Creating an intelligent and seamless project ecosystem can transform R&D operations and portfolio management from a reactive to a proactive discipline.
It was the dawn of 2022. The newly anointed SVP of R&D Operations at a 50-person, fast-growing, ambitious biotech company was looking to transform the traditional approach to managing biotech operations and support their burgeoning portfolio of early-stage assets.
This was not Alison's first rodeo. A 20+ year veteran of the biopharma industry, having held roles ranging from lab scientist, program manager, launch leader, portfolio executive, and Head of R&D operations, she knew exactly what her fledgling company needed to rapidly achieve its first drug candidate nomination and prepare to file an IND within H1.
Alison Conlon's vision was a solution that could deliver robust value while reducing manual work and complexity for their different functional teams’ workflows; her requirements included:
1. Unified System for Task and Status Updates: A “single source of truth” that allows task owners, not just project managers, to update progress statuses with automated reminders.
2. Dynamic Linking and File Integration: Support linking multiple plans related to a single asset to allow teams to work independently while maintaining an interconnected view.
3. Effective Visualization and Reporting:
4. Self-Service, Dynamic Reporting: Integration with existing tools (Smartsheet, Jira, SharePoint, and Power BI) for dynamic, drill-down reporting on portfolio metrics, ideally including financials and resource allocations.
5. Risk Management: Integrated risk tracking and streamlined governance assessments for project plans, rolling up to program and portfolio levels.
6. Realtime Dashboards:
7. Gantt Chart Visualization: Waterfall charts with easy integration into PowerPoint and standalone realtime timeline views for high-quality interactive leadership presentations.
8. Simplicity Over Customization: A straightforward, comprehensive, highly configurable, yet out-of-the-box solution to avoid the issues introduced by complex customizations.
Essentially, she wanted a multidimensional integrative system that equipped her leaders to optimize workflows across complex interdependencies in functional teams flexibly. She sought to facilitate strategic alignment that traditional tools struggle to support and ensure the system minimized manual reporting and provided actionable visuals while enhancing team collaboration and governance oversight.
Biotech organizations typically operate with highly specialized teams—R&D, CMC, Clinical Operations, Regulatory, and Commercial—working on interconnected yet discrete plans that contribute to the progress and growth of the overarching portfolio. In this environment, efficiency depends on seamless collaboration across functional areas and their external collaborators and strategic partners.
Creating an intelligent and seamlessly integrated project ecosystem can usher in a new level of clarity, transforming R&D operations and portfolio management from a reactive to a proactive discipline.
Where timely predictive insights and actionable data allow executives to see beyond lagging indicators and respond to potential challenges before they become bottlenecks.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step — and a map with GPS!
Developing a new drug from scratch can easily take 10+ years. Not every candidate makes it to IND and NDA. Far too many biological variables are at play, many of which are not in our control, at least not yet.
However, ensuring absolute control over operational variables means every drug candidate gets backed by the full power of the organization and receives flawless execution support.
Over the last three years, our protagonist and her company have experienced many ups and downs. Such is the nature of science; the default outcome, more often than not, is failure.
Yet, this emerging biotech's operational prowess in R&D remains par excellence compared to dozens of its peer biotechs and biopharmas.
This is their victory, and deservedly so. Unipr simply creates the technology. It is ALWAYS the people using our solutions that determine the extent of benefits they receive. It is like, on the F1 track, even the most advanced car is only 20% of the outcome; the decisions made by the driver, pit crew, and management team determine 80% of the wins.
Unipr is highly configurable. By design. Because no two companies operate in the same way. And so, we take very little credit for what our sponsor has been able to accomplish with it at her company.
What follows is her story in her words.
The experiences mentioned in the panel discussion below serve as a blueprint for R&D executives looking to elevate their pipeline operations.
In summary, she recommends three strategies to guide peer decision-makers:
A. Centralize data and simplify processes. If data is scattered across various tools, its value diminishes. A unified platform like Unipr can centralize information, making it more accessible and actionable.
B. Leverage visual dashboards and realtime analytics. Dynamic project portfolios require a level of oversight that goes beyond static reports. Interactive multilevel dashboards, like the ones in Unipr, provide realtime insights and empower leaders to react swiftly and strategically.
C. Focus on predictive insights to enhance strategic decision-making. Tools like Unipr AI shift leadership focus from hindsight KPI tracking to forward-looking, predictive metrics that help leaders with foresight for mitigating potential risks, allocating budgets and resources more effectively, and driving team morale through streamlined processes.
To dive deeper into the practical application of these strategies, watch the panel discussion video. In it, you’ll hear firsthand insights you can use to transform your pipeline operations.
In this new era of data-driven management, executives seeking to stay ahead should consider the competitive advantage offered by a unified, comprehensive platform like Unipr.
By transforming static information locked in disparate sources into unified multifaceted data powering realtime actionable insights, Unipr offers a new standard in portfolio management, ensuring leaders can navigate the complexities of today’s biotech R&D operations with foresight, confidence, and precision.
I previously worked with Microsoft Project, Think-Cell, Smartsheet and One-Pager. All are really great in certain areas and all have their drawbacks.
What I was looking for was an opportunity to do something totally new, understanding what works well, wanting to get rid of what didn't work well, and have the opportunity to bring in Unipr to the organization.
I'm not getting paid to say this, but I promise I'll make it a job requirement for any job I have. It has been so helpful to have and be able to connect our information.
If you have data sitting in so many places, it's actually not valuable. If you're using people to connect it, that's a waste of resources and maybe demoralizing for that person who is chasing the information.
So, Workplans.
As a portfolio manager, I wanted to be able to take a look at all of the projects across our entire portfolio. When I'm working in a research setting, there are a lot of different projects that are highly dynamic, constantly changing, and it would take too long to go through each one and say, "What is this information trying to tell me?"
By using the visualizations, these are projections and some of the visuals that are available, I can do a very quick view within seconds, be able to say which of these projects deserve my attention right now, which are trending behind relative to what the team said, which are projected to trend behind based on maybe there's challenges that have been raised or there's resources that are constrained.
So immediately, I can go from a list of 100 to a list of five to ten to take my deep dive there. That way I am using my time more efficiently, I'm having better conversations with my team members and we can get to the heart of issues faster.
Similarly, SamePage is another feature within Unipr that I so enjoy. It's great.
For a given project, you can immediately see a dashboard type view. It's very interactive. I can go immediately see a list of everything that's overdue. I can go immediately and see a list of everything that has been flagged as a challenge. And it includes the context of why is it a challenge. So from an agenda planning perspective, this is super helpful.
I don't have to go line by line through the plan, I don't have to create a Gantt and say, what is this telling me? SamePage is doing all of that for me.
Finally, Search feature.
So this is one where I can be as broad or as narrow in my search. I can say "Tell me every milestone that is completing in the next two weeks," or I can say, "Tell me every activity that is projected to be late and it gives me that view and I can visualize it," or I can see a list view.
There's a number of different options, all better ways to access the information, to interpret the information.
Data is only data if you know how to talk about it and you can understand what it's telling you.
And so the features that I've mentioned here are helping me get to those more refined questions that the teams then can engage to get to the answers.
