Healthcare Services Provider's Government Affairs
Department Powered by Borealis
Overview
Zuellig Pharma is a leading healthcare solutions company in Asia and its mission is to make healthcare more accessible to the communities it serves. The company was started more than 100 years ago and provides world-class distribution, digital and commercial services to support the evolving healthcare needs in 16 markets across the region. It has over 12,000 employees working with more than 450 clients including the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Team using Borealis: Government Affairs
Since: March 2023
Users: 30
In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Zuellig Pharma had to work closely with governments to ensure access to vaccines and healthcare products amid supply shortages and deployment issues but at that time, it didn’t have a dedicated Government Affairs (GA) department. The need to institutionalise a GA department to manage these relationships quickly became apparent, and a dedicated department was created in 2021.
Challenges
There were three main challenges that Zuellig Pharma needed to address.
Due to the company’s structure, in-market GA leads needed to wear many hats and also managed other roles and responsibilities. Time constraints were a challenge for the team.
Since GA needs to engage with a wide variety of stakeholders who have different priorities and goals, the lack of a formal and standardised registry to store and track data was also a significant challenge. The diversity of the company’s GA activities across all businesses and functions also contributed to this need.
And finally, the absence of a data platform or dashboard-equivalent to track GA performance was a challenge for the company’s management team.
The main stakeholders we deal with are primarily the ministries of health and their related health and regulatory agencies in the markets where we operate. Then there are industry groups and other trade and finance-related ministries that we engage with. In some cases, we also have to work on issues impacting ease of doing business, such as the need to streamline regulatory and reimbursement practices. So, it's a wide variety of stakeholders that require our attention.
Working with Borealis
After examining several software solutions and packages, the GA team decided on Borealis’ stakeholder management software.
In 2023, Zuellig Pharma started using Borealis software mainly as a database and organisational memory.
Thanks to its user-friendliness, Borealis software made it possible to efficiently enter and easily retrieve a variety of relevant stakeholder information, such as:
» Details of engagement plans
» Results of activities
» Relationship status
This valuable information helped the GA team to understand where to focus their efforts to achieve maximum positive impact. This made it an excellent tool for the GA team to prioritise their work.
In addition, the Borealis Analytics function and dashboard, which shows not just number of engagement plans, communications to-date but also the target vs planned progress made over a period either 30 or 90 days, is one of the elements that generates the most interest from users, and also from management teams who are informed on the progress of engagements.
Performance indicators
After 6 months of use, the GA team had entered enough data to be able to create analysis reports and choose indicators to measure performance.
With the support of Borealis, Zuellig Pharma will continuously develop this database to evolve into a performance indicator/management tool.
Borealis involvement
Borealis supported Zuellig Pharma’s GA team in the implementation of its stakeholder management software, participating closely in the creation of the new service. Always keen to be an involved partner, Borealis was particularly attentive to Zuellig Pharma’s needs and goals.
To support Zuellig Pharma’s development, a Borealis Customer Success Advisor worked closely with the company’s GA team. Drawing on best practices learned from working with other clients’ GA departments, the Borealis advisor recommended widgets that could be integrated in their system dashboard, which helped the team associate numbers with less tangible concepts, improving their reports.
The GA team wanted to measure three elements:
» Relationship building – how relationships are evolving with stakeholders: “How have things improved? How has their knowledge of our issue or product evolved?”
» Shaping a leadership environment – to what extent are planned activities influencing the engagement process: “What commitments have you made that have had an impact on the progress of the project?”
» Execution and impact – what are the financial impacts of engagement activities: “To what extent does what we do translate into financial impact?”
Here is a concrete example related to the second point. A “Milestones” function included in the dashboard allows users to see whether a particular activity (roundtable, conference, discussion, etc.) has been completed at the right time.
Numbers to reinforce credibility
Borealis also enables GA to demonstrate their involvement in the company’s sustainable engagement strategies.
Zuellig Pharma’s GA team now uses Borealis dashboards in their presentations to internal stakeholders and customers. For example, they can show them visually and how many stakeholders the GA team has engaged with. They can also specify how many of these were government entities, and how many were industry associations, leaders, board members and so on.
By providing the number of associations or commitments recorded in the system, the software helps establish the credibility of both the GA department and the company, as a whole.
Collaborating successfully
With Borealis’ help, Zuellig Pharma’s GA function is progressing from managing a database to a performance management tool.
So far, everyone I've shown this tool to who are not part of our organisation - other consultants or customers - have been impressed by the way GA can be organised. We look forward to ongoing improvements that will help us perfect our work.
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