Podcast: What are the key factors in building successful partnerships in pharma?

Hi, my name’s Matthew Dickinson. I’m the Managing Director of Dice Medical Communications, and today I’m with Sandra and Rob from our team. We’re going to talk about partnerships in the pharma industry, what they mean, and how important they are. Would you like to introduce yourselves?

Yeah. So, I’m Sandra Laird, Director of Medical Education and Market Access.

Hi, I’m Rob Wilson, Creative Director here at Dice.

So, welcome, both of you. When we talk about partnerships, there’s a wide range of connotations that come to mind when you say, “We are partners with X.” If you think about our business, we have partnerships with our clients, our clients have partnerships with their customers, there are partnerships within an organisation, partnerships with patient organisations, and partnerships with entities like Veeva and our accreditations with industry bodies. So, when I say to you the importance of partnership, how would you describe the importance of these partnerships within our industry and ecosystem?

I think, for me, the starting point is that a true partnership is about shared responsibility, working genuinely together towards a common goal. Certainly for us at Dice, and in our working life in general, you get much more out of working with clients if you are true partners. You feel that you are supporting them, and they are supporting you, working towards a common goal. In the industry more generally, we often talk about partnerships, but we don’t always truly work in a partnership way. For me, we develop medicines, but they are part of a much bigger ecosystem. They fit within a service within the health service. Only by working with those other stakeholders, to truly understand where that medicine fits, do we realise its true potential. To me, that’s the essence of partnership.

I agree with all of that, Sandra. For me, partnerships are everywhere—within my team, with you, and before we even get to our partnerships with clients. That’s really important. When we talk about our partnerships with clients, it’s crucial that we’re not doing a disservice by one party dictating to the other. We have to be brave, to contribute more, and work together as equals. It’s a complete partnership.

And, to be honest, part of that bravery is acknowledging when things go wrong. It’s about having that honest conversation that says, “I maybe wouldn’t have done it this way,” or “Could we consider it that way?” Being able to shape, amend, and move forward in a different direction is the essence of good relationships and partnerships. And I think that’s okay.

I think our business is a relationship business, and pharma as a whole is much more of a relationship business than people might think. Our relationships with our clients are vital, but our clients’ relationships with their customers are equally important. Relationships with clinicians are a huge part of what we do. If you think back to many of the launch campaigns, meetings, or market access discussions we’ve had, having good relationships—creating a feeling of partnership—leads to disproportionately positive outcomes. For us, this sense of partnership that we always try to facilitate with our clients, their customers, and patient organisations, is a bit of a secret to our success. We always want to push that further, and internally, as you say, Rob, we’re partners in a business that is trying to push for stronger patient outcomes out there in the world. I think that’s a really nice way of looking at it.

Ultimately, if we are working in partnership with our clients, and they are working in partnership with the NHS in its broader sense, that is the best way to deliver value for patients.

To what extent do you agree with the statement that partnerships encourage trust between people, between the industry and society, and between groups within our field? If we have strong partnerships, do we deliver more trust in the business we’re in?

I think you can’t really have a partnership without trust. If we don’t trust each other to do a great job, if our clients don’t trust us to do a great job, or we don’t trust them to deliver on what they say, we’ve got nothing. Trust is at the heart of everything we do. It’s one of the massive challenges the industry has had to grapple with—how to build trust and true partnership with the NHS. There is still an element of distrust sometimes between the NHS and the industry, and we need to work on that.

I agree. Distrust is destructive, and trust is very much the building block. The sky’s the limit when you work with trust.

Particularly from a creative standpoint, if we have trust in our partnerships, we can come up with work that really delivers on solving the business, marketing, or communication problems our clients face. Our work is improved by better trust, and clients trusting us helps deliver better work. That spirit of partnership makes a significant difference to what we do. I’m proud that many of our clients have been with us for a long time because we’ve built that sense of partnership and shared responsibility for the outcome.

Absolutely. From a creative point of view, in a regulated world where creativity can be quite restricted, building trust with our clients gives us the opportunity to push the boundaries and do something a little different in our work. Trust is vital.

I agree. When I think about our partnerships with clients, our partners like Veeva, our customers, and our team, the most important thing for me in nurturing those partnerships is being honest enough to tell things as they are. One of the biggest challenges we face as an industry, particularly in British culture, is being almost too polite to question if we are taking the right approach, doing the right thing, or if there is a better way. We need to be honest enough to ask those questions.

Is there anything you would do to encourage and nurture partnerships? For me, it’s about being honest and open, questioning if we’re doing the right thing, and exploring whether there’s another way to handle a problem. Is there anything you would add to that?

I think it’s about always putting your best foot forward. It’s easy to do good work, but just good enough. If we’re working as true partners, we always strive to do even better. What we did last week is what we did last week, and we want to do even more. Always striving to do better is critical.

And being honest when we sit down together and say, “We could do even better than that.”

One of our cultural principles is to aim for world-class. It’s easy to ask, “Is this world-class thinking? Is this world-class work?” If not, let’s be honest and push it to make sure it is.

But world-class five years ago is not world-class now because the world moves on. We’ve got to keep reinventing ourselves and keep challenging ourselves. That’s really important—not resting on our laurels.

Exactly. Not resting on our laurels is key. If you produce an outstanding launch one year, don’t just roll out the same thing. Raise the bar.

Sandra, Rob, thank you so much for your time and efforts in pulling this together with me. It’s been a pleasure to talk to our clients about topics close to our hearts. We’d love to hear from our clients or anyone listening to these podcasts if there are any topics you’d like us to cover. There’s much more to come on this front. This is the latest batch we’ve recorded, but it goes on with many others we’ve done in the past. I’m keen to keep the conversation going, and this won’t be the last time we sit here together.