Twombly, CSAP Chairman, ASAP Program Committee President, The Rhythm of Business, Inc.

Strategic Alliance Magazine is published quarterly. Publisher is The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, 960 Turnpike Street, Canton, MA 02021, +1-781-562-1630. Sub-scriptions are $99 for one year, $189 for two years. Canadian subscriptions are $149 per year. All other international sub-scriptions are $199 (using air mail). Subscription inquiries: +1-781-562-1630. Periodicals postage is paid in Chicopee, MA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE, 960 Turnpike Street, Canton, MA 02021. Copyright 2013, The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy-ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permis-sion of the publisher. For reprints, please contact The Associa-tion of Strategic Alliance Professionals at +1-781-562-1630.

54 n THE CLOSE

A New PerspectiveOur Association and Alliance Initiatives Are Doing More Than Simply Helping Our Careers and Company Alliances | By Jack Pearson, CSAP Alliance management professionals are all about helping companies achieve their most important strategic alliance objectives. A recent stint as acting CEO has helped ASAP’s vice chairman see the link between the things members accomplish with ASAP and the impact it makes on the greater business landscape.

51 n ALLIANCE CHAMPION

Leading from the Center Andy Eibling Brings Years of Big Pharma Experience to Bear on Formalizing the Alliance Management Practice at CRO Covance | By Michael BurkeThis issue’s Alliance Champion, Andy Eibling, brought his years of experience at alliance management and Big Pharma pioneer Eli Lilly and Company to his current role at CRO Covance, where he and his colleagues are taking the discipline to the next level.

46 nYOUR CAREER

A Ray of OpportunityIt’s Not a Role for Beginners, but for Seasoned, Highly Networked Alliance Pros, the Sun Is Shining By Michael Burke It is hard to break into the alliance management field without exper-tise specific to your industry, and oftentimes your company, too. But for those whose feet are already wet, opportunities could be arising soon. Here are some of the skills professional recruiters and longtime alliance management veterans are looking for in candidates.

in this issue

For more information on Vantage Partners contact us at: + 1 617 354 6090 | [email protected]

Vantage Partners is the world’s leader in helping companies achieve breakthrough business results by transforming the way they negotiate and manage relationships with key business partners.

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The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management: A Practitioner’s Guide, 3rd edition, is the only compendium of alliance management practices, principles, and current professional standards that puts all the information you need in one unique, indispensable resource. This new publication provides:n An unequaled body of knowledge for alliance

professionals at every leveln A substantive update and revision of

previous editionsn All-new material, including a new section on emerging

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For your career, your alliances, and your company’s alliance management practice, you can’t afford to be without The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management: A Practitioner’s Guide.

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!$299.99 for nonmembers. Up to 60% discount for ASAP Members.For more information or to order, go to strategic-alliances.org/handbook.

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Tel: +1-781-562-1630strategic-alliances.org

[email protected]

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11Quarter 4, 2013

Xerox partnered with Kentucky gov-ernor Steve Beshear and his admin-istration to operate a contact center to support Kentucky’s Health Benefit Exchange, known as kynect. The kynect contact center opened in Lexington on August 15, with more than 60 profes-sional customer care representatives using state-of-the-art technology to answer questions about Kentucky’s new health insurance marketplace, assist citizens in navigating the online ap-plication process, and, for those without Internet access, even to help complete and file applications. Representatives are available via phone, live online chat, and email. The contact center was expected to have more than 100 representatives on staff in time for the start of open enrollment on Oct. 1.Close collaboration was required between Xerox and the Commonwealth of Kentucky to complete all the techni-cal preparations to ensure that state residents receive efficient and speedy service from the most appropriate infor-mation source by ensuring the optimal connection with the appropriate govern-ment agencies. Meanwhile, the State of Nevada built its own health exchange with the help of Xerox, whose system expertise it tapped through a five-year, $71 million deal. The Nevada exchange features a number of moving parts, all of which had to

be built from scratch, including a Web site, call center, back office, Xerox data centers in Texas and Pennsylvania, and links to the federal data services hub that connects to federal agencies. As of Oct. 1, the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange is helping Nevada residents to view insurance plans from various providers, compare rates, calcu-late premiums, and purchase policies—and get help via a live chat function or over the phone if they encounter any difficulties in the process. Building these state sites has been an unprecedented effort for the states themselves and for Xerox, with many different pieces and considerations, from structural components of the sys-tems involved to changing policy inter-pretations and rulings as the exchanges prepared to go live—all on a tight timeline and in anticipation of a rush of participation in the first days and weeks after implementation. As Kevin Walsh, senior vice president for eligibility and exchange services at Xerox, noted, “It’s the type of project that should normally take between three and five years.”The nationwide build-out of health care insurance exchanges mandated by the Affordable Care Act represents one of the largest information technology initiatives in U.S. history. The scope of the projects, and the complexity of the

law itself, presents numerous hurdles for state officials and the contractors hired to construct and run the exchanges.“Everyone is wearing six hats, and no one is getting a lot of sleep right now,” said John Hager, executive director of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange.Nevada employed face-to-face meetings, public comment sessions, online infor-mation programs, and other means to ensure that all parties with a stake in the exchange were updated on its progress and informed about what to expect. “You can’t communicate enough,” said Hager. “We brought everyone to the table to make the policy decisions on how the exchange should be created and what we are doing.”

ASAP NewsRegistration Now Open for ASAP Global SummitRegistration for the 2014 ASAP Global Alliance Summit is now open. From March 9 to 13, 2014, the desert will bloom as hundreds of alliance manage-ment professionals and luminaries from all over the world descend on the Phoenix area to convene at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for this annual must-attend event, by far the world’s largest annual gathering of

Xerox Helps State Health Exchanges Get Up and Running

By Michael Burke

ASAP GLOBAL MEMBER XEROX has been helping states implement the Affordable Care Act by partnering with them to make their health insurance exchanges operational. So far, the company has worked with Kentucky and Nevada to get their exchanges up and running, and offers packaged solutions for other states looking to provide better access to health care.

Collaborative Buzz


leading companies and practitioners in alliance management.As always, the 2014 Summit will feature top-notch programming covering strat-egy and execution, the latest theory and best practice, state-of-the-art alliance management tools, and every phase of the alliance life cycle; world-class net-working with some of the profession’s outstanding thought leaders, as well as your current and prospective partners; and professional development opportu-nities, including certification workshops and hands-on skill-building sessions. In addition, new features are being de-signed and added day by day to ensure that even alliance management veterans will gain fresh insights. Alliances and collaborations are everywhere, and those who are “walking the talk” will be carrying the torch and holding the talk-ing stick in March. To register for the Summit or for more information, go to www.strategic-alli-ances.org/summit.

ASAP and ASAP Partner Events2013 ASAP BioPharma ConferenceWednesday, November 20 – Friday, November 22, 2013, Hyatt Regency Bos-ton, One Avenue De Lafayette, Boston, Mass., USA (go to www.strategic-allianc-es.org/biopharma for more information and to register)

DC/MidAtlantic Chapter Event: “‘They Said WHAT??’: How to (Re)Build Trust and Respect with Alliance Partners”Wednesday, November 20, 2013, 7:30–9:30 a.m., Microsoft, 5404 Wisconsin Ave., Conference Room #7023, Chevy Chase, Md., USA (go to www.strategic-

alliances.org for more information and to register)

BeNeLux Chapter Event: “Eco System: Multi Party Alliance vs. Single Alliance Structures”Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 4:00–7:30 p.m., Royal Philips Electronics, Breitner Tower, Amstelplein 2, 1096 BC Am-sterdam, The Netherlands (go to www.strategic-alliances.org for more informa-tion and to register)

2014 ASAP Global Alliance SummitSunday, March 9 – Thursday, March 13, 2014, Talking Stick Resort, 9800 E. Indian Bend Rd., Scottsdale, Ariz., USA (check www.strategic-alliances.org/sum-mit for more information and to register)

Alliance NewsSo It Doesn’t Stink—But Is It See-Through? Lululemon and Noble Biomaterials Stretch Fabric AllianceLululemon Athletica Inc. has an-nounced a strategic global alliance for the material X-STATIC with Noble Biomaterials. The partnership gives Lululemon exclusivity to use Noble’s X-STATIC antimicrobial technology in its performance apparel, which the com-pany said will “secure our leadership position in ‘anti-stink’ athletic apparel.”Noble has been a long-standing partner of Lululemon, providing its X-STATIC technology for the company’s Silveres-cent fabric since 2005. Made with 99.9 percent pure metallic silver, X-STATIC is designed to provide permanent odor protection by naturally inhibiting the growth of bacteria on the surface of fabrics. The silver fiber is woven directly into the garment and will not wash out over time through laundering. Thus if any clouds appear on the horizon in this alliance, it’s safe to say they’ll have a silver lining.

Clouds United: Salesforce and Workday Partnership Sails AloftASAP Corporate Member Salesforce.com and Workday recently announced plans to integrate the entire Salesforce and Workday product lines to enable their customers’ mutual success.Salesforce.com plans to standardize on Workday’s applications, and Workday plans to standardize on Salesforce.com’s applications and platform, integrating Salesforce with Workday Human Capi-tal Management (HCM), Workday Fi-nancial Management, and Workday Big Data Analytics. Additionally, Salesforce.com intends to integrate Workday into its applications and platform, includ-ing Salesforce Chatter for collaboration throughout the enterprise.“It’s a great day for the cloud!” exulted Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce. “Aneel [Bhusri, chairman and co-CEO of Workday] and I both agree that Salesforce.com and Workday need to unite our clouds.”

BMG and Primary Wave Hold Hands, Seek Music NirvanaGerman media company Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA announced in Septem-ber that its music rights management subsidiary BMG had entered a joint venture with Primary Wave Music that will focus on the new music of established musicians, according to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other sources.As part of the agreement, U.S. music publishing and marketing company Primary Wave will be responsible for marketing newly released titles, while BMG buys a substantial stake in Pri-mary Wave’s music publishing rights. Bertelsmann put the total value of the partnership at around $150 million but released no other financial details.The purchase of some of Primary Wave’s music publishing rights gives BMG a portion of the rights to such

Collaborative Buzz

13Quarter 4, 2013

classic hits as “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire, and the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” as well as songs by Hall & Oates, Nirvana, and Aero-smith. BMG announced in June that it would begin representing the publish-ing interests of rock gods such as the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.Bertelsmann established BMG in partnership with financial investor Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. in 2008, having sold most of its existing music assets to Sony and Universal. Earlier this year, the German company bought out KKR’s stake.Primary Wave, based in New York, started in 2006 when the company paid $50 million for half the publish-ing rights of Kurt Cobain, the late lead singer of Nirvana. The company has expanded into artist management, branding, and television. Among its most successful acts is the singer CeeLo Green. Primary Wave will retain some publishing assets, including the Def Leppard catalog, along with its manage-ment company, according to a report in Billboard.

Renault-Nissan and Daimler Alliance Rolls OnThe chief executives of the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler AG report that their companies’ partnership is advancing quickly, and the scope of the collaboration is increasingly global.The French-Japanese-German partner-ship began in April 2010, with three “pillar projects” primarily focused on Europe. Since then, the portfolio has increased to 10 significant projects, including major initiatives from North America to Japan. In addition, relevant business units are working together in best-practice sharing and other forms of cooperation.“While our initial collaboration focused strongly on European projects, we are now focusing on synergies in all key markets,” Renault-Nissan chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn said at an annual

media briefing on the partnership in mid-September. “The largest economies of scale are always global.”“We will continue to seek out new projects together that make sense for all partners and, most importantly, our customers,” Daimler CEO and head of Mercedes-Benz Dieter Zetsche said.The CEOs cited the joint production of Mercedes-Benz four-cylinder gaso-line engines in Decherd, Tenn., as one example of how the partners profit from the cooperation. Just one and a half years after the groundbreaking in May 2012, production machinery is now being installed and the start of production is planned for mid-2014. The engines produced in Decherd will then be used in the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, which is produced at the Daimler plant in Tusca-loosa, Ala., and in new Infiniti products.Joint development work is also proceed-ing on schedule for a new family of shared three- and four-cylinder gasoline engines with turbocharging and direct fuel injection. Another outgrowth of the alliance is the new Infiniti Q50, which was presented in Geneva in the spring and will be available this fall. It is the first Infiniti automobile to have a power train comprising a diesel engine and auto-matic transmission from the cooperation with Daimler. The first vehicles resulting from the collaboration, including the Mercedes-Benz Citan van, are already on the road.

Bayer Takes a Broad ViewASAP Corporate Member Bayer Health-Care, a subgroup of Bayer AG, has entered into a strategic alliance with the Cambridge, Mass.–based Broad Institute in the area of oncogenomics and drug discovery, according to PharmaBiz.com. The goal of this collaboration is to jointly discover and develop therapeutic agents that selectively target cancer genome alterations over a period of five years. (Oncogenomics is a promising field of oncology research that identifies and characterizes genes that are associated with cancer.)

The Broad Institute is a nonprofit biomedical research institute that brings together scientists from Harvard, MIT, and the Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and has expertise in genomics, cancer, chemical biology, and drug discovery.“We are excited to collaborate with such a prestigious research institute as the Broad Institute,” said Prof. Andreas Busch, head of global drug discovery and member of the executive commit-tee of Bayer HealthCare. “The Broad

Institute’s scientists have created impres-sive systematic catalogs of mutational changes across different types of tumors, laying a foundation for the development of new cancer therapies and diagnostics. The alliance is another significant step underlining our engagement in the field of oncology and personalized medicine.”

Tighter Abs: AbbVie and Ablynx to Partner on Rheumatoid ArthritisASAP Global Member AbbVie and the Belgian company Ablynx announced that they have entered into a global license agreement to develop and com-mercialize the anti-IL-6R nanobody ALX-0061 to treat inflammatory dis-eases. ALX-0061 is Ablynx’s proprietary anti-IL-6R nanobody that successfully completed a Phase IIa study in February 2013 reporting strong efficacy and safety data in patients with moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis (RA) on a stable background of methotrexate. Speculation in some industry publica-tions has this approach possibly succeed-ing AbbVie’s successful drug Humira one day as an RA treatment. Under the terms of the agreement, Ablynx will be responsible for complet-ing Phase II clinical development in

BMG announced that it would begin representing the publishing interests of rock gods such as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Strategic Alliance Magazine14

both RA and systemic lupus erythema-tosus (SLE). Upon the achievement of predefined success criteria, AbbVie will exercise its right to in-license ALX-0061 and be responsible for subsequent Phase III clinical development and commer-cialization. Ablynx will retain an option for copromotion rights in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Ablynx will receive an up-front payment of $175 million, which will partly be used to fund the next phases of clinical development of ALX-0061. Upon achievement of certain development, regulatory, commercial, and sales-based milestones, Ablynx will be eligible to receive additional milestone payments totaling up to $665 million as well as double-digit tiered royalties on net sales upon commercialization.

Print It, Baby: Heavy Hitters Launch Mobile Print AllianceCanon, Samsung Electronics, ASAP Corporate Member HP, and ASAP Global Member Xerox have launched the Mopria Alliance, a global nonprofit membership organization formed to promote, simplify, and increase ac-cessibility of wireless printing from smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The Mopria Alliance aims to bring together the mobile, software, and print industries with the goal of aligning to standards that make printing univer-sally compatible from any mobile device to any printer anywhere. By the end of 2013, it’s estimated that the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth, changing the way people do everything from capturing memories to managing work on the go. Currently, 40 percent of employees use their own smart phones in the workplace, and in the next three years, the number is expected to increase to 56 percent. While the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend has become second nature for many employees and businesses, printing from mobile devices has not. The Mopria Alliance aims to ensure that this need is met with simple,

ubiquitous wireless print capability across software, mobile, and print devices.“The Mopria Alliance is all about simplicity. If a person is at home, in the office, or traveling on the road, they want a simple, secure mobile printing experience. The Alliance embodies the freedom to print from anywhere from any device. It’s that simple,” said Karl Dueland, vice president of the solu-tions delivery unit at Xerox.The Mopria standards will be available soon. Members of the alliance will begin incorporating the standard in their prod-ucts in the coming months. Companies interested in joining the Mopria Alliance can find more information at www.mopria.org/membership.

Third Time’s a Charm: Tata Takes Off with Singapore Airlines AllianceEighteen years after a first failed attempt, Tata Group has again joined hands with Singapore Airlines to start a new full-service airline in India, according to The Economic Times. Tata Sons, the holding company of most of the operating firms of the $100 billion–plus conglomerate Tata Group, signed an MoU with Singapore Airlines in September under which it will own a 51 percent stake in the proposed carrier. The rest will be with Singapore Airlines. The group, which had in February an-nounced a partnership with Malaysia’s Air Asia for a low-cost carrier in India, said it has applied for approval from India’s Foreign Investment Promo-tion Board (FIPB) to establish the new airline, which will be based in New Delhi. This is the third attempt by the two partners to enter the Indian civil aviation sector, with the previous tries coming in 1995 and 2000.

Big Pharma Players Join JPMorgan and Gates Foundation in Vaccine Investment FundJPMorgan Chase and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have set up a Big

Pharma–backed vaccine investment fund, and ASAP Corporate Members GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Pfizer are among the first investors in the fund, which will back late-stage develop-ment of technologies to fight disease in low-income countries. Having raised $94 million from its initial investors, the Global Health Investment Fund (GHIF) will now begin the process of aiding vac-cines in navigating Phase III trials.The fund will, for the first time, allow individual and institutional investors the opportunity to finance late-stage global health technologies that have the potential to save millions of lives in low-income countries by advancing the most promising interventions for fighting malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and maternal and infant mortality, among other conditions. “We invest in global health because we know that when health improves, life improves by every measure,” said Bill Gates, cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Private sector financing for global health research and development is more im-portant than ever. Philanthropy, govern-ment funding, and pharma industry sup-port have built a pipeline of global health innovations, but late-stage clinical trials are costly and development expenses are outpacing charitable support. Traditional investment capital can play a meaningful role in solving this problem, particularly when it is supplied by investors who in-clude the expected social impact of their activities in their return calculations.

England Swings: Johnson & Johnson Trumpets Multiple U.K. CollaborationsJohnson & Johnson Innovation an-nounced several new collaborations in the European region to coincide with a “Celebration of Life Science Innova-tion” event, hosted in October by its London Innovation Centre. The

Continued on page 44

Collaborative Buzz

A global CMO, serving the biopharma industry for more than 25 years

15 of the top 20 biopharma companies in its customer base

Produces more than 50 drug products for commercial sale, of which 18 are complex large molecules (i.e., biologics)

Acquired more than 30 new partners over the past fi ve years, from virtual biotechs to large pharma companies

One 2 One in a Flash

Quarter 4, 2013 15

CMO One 2 One’s Utilization of Alliance Management Principles Has Helped Build

Long-Term Relationships with Clients By Jon Lavietes

FOR TODAY’S AVERAGE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY, there is more incentive to work very closely with contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) than ever. Costly high-profi le manufacturing failures litter the pharmaceutical industry’s past. A few years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recalled the anticoagulant Hepa-rin aft er several deaths were linked to contaminated batches produced in China.

On the other end of the spectrum, more than a decade ago Amgen and Wyeth’s blockbuster arthritis drug Enbrel represented a major potential cash cow. Unfortunately, they failed to capitalize fully on their market opportunity because they couldn’t ramp up their manufacturing capabilities to meet the overwhelming initial demand for the drug. But even without a large-scale disaster, it simply costs too much time, money, and resources to switch to a diff erent CMO if you don’t like your fi rst choice for any reason. So it pays to get this kind of partnering right the fi rst time.

For One 2 One, a global CMO with operations on every conti-nent and a business unit of specialty pharmaceutical company Hospira, the feeling is mutual. Th e company applies alliance management principles directly to many of its customer relation-ships, and insists on maintaining a close collaboration wherever a client is willing.

“If you’re not close with your cus-tomer, you’re putting yourself in a major high-risk situation for some products that make amazing mon-ey for these companies, or are the only therapy available for certain patient populations,” said David Powell, director of business devel-opment at One 2 One.

Building a Pharma “Safe House”How does alliance management

play out in a CMO–pharmaceutical company agreement? Powell (pictured above) and his colleague Mark Ward, alliance manager at One 2 One, tell the story of two separate occurrences where cli-ents that received severe regulatory sanctions from the FDA for operations at plants it deemed to be in noncompliance transferred a multitude of manufacturing activities related to the sites in ques-tion to One 2 One. Where no one would have blamed the CMO for keeping a distance from the situation, the company actually worked hand-in-hand with its clients to come up with solutions that would be submitted to the regulatory agency—and even went as far as to voluntarily include its name and manufacturing pro-cesses in all of the paperwork that got delivered to the FDA.

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Mark Ward, alliance manager at One 2 One.

“Some CMOs would say, ‘You know what? It’s time to get out of this relationship. You got into big trouble. You’re going to have so many problems [for a long time]. We’re just going to go and move on our way,’” said Ward. “For us, it was just the opposite. We saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate a partnership and willingness to get in there with them.”

Suddenly, One 2 One saw the two respective client product port-folios increase significantly. In order to rectify the situation in the FDA’s eyes, One 2 One ultimately had to port drugs from the customers’ troubled plants to the CMO’s facilities. With an increased commitment to the relationship from each partner and significantly more at stake for the alliances as a whole, One 2 One and its partners had to adjust its application of alliance management tools and methodologies accordingly. The gover-nance committees now had to connect executives at the highest levels. Metrics were revised to measure the alliance’s success in transferring the clients’ products to One 2 One’s site and shut-ting down the clients’ problem manufacturing sites within an aggressive timeframe. For example, the FDA required monthly reports validating the transfer of technology to the new manu-facturing site and verifying that this new plant could produce the same product as the old facility. Both partners tracked internally whether the required information was being delivered to the FDA accurately and on time—“in a very absolute, regimented fashion,” according to Ward.

Ultimately, One 2 One helped its clients reduce a process that normally takes two or three years down to 12 to 18 months. With an FDA-approved site up and running, One 2 One’s business with the clients increased dramatically after the CMO helped them minimize and/or avoid harsh federal financial penalties.

“The company saw us as an outlet to really solve even more of their problems. Anything they felt was possibly at risk internally they began to move to us,” said Ward. “We became kind of a safe house, so to speak.”

The benefits of executing a high-risk/high-reward initiative of this type extend far beyond increased business from the client.

“It changes the whole dynamic of how that company views you. We have had incredible CEO visibility. [We were looked] at as saviors to some degree in terms of product supply to their patients in very, very drastic times,” added Ward.

A Long History of Using an Alliance ApproachPowell concedes that implementing an alliance management approach to customer relationships is hardly novel for CMOs today.

“Now I think [alliance management] is more commonplace,” he said. “It’s not like we’re standing out.”

But by most accounts this was not the case back in 2004, when a convergence of several factors led the company to decide to apply the alliance approach to its business. That year, Abbott Laboratories spun off Ho-spira as a company. Hospira was responsible for Abbott’s “fill finish” products—in-jectable drugs administered by syringe or other means. Suddenly, what was once a smaller unit of a big company was now its own entity, and the spinoff came with tremendous reve-nue growth expectations from new investors. For the first time in its history, One 2 One had to separate its existing customer man-agement and new business functions. It concluded that alliance management could facilitate this transition for several reasons.

First, customer-centricity was in its DNA. Compared with oth-er CMOs at the time, Hospira’s drug delivery origins required a much closer collaboration with pharmaceutical and biotech companies in delivering Abbott’s remedies. After all, before it was renamed One 2 One, the unit was called Abbott Pharmaceutical Partnerships. Second, around the time of the spinoff, One 2 One became aware of Eli Lilly’s alliance management approach with its drug development partners and was impressed with Lilly’s use of tools, one of which was the alliance health check, identifying with its emphasis on intangibles and soft metrics.

Alliance Management Tools Fully Entrenched An ASAP Corporate Member since 2008, One 2 One has deeply integrated the tools and practices common in the ASAP community into its operations for some time. The com-pany’s core metrics include:n Governance structure – Have we collaboratively installed an

oversight framework appropriate for the relationship? n Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API)/Bulk Drug Yield

– Are processes yielding the highest percentage of final product per batch?

n Cycle time – How long does it take to receive the bulk drug and convert it into a commercially released product?

n Quality performance – Are the company’s quality systems ahead of regulatory agency standards and industry norms? Are potential noncompliance issues being documented and properly investigated? Are issues with batches resolved timely and successfully?

n Adherence to schedule – Are both the company andContinued on page 45

Quarter 4, 2013 17

Now It’s Easier Than Ever to Demonstrate Your Leadership

THE POTENTIAL FOR monumental game-changing innovation—and disrup-tion—is everywhere. It will eventually come in a blur, and you will either be driv-ing it or getting bowled over by it. No industry will be spared.

18 Strategic Alliance Magazine18 Strategic Alliance Magazine

Connecting the Dots That Can’t Yet

Be Seen

Alliance Managers Will Have to Reimagine Their

Value Chains to Achieve the Next Breakthrough Innovation By Jon Lavietes

You are reading the Limited Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine, the magazine of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

The printed magazine is mailed free to all ASAP members and Sponsors and is also available

as a paid subscription.

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19Quarter 4, 2013Quarter 4, 2013






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21Quarter 4, 2013

Get the Professional Recognition You Deserve!

Earn Certification Points for Your Company’s Alliance Management Training!

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training – or taking courses provided by your

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23Quarter 4, 2013


Comply or Die (or Just Pay

Millions in Fines)The Alliance Manager Can Play a

Major Role in Preventing Costly Instances of Marketing Noncompliance

By Jon Lavietes

25Quarter 4, 2013

STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | SPECIAL FOCUS | BIOPHARMA






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The Spotlight Intensifies

Opportunity for Biopharma Alliance Professionals Grows as Companies’

Strategic Focus Sharpens— and the Executive Suite Looks to Alliance

Management to DeliverBy Jan Twombly, CSAP, and

Jeff Shuman, CSAP, Ph.D.

WHEN THE RHYTHM OF BUSINESS PRESENTED the results of its 2012 Practice of Alliance Management in the Biopharmaceutical Industry Study at the ASAP Biopharma Conference last year, the overarching conclusion we shared was that the performance of alliance managers is now in the spotlight—and it’s executive leadership that constitutes the principal audience.

Quarter 4, 2013 29

STR ATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE | S P E C I A L F O C U S | BIOPHARMA






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31Quarter 4, 2013



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Learn more about Partner Listening Tours at rhythmofbusiness.com/partner-listening-tours.

You are reading the Limited Edition ofStrategic Alliance Magazine, the magazine of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

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For Membership and Sponsor informationemail [email protected]

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35Quarter 4, 2013


You are reading the Limited Edition ofStrategic Alliance Magazine, the magazine of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.

Th e printed magazine is mailed free to allASAP members and Sponsors and is also available


Th e complete PDF is available to members by logging in to www.strategic-alliances.org

For Membership and Sponsor informationemail [email protected]

or call +1-781-562-1630 ext. 200


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E D I T O R I A L S U P P L E M E N T


By Brent H. Harvey, CA-AM, David S. Thompson, CA-AM, and Steven E. Twait, CSAP

As alliance professionals, one of our primary roles is to help clients structure and manage all elements of a partnership

with the aim of achieving a long-term goal. We work hard to establish an alliance vision, define each partner’s roles and

responsibilities, and create a plan to manage contractual obligations. We then review and revise the plan during the

course of the alliance’s life cycle.

39Quarter 4, 2013

So while it’s clear that we have the process well in hand for our clients, how often do we apply that same rigor to our own alliance management organizations? It would seem that when it comes to business planning, just as in other areas of life, it is often inadvertently a case of “Do as I say, not as I do!”

This inconsistency is understandable for a variety of reasons. Generating a business plan is time consuming, and it can easily pull you away from what seems to be an ever-expanding list of daily alliance management tasks. There’s also the question of relevance: by the time you finish writing the plan, it’s obsolete, right?

While avoiding business planning is easy, commit-ting to a rigorous planning process can prove extremely beneficial. In many ways, creating a comprehensive business plan is like embarking on a sustainable fitness program—both require dedication over the long haul, not just a few weeks. You may decide to exercise and eat right to address a current health problem or to prevent future is-sues, and you may not see immediate results—and might even want to quit!—at different points along the way. But if you set realistic goals, review your progress regularly, and make necessary adjustments, you will achieve the desired outcome. The same is true of business planning: if you construct a logical framework and stick to your process, you will almost certainly improve the effectiveness of your alliance management organization.

In this article, we describe why and how our alliance management team approaches the business planning process to address the strategic, operational, and financial aspects of our business, the results we have achieved, and how we continue to review, revise, and improve our methods. Our hope is that this information might prove useful as you look to improve the effectiveness of your own group and better serve your clients.

Plan to ThriveLet’s start with the “why” that first prompted our plan-ning efforts. While our company has had a long history of commercial collaborations and a passion for alliance management work, several years ago we made a con-scious choice to enhance and expand our internal practice. To set ourselves up for long-term success, we decided to operate our alliance management organization like a boutique consulting firm within a large corporation, with a

clear focus on delivering value to clients. Our mindset was one of a for-profit entity that could clearly demonstrate its worth. We also knew that to compete effectively for inter-nal resources, we needed to demonstrate our contribu-tions more vividly and consistently to our clients. To ensure the viability of our vision, to organize our thinking, and to help secure and assign resources, we set out to develop a business plan.

We were—and remain—excited about striving to run our alliance management group in a professional, client-focused way. We have derived a sense of empowerment from this partner-centric model, and that in turn has served as a strong impetus to our business planning process. As we embarked on our journey, we sought to address four strategic questions:1. Who are alliance management’s key clients and what

do they want from an alliance manager?2. What needs to be done and what needs to be

avoided to build a successful alliance management organization?

3. What metrics must be developed to foster successful alliance management behaviors?

4. How do we effectively prioritize the many competing activities facing an alliance manager?With these central questions as a base, we began

the process of articulating a crisp vision, strategy, and action plan for our alliance management firm to ensure that we would deliver consistent, measurable benefits to our clients.

Take a Sustainable ApproachNow let’s examine how we went about developing the business plan. To start, we wanted the “principals” of our firm to play an integral role in the process, and fortunately we had a core team of professionals who shared a deep commitment to the practice and were proponents of a client-focused alliance management concept. This core team, which comprised our chief alliance officer and several seasoned alliance managers from diverse back-grounds, began mapping out the process.

At the outset, the team had to decide on an approach to plan development. We realized that you can take many approaches: completely outsource the work to a consult-ing firm, hire an expert for advice, or develop it in-house. Given our motivation and sense of urgency, we chose to


40 Strategic Alliance Magazine40

develop our plan in-house using a template from SCORE (originally Service Corps of Retired Executives, but now known as Counselors to America’s Small Business), a non-profi t association dedicated to “helping small businesses…grow and achieve their goals through education and mentorship” (see www.score.org). The small business focus aligned nicely with our boutique consulting fi rm approach, and the group’s site provided a practical template that was easy to use, enabling us to focus our eff orts on content creation.

Using the SCORE template as a framework, we decided to structure our plan in these sections:i. Executive summaryii. General fi rm overviewiii. Integrated products/servicesiv. Environmental overviewv. Operational planvi. Leadership team and organizational structurevii. Financial planviii. Client action planix. Accountability metrics

To create a fi rst draft, each member of the core team took the lead in authoring two or three sections, with indi-viduals covering their specifi c areas of expertise whenever possible. As anyone who has been tasked with writing a plan can confi rm, putting ideas on paper was no easy duty. It forced us to be articulate and concise. We also spent signifi cant time on integration and fl ow because there were multiple authors, but after several months and many review cycles, we were able to develop a plan we felt good about.

At that point, we took the opportunity to “pressure test” the plan with select colleagues outside alliance manage-ment. This step provided valuable, objective perspectives and insights. After weighing and incorporating the feed-back into our document, we began putting our plan into practice. Knowing that we wanted to keep our plan vital and relevant, we built in an iterative four-step process of “plan, do, evaluate, revise.” To implement this process, we met—and continue to meet—regularly to ensure that the plan refl ects our current knowledge and to make certain we are on track in meeting our clients’ needs.

Focus on Clients, Continuous ImprovementFinally, let’s explore how our business plan has helped us improve our organization and better serve clients. The fi rst

benefi cial result of the process has been to instill in our group a deep understanding of what we are attempting to achieve and the behaviors we need to demonstrate to attain our objectives. Our original in-house planning approach relied extensively on extra eff ort by our team, and this work yielded powerful outcomes in terms of crystallizing concepts, strengthening the team, and building buy-in.

In addition, the process uncovered specifi c areas in which our alliance management group needed to improve. With our energies focused squarely on instilling and operat-ing within a boutique consulting fi rm mindset, we concen-trated on four objectives:1. Documenting our products and services to help

increase our entire department’s knowledge level and improve our ability to consistently deliver value.

2. Creating metrics that track the products we are sell-ing and services we are performing and highlight key upcoming alliance events.

3. Capturing value to document outcomes of complicated problems solved by alliance management, including alliance management’s role and the quantifi ed value.

4. Taking a more strategic approach to client interactions.To make sure our group understood the importance

of meeting these objectives, we increased communication throughout the entire department, and we addressed each issue as described below.

The fi rst revelation of our business plan research was that we needed to reduce the variability in how we man-aged alliances; that is, we wanted our clients to be neutral as to which alliance manager was assigned to their alliances, rather than having favorites. We strongly suspected that our clients preferred certain alliance managers based on their skill and consistency in delivering alliance services. We needed to reduce these variations without eliminating the creativity and individuality of each alliance manager.

To this end, we coined the phrase “binder project” to describe an initiative to prepare guidelines and procedures for the more than 30 products and services we highlighted in our business plan. These 30 items were considered core work for all alliance managers, so everyone in the alliance


41Quarter 4, 2013 41

management practice participated in the binder proj-ect. (Examples of products and services include alliance start-up, governance implementation, crisis management, strategic future, and 3-D fi t.) The online binder we created through this initiative, the OAM e-Binder, serves as a valu-able alliance management toolkit resource. Each product or service, as shown in the fi gure below, has a hyperlink to information such as guidelines, job aids, and examples.

Yet again, the benefi cial side eff ect of this process has been that the entire alliance management team is familiar with the most eff ective tools for dealing with alliance issues, having had the chance to discuss and compare notes with one another while developing the binder.

To address our second issue, we created online stan-dardized metrics to track the frequency of product and service use as well as key upcoming alliance events such as clinical results, regulatory submissions, product ap-provals, etc. The metrics provide information on what we have been doing and where we spend our time. These metrics are used as lagging indicators of success. (For

more information on metrics, refer to the article “Measur-ing Alliance Management” in Strategic Alliance Magazine, Q3 2011, http://www.lilly.com/pdf/SAM_q3_2011-Metrics.pdf.) The key events that we capture provide a forward-looking view, helping to ensure that alliance managers anticipate important milestones and initiate the appropriate conversations and meetings to prepare.

Our third objective was inspired by the discovery that our clients regarded our ability to solve complicated alliance problems as one of the most valued services we provide. Given the importance of this off ering, we set out to formally capture its value. As guiding principles in ac-complishing this, we aimed to be conservative in quantify-ing alliance management’s contribution and to obtain cli-ent leadership’s endorsement on this value. For example, if an alliance manager’s role on the team was that of basic team member, this most likely would translate to a low contribution or low portion of the total project value. On the other hand, if the alliance manager’s role was that of project leader—a more desirable role—this would



translate to a higher portion of the total project value. To this point, our calculable value has been derived primarily from leading projects that ultimately generate direct cost savings or revenue enhancements.

Finally, we saw an opportunity to take a more strategic approach to client interactions. We viewed the scope of this objective broadly, with our defi nition of “clients” including not only the leaders we interact with directly on the alliance, but also the leaders of the business units and functional areas in legal, fi nance, and human resources. We now make a concerted eff ort to provide high-level updates on our con-tributions, share critical events that we anticipate and should prepare for, and ask for feedback on how clients perceive our performance and the state of our relationship. To expand the professional development of our consulting staff , we also have been applying concepts from Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting to team-teach best practices.

Keep Moving ForwardEach year, our business plan has evolved as we systemati-cally follow the process of plan, do, evaluate, and revise. While the strategic and fi nancial components typically have minor updates, our operational component has evolved signifi cantly. As a result of what we have learned through the iterative planning process, we currently are moving forward in three new areas:1. Expanding our practice into new business areas: The skills

and experience alliance managers have in maximizing alliance value, managing risk, and leading governance are transferable. We have become actively engaged in collaboration projects with venture capital fi rms, and we have a seat at the table for important internal policy-set-ting discussions. We also have recently developed a new model to serve the growing number of country-focused alliances in emerging markets.

2. Expanding value-capture capabilities: After evaluating our experience in capturing value, we decided to expand our defi nition and then design means to calculate other ways we add value, such as when we streamline alliance activities and help avoid legal action by proactively resolving disputes.

3. Articulating alliance management’s value proposition: As we focus on building our alliance management brand, we feel it is important to have consistent mes-saging. Therefore, we developed a quick and easy way

to tell the story of what alliance management does. The elevator speech goes something like this: We manage three types of risk; business risk, human risk, and legal uncertainty. We have demonstrated that we manage these risks in a manner that helps drive value to our client and delivers multiples of return on investment to our company.From its earliest days when it was the project of a small

core team, the process of developing a comprehensive busi-ness plan has grown in importance and has set our entire alliance management department on a new trajectory. By implementing, evaluating, and adjusting our plan, we have continued to meaningfully evolve our practice to deliver greater value to our clients.

Brent H. Harvey, CA-AM, is director of alliance management at Eli Lilly and Company. With responsibility for alliance manage-ment for development, commercial, and manufacturing alliances, Brent leads teams focused on maximizing the value of partnered assets at each stage of the development cycle. He is also responsible for directing corporate due diligence for alliance management.Brent has played an integral role in some of the largest development and commercial alli-ances in the company’s history, including worldwide partnerships with Bristol Myers Squibb and Daiichi Sankyo. He is also the alliance manager on collaboration projects with venture capital fi rms. Prior to joining alliance management, Brent was the fi nan-cial controller on a complex worldwide partnership.Brent earned a Bachelor of Science degree in construction en-gineering at Purdue University and an MBA at Indiana Univer-sity’s Kelley School of Business. He also has a Certifi cation of Achievement – Alliance Management (CA-AM) and is a certifi ed management accountant (CMA). He can be reached at [email protected] or +1-317-655-0452. Steven E. Twait, CSAP, is senior director of alliance manage-ment and M&A integration at Eli Lilly and Company. He can be reached at [email protected], +1-317-276-5494.David S. Thompson, CA-AM, is chief alliance offi cer at Eli Lilly and Company and is a member of the ASAP board of directors. He can be reached at Th [email protected], +1- 317-277-8003.


43Quarter 4, 2013 43Quarter 4, 2013


Collaborative Buzz Cont. from page 14

event brought together U.K. life science leaders and scientists from Johnson & Johnson to celebrate promising advances and discuss novel collaboration models to deliver better health care solutions for patients around the world.U.K. science minister David Willetts said, “The U.K. has a long tradition in using collaboration and partnership to spark new ideas and develop new ad-vances in the life sciences. I am pleased that Johnson & Johnson [has] recognized that strength, and chosen London to be one of their world centers for innova-tion and collaboration.”The London Innovation Centre is one of Johnson & Johnson Innovation’s four regional hubs that focus on identifying and accelerating the most promising early-stage science that will advance the development of new health care solutions. The new collabora-tions across the European region include an alliance between Janssen Biotech, Inc., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (an ASAP Global Member), and Effimune, a biotech specializing in autoimmune disease treatments; Johnson & Johnson’s investment in Merus B.V., a private, venture-backed biopharma company based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, that is building a pipeline of single-cell derived human bispecific antibodies for cancer therapy; and research collaborations with various U.K. research institutes and centers focusing on vaccines.

Triple Bottom Line: Dow–Nature Conservancy Collaboration Gets AwardIn October, the Harvard Kennedy School presented the 2013 Roy Family Award for Environmental Part-nership to ASAP Corporate Member Dow Chemical Company and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) for their groundbreaking collaborative work to incorpo-rate the value of natural resources into the business bottom line, according to the Harvard Gazette.To celebrate the award, leaders of Dow and TNC took part in a panel discussion at Harvard Kennedy School to describe their development of tools and models to integrate the value of forests, watersheds, and biodiversity into more sustainable business and com-munity decisions. The panel, “Valuing Nature: Saving Ecosystems Is Good Business,” also detailed steps that other corporations and nongovernmental organiza-

tions (NGOs) can take to protect the earth’s natural resources as businesses continue to grow.The Dow-TNC union is an innovative collaboration to research the value of ecosystem services. Established in 2011, the five-year project combines the expertise of Dow, one of the world’s largest chemical manu-facturers, and TNC, the foremost global land and water conservation organization, to develop tools and models that incorporate the value of natural resources into business decisions.The collaboration recently completed its first pilot at Dow’s facility in Freeport, Tex., the company’s largest manufacturing facility; it is currently in the midst of the second pilot in Santa Vitória, Brazil. A major goal of this collaboration is to produce results and findings that are replicable and transferable to Dow’s other 135 sites. In addition, most of the methodologies, tools, and results will be shared publicly with the hope that other companies, NGOs, and governments can make use of them as well.

Hoosiers: Covance and Indiana University to Collaborate on Early Clinical ResearchASAP Global Member Covance Inc., a global drug development services company, and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, part of the Indiana University School of Medicine, have announced an agreement to collaborate in conducting early clinical trials for new medicines on behalf of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.This alliance provides a significant opportunity to bring more Phase I clinical research to Indiana, through the clinical research unit located within the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis and Covance’s clinical research unit located in Evansville. Phase I clinical research includes studies where investigational new drugs are administered to humans for the first time.Working together, the two organizations will conduct high-quality research in a safe and regulated environ-ment for sponsors who are looking to recruit both healthy volunteers and patients for early clinical studies.“The alliance with the Indiana CTSI will help us provide biopharmaceutical clients with quicker access to patients in a hospital setting that supports specialized care and monitoring,” said Rob Aspbury, vice president and general manager of global clinical pharmacology services at Covance. “With quicker access to patients, we can streamline the drug development process and bring im-portant new medications to patients who need them.” n

Collaborative Buzz

Quarter 4, 2013 45

Member Spotlight Continued from page 17

its partners’ processes occurring as they are sup-posed to? Are partners delivering APIs and the like on schedule, so One 2 One can fulfill its part of the operation on time?

One 2 One’s health checks, conducted on an annual basis by a third party to preserve anonymity, are mod-eled in large part after Lilly’s in that there is a heavy emphasis on the soft side of the relationship. In ef-forts to get a sense of whether each party is living up to the other’s standards, the health check specifically addresses elements such as customer service, trust, speed and accuracy of decision making, communica-tion, accountability, and resources allocated.

Speaking simultaneously about the aforementioned serious regulatory situations and alliance management principles in general, Ward said, “I don’t know if trust is considered a tool, but it’s an absolutely essential part of that kind of relationship.” He added, “When you’re in trouble, and you’re betting so big on someone, it has to be there.”

Customer Buy-In Is Essential— and It Doesn’t Come CheapAs Powell reflected on One 2 One’s journey over the course of nine years, two lessons learned came to mind. First, you cannot indiscriminately impose an alliance management approach on a client that is not going to reciprocate.

“It’s a two-way street. You can’t just say we are going to apply alliance principles to a customer that really has no interest, you have to have buy-in on both sides,” he ex-plained. “We learned early, it’s not for every customer, be you a large global pharma or a small biotech.”

Second, if your organization is strictly focused on short-term revenue, this might not be the approach for you.

“We learned it’s not the cheap route,” said Powell. “It

takes more time, more effort, more money to apply it. There is payback in the long term in terms of maintain-ing customers’ loyalty and satisfaction, but to monetize that [investment] it’s an outlay of time and resources.”

But both Powell and Ward make it clear that the payoff is well worth it over the long haul. By placing such a heavy investment up front into joint compliance procedures, executive-to-executive interactions, alliance manager peer relationships, and adaptations to the client’s pro-cesses, it is easier, quicker, and cheaper to acquire ad-ditional drugs from the customer thereafter.

“The next product they have that is similar, in their minds they know you. You’re there for the long term, both from a cost and a security-of-supply standpoint. They know what they’re getting into if they funnel that next product toward you,” said Ward.

He added that the repeat business dovetails nicely with an emerging trend in the alliance management community—pruning the supplier portfolio to rely on fewer partners.

“There’s more business in fewer locations [for the cli-ent]. It’s easier to manage one company than it is to manage five.”

Most important, Ward felt that the alliance-oriented approach put the company on a solid footing to han-dle adversities faced by the company and its custom-ers in the past, and positions it well to continue to do so in the future.

“[Alliance management principles don’t] guarantee a problem-free relationship,” he noted. “What it does is it provides you a framework to work through anything that comes up to where it is being approached in an un-biased fashion.”

After all, the client’s drugs can be manufactured, but its trust cannot. n

Troy J GautierManaging Director, Chief Alliance Officer+1 678 644 [email protected] www.alliancesprogress.com

Grow your revenues and your capabilities!International ecosystem developmentAlliances Progress is a professional services firm specialized in designing and running international alliance partnerships.


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47Quarter 4, 2013

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49Quarter 4, 2013






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Quarter 4, 2013

WHEN ANDY EIBLING ARRIVED at the contract research organization (CRO) Covance in January 2011, aft er almost a quarter century at Big Pharma player Eli Lilly and Company, he knew there would be a diff erence, but fi gured it would be modest.

Aft er all, in his more than 24 years at Lilly he estimated that he spent “half or more of that time working in alliance man-agement and business development,” and he was coming into Covance as a vice president of alliance management with re-sponsibility for its long-term strategic alliance with Lilly.

But Eibling was not wholly prepared for the magnitude of the shift in size and scope, or the change of perspective involved in coming into a CRO. “I knew there were going to be cultural changes moving from pharma, where you are generally the client or big partner working with small biotechs, to the service sec-tor, but I underestimated the impact,” he admitted. “I’ve spent a good portion of my last three years learning about the dynamics of this industry and Covance’s business model. Once I better un-derstood the challenges and opportunities facing CROs and the unique value proposition Covance could off er, I could then help scope out the direction we want to go, both in the partnerships we’re managing and as an organization.”

Eibling held a number of roles at Lilly beginning in the late 1980s, most involving business development or alliance management, and culminating in the position of director of business develop-ment from 2009 to 2011. He credits this background with pre-paring him for his current role at Covance, while noting that the companies’ respective positions on the biopharma playing fi eld are quite diff erent, and their mindsets refl ect this.

Changes in Attitude“Th e partnerships we engaged in at Lilly were of a codevelop-ment, comarketing nature,” he explained. “You’re working with a partner around one piece of innovation you’ve chosen to de-velop together or take to market together. Th ere is a feeling of shared risk and involvement, but it is limited to that specifi c compound or technology. In the CRO industry, Covance’s re-lationship with Lilly was groundbreaking in scale, scope, and the many points of shared risk. [We had] the acquisition of the plant site, the transfer of employees, and an enormous cultural and operational joining of the companies. It wasn’t about pro-viding transactional services over time for advantaged pricing.

“Still, there’s a perception by many in the biopharma industry that at the end of the day a CRO is just a service provider, a ven-dor. We’re seeing that mindset change and we’re actively trying to change it—it has to change. As pharma has gotten smaller, a lot of employees from pharma are now at CROs, so there’s a shift in intellectual capital. Twenty years ago, CROs were seen as good, though perhaps not as good as pharma in performing tasks phar-ma viewed as tactical and noncore. Now we’re viewed to be just as good [if not better given signifi cant outsourcing] at much of the transactional work, and an increasing amount of strategic activi-ties that were viewed as core to pharma have landed with us. We help design solutions that get a drug to market faster and more cheaply, a better-quality answer. We have to transform those re-

R E G U L A R F E A T U R E

championalliance

Andy Eibling Brings Years of Big Pharma Experience to Bear on Formalizing the Alliance

Management Practice at CRO CovanceBy Michael Burke

51

Leading from the CenterLeading from the Center

Strategic Alliance Magazine

lationships to where there is more of an element of collaboration—we’re really talking about solutions instead of ‘tell us what you want to do and we’ll do it.’ Innovation and opportunity still belong to the pharma company—we’re not going to change that. But if we can collaborate more effectively and openly and shed some of this vendor-client mentality, we can really drive better solutions to the marketplace.”

The Center Can Hold: Covance, Lilly, and Alliance ManagementThe rise of CROs has provided a golden opportunity to the likes of Covance, and to alliance professionals like Eibling. In particu-lar, the ability of CROs to handle the research aspects of the bio-pharma life cycle that traditional pharma companies no longer want to deal with means that those CRO–Big Pharma partner-ships—such as the one Eibling oversees between Covance and Lilly—are increasingly common and important.

“The quality is there, the capabilities are there, for the pharma com-panies that are more progressive in how they leverage those relation-ships—they’re getting much more value out of them,” said Eibling. “It’s still an interesting discussion to talk to pharma about what things we can do, and what things maybe we shouldn’t be doing: those stra-tegic conversations about core capabilities, how to augment or ab-sorb and execute those that aren’t core, better/cheaper/faster because of efficiency. We have to continue to advance the dialogue, because if you stay still, you get passed. That’s why we value these partnerships so much.”

While Lilly has for some time been seen as one of the pioneers of the practice of alliance management, Covance has its own alliance management capability that is “maturing as we speak,” according to Eibling. The practice is organized in a way specific to Covance’s business and its role in the value chain as a CRO.

“We provide services that span the entire value chain of pharma, from discovery research through late-phase clinical development and postlaunch commercial support,” Eibling explained. “We’re organized into business units that provide those services. We have enterprise alliance managers like myself responsible for significant alliance partnerships that span a number of those business units. We also have alliance managers who are at the helm of alliances for a single business or specific service lines within Covance. Rather than doing a major restructuring, we’ve created a virtual network of alliance managers. We’re building the competency across the business units in that way—I refer to it as a ‘center-led organiza-tion.’ The group of us that are enterprise alliance managers are help-ing to lead the way in establishing what the competency means at Covance, best practices, commonality, and linkage across all these roles. We’re working across the matrix of the organization, which most alliance managers are used to doing.

“We have alliance managers watching over the separate steps, with

enterprise alliance management overseeing the whole thing. As such, those folks tend to be the most experienced, understanding the broader business. So we’re leading that partnership, coaching and mentoring those around us, developing best practices and toolsets, looking at training and developing skills. You could call us a ‘center of excellence,’ but we’ve chosen not to use that language because we want the whole organization to be that. We are guid-ing the rest of our alliance colleagues, with the support of senior leadership, to become more fluent at this work. For many of these partnerships, while there may be issues you get involved in to help get them resolved, you’re not down there every day. We help ensure that the right infrastructure is in place—the right metrics, right people, right environment in each of those areas—to be successful. As opportunities or issues arise, we can help push those forward to make them happen, connect the dots with our peers. So somebody is always watching [over the process].”

Talk About an EvolutionEibling said that since he arrived on the scene at Covance, bearing his years of alliance management experience at Lilly, Covance’s own alliance management practice has seen “more of an evolu-tion than a big change.”

“We have formalized the role and established what it means,” he said. “Each business was kind of doing their own thing. We’ve progressed since then, working across teams to create more com-monality. We joined ASAP, increased our involvement with ASAP, and really pushed and endorsed certification as a means to create a common language across all the folks doing this work. And we’ve experienced great success there. We have not [totally] reorganized, because we wanted to leave the autonomy and ownership in the business units, but we do recognize the need for a center of compe-tency. A lot of organizations struggle with this.

“On the service side, everyone is extremely partner focused—it’s part of our DNA. There’s a uniform groundswell and support [for this at Covance]—[people say] ‘I would love to have the help.’ So we as the alliance management team haven’t had to fight to become in-volved. By creating alignment, providing value to everybody, we’ve gotten very good support from the business.”

While partnering is integral to the way Covance does business, Eibling said the company has experienced its own growth in the maturity of its understanding and practice of alliance management, much like other organizations.

“In the early days of establishing [alliance management] at Lilly, a whole cultural shift needed to happen, from ‘not invented here’ to supporting partnered innovation,” he recalled. “At Covance, we were able to skip past some of those steps. This organization is extremely focused on making sure partnerships are successful. Still, we’ve had to do a decent amount of education —all organizations go through that. We’ve had to explain and differentiate the role as specialized

52

Quarter 4, 2013 53

and adding value, that it very much augments the existing roles in the organization today. At the end of the day, we need all of our client relationships to be successful; it’s more of our business model than in other companies, that’s where our revenue comes from.”

Ten Years AfterIn his own career, Eibling said he was first exposed to alliances in the 1990s in a business development role at Lilly.

“Because of their unique nature, it was clear these were revenue-generating opportunities someone needed to take care of,” he said. “Moving into that role, that was my first real exposure [to alliances]. It happened to coincide with Lilly going through some strategic de-cisions with partnering as a core strategic imperative. It’s that extra step of, if partnering is going to be important, how do we get good at it? From the outside, I still see [Lilly] as among the best. That early work has paid off for them.”

Covance was originally spun off from Corning, but its relationship with Lilly quickly became key to the company’s existence and suc-cess. Covance purchased its Greenfield, Ind., drug development fa-cility from Lilly and agreed to provide Lilly with drug development services for 10 years. The partnership with Lilly is still going, and has been extended for a year so far.

“Covance has done several other large deals since, but Lilly was the first, and it was groundbreaking,” Eibling said. “It’s an extremely important partnership to Covance. I spend my time making sure all parts are successful, making sure we’re pushing to do more and better, that we find ways to innovate. I had the opportunity to learn from some great people at Lilly, and work on some very challenging partnerships—but I honestly can say I never worked on one as far-reaching and complicated as this one. There are thousands of people touching this partnership on a daily basis, hundreds of pieces across the value chain. The alliance is worth $1.6 billion over 10 years, and Lilly has exceeded their commitments, just to give you an idea of the magnitude of this thing. It’s fascinating to be a part of, incredibly challenging. There are a lot of ‘failure nodes’ or places where the alliance can break, so great attention is paid to heightening people’s awareness and, where necessary, shifting behavior at these essential points to reinforce its success.”

After the Thrill Is Gone: Or, From Refrigerator to BuickIn fact, along with Lilly’s Steve Twait, and Ken Carlson, Eibling will be doing a presentation at the 2013 ASAP BioPharma Confer-ence in November in Boston on managing such a large, ongoing partnership. What do you do when the initial excitement of the alliance wears off and you’re left to care for, feed, and manage a many-faceted behemoth and try to keep it profitable and on track?

“We did an interesting exercise last summer with that group, about keeping an alliance fresh,” Eibling recounted. “There’s that honey-moon period when you sign the deal, everybody’s talking about

how great it’s going to be and the value you’re going to achieve. After a three-, four-, five-year period, it’s ‘been there, done that.’ You’re not as enamored of each other anymore. You’ve changed, the industry’s changed, the companies have changed, the people have changed. Ken said we need to stop, engage, think about how we’ve changed, what our original strategy was, what changes we need to make, what opportunities that provides for us that we’re not taking advantage of. At some point you’ve got to step back and say OK, let’s reexam-ine the strategy, make sure we’re still aligned. It’s easy to lose your way—like going out to buy a refrigerator, and you come home with a Buick. It was a good exercise—we’re still leveraging that, working on some of the things we surfaced.”

In Eibling’s mind, the profession of alliance management and its as-sociated tools, concepts, and practices have their own history and their own trajectory. Its growth is tied in not only with their use at companies and in particular industries but with the growth of ASAP.

“At Lilly we were building stuff—tools, terminology, it just didn’t ex-ist,” Eibling remembered. “To a large extent we did it ourselves, with the help of others. [Now it’s] ‘What is out there that we can pull in and make our own?’ That’s the value of being a member of ASAP. Trying to get our folks to be engaged with ASAP, pulling out best practices. [The ASAP Handbook of Alliance Management] has been a great ref-erence tool for us, in terms of learning from and helping people to understand what the competency looks like. When you’re a pioneer you have to do a lot of stuff nobody’s ever done before. You’re giving more than you’re getting, to put it crudely. We’re on the other side of that now. We’re in the position where we can learn a lot, and ASAP has the potential to be that clearinghouse of knowledge. That’s where there’s a lot of value for us. The challenge is getting people engaged.”

Further On Up the RoadAnd the road ahead for Eibling, Covance, and the practice of alli-ance management in biopharma?

“If I think about the pharmaceutical and CRO industry, many of to-day’s relationships are still rooted in a transactional mindset; you’re still paying for work. But we’re going to continue to see innovative working relationships unfold,” Eibling posited. “Pharma compa-nies are saying, ‘OK, we’ve got to really think differently about this.’ There are pilots happening—in some cases fairly radical partnering methods being employed in an almost ‘burn-the-boats’ fashion—and there’s no turning back. It can be painful, but it does force a culture shift that you’ve got to have.

“When we work with pharma, we consult, advise, collaborate. At Covance we believe we are accountable to help them develop bet-ter solutions, faster; to use decision-driving data in novel ways to help [medicines] get to patients more quickly. Both sides need to be very open-minded in how we craft those relationships and deliver outcomes that we’re all going to be dependent on as we get older. It’s exciting to be in a profession that can play an important role in such essential work. It’s why I love what I do!” n

Overset on page “57’


A New PerspectiveOur Association and Alliance Initiatives Are Doing More Th an

Simply Helping Our Careers and Company Alliances By Jack Pearson, CSAP

COMING INTO THIS YEAR, I THOUGHT I had seen ASAP and the alliance manage-ment discipline from every angle. I had built Quintiles’ Global Alliance Management Group, opened up new business opportunities in emerging markets, and designed the competencies that would defi ne the people the company hired to be part of the practice. As I joined ASAP and eventually became its vice chair-man, we worked to establish the association’s certifi cation standards, which now help hundreds of alliance managers maintain their skills and keep their careers on an upward trajectory. And like all ASAP members, I have learned new ways to approach and address alliance issues via a variety of alliance success stories, honed relationships with old and new partners, and become more aware of the acceptance al-liance management has gained throughout industries across the globe.

But in my recently concluded fi ve-month stint as ASAP’s acting CEO, I have seen all of these elements from a diff er-ent viewpoint. I have a new perspective on how the work we put into ASAP intersects with the bigger issues we ad-dress on behalf of each of our organizations. To elevate this connection and make it more visible externally, ASAP has contributed an article that will be published in HR West Magazine this fall. Th e piece will speak to what HR profes-sionals might want to be aware of in identifying and hiring people designated specifi cally to help their organizations thrive in an increasingly collaborative business world.

While we establish this dialogue with the broader HR com-munity, some of our most dedicated members have already brought this vision to life in their company. Specifi cally, SAS earned an ASAP Alliance Excellence Award in 2012 in part for its eff orts to work with its HR organization to outline the roles, qualifi cations, and responsibilities for the company’s alliance management group. Th e point here is that the contributions made by a well-defi ned, organized, and integrated alliance team and strategy are now being brought to the attention of corporate functions that tra-ditionally contribute to the design of the organizational workforce. Being interim CEO has allowed me to see more clearly than ever before how and why the eff ort and focus of

an eff ectively implemented partnership function can take the business world to new heights.

Later this year we will implement new initiatives such as the ASAP Accredited Educator Partner (AEP) program, a certifi cation off ering set featuring continually updated industry-specifi c content and a much broader availability of globally based educators using materials tailored to each country’s needs. Additionally, we will be instituting new vehicles to communicate to parties outside of our member-ship that have yet to realize the signifi cant impact a strong partnership management strategy can make on the future success of their organization. We will also target our com-munication to companies that can use alliance management to strengthen their own business prospects via investment management, consulting improvements, and educational support. Finally, global initiatives are under development that will take the concept of strategic alliance oversight to geographies that have been underserved in this regard.

All of this is designed to execute on ASAP chairman Russ Buchanan’s directive to bring a more strategic approach as opposed to tactical oversight thinking in 2014 (see “Up Front,” p. 5), which will in turn help us expand the number of unique business alliances such as the Cisco-Xerox and NetApp-Citrix partnerships that make a tremendous im-pact on the global business arena.

Our members’ contributions will do more than just help ASAP realize its goals; they will help alliance management professionals capitalize on the opportunity to infl uence an increasingly collaborative business world. Even as we do our daily jobs, and especially as we work within ASAP to grow ourselves and our profession, we should always keep in mind that we no longer have to ask for the chance to make a broader impact on our companies; we’re already driving that transformation. n

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Strategic Alliance Magazine - Q4 2013 - Non-ASAP-Member Edition