It takes three: optimising business partnerships for success and sustainability
Challenging times can put a strain on any client-agency relationship. The handoffs get messy, patience runs thin, and trust can quickly evaporate. While the Healthcare Communications Association (HCA) initially spotted these partnership pain points in pharma, they probably strike a chord for procurement professionals across all sectors. Marketing procurement iQ reviews the HCA’s thought leadership work on optimising the Business Partnership Triangle.
The business partnership triangle decoded
The pharma industry is facing an unprecedented pace of change. The opportunities, and the risks, seem greater, the timelines from R&D to commercialisation are growing shorter, and the macro-economic and political outlook is best described as challenging. Patient, Healthcare Practitioner and Payor expectations are shifting, demand for content is exploding exponentially, and cost pressures are relentless.
Whilst these challenges are being acutely felt in life sciences, they will feel relatable for readers across industry sectors. When commercialising any product or service, relationships between business partners, agencies and procurement are critical to successfully navigate choppy waters. These connection points form what the HCA calls the “Business Partnership Triangle.” All three stakeholders must pull together rather than push apart. But let’s be honest – the track record hasn’t always been stellar in pharma, and the same is certainly true across industry siloes.
According to recent HCA research, each stakeholder typically focuses on their own issues, expecting others to fall in line without considering the ripple effects. This siloed approach risks inciting bad feelings and can ultimately lead to partnerships breaking down. We’ve all seen the pledges to do better and best practice guides published over the years. They certainly help – but are they more sticking-plaster fixes than long-term solutions?
Moving beyond sticking-plaster solutions
In 2024, recognising that business partnerships were suboptimal, the HCA took a more courageous approach. Feeling the clue to the solution was in the word ‘partnership’, they set out to catalyse changes in the Triangle’s dynamics by working in partnership.
“You don’t solve this type of ingrained dysfunction overnight,” notes the HCA, whose research acknowledges that while some partnerships function beautifully, there’s always scope for improvement.
The HCA’s work unfolded in two phases. First, they ratified the challenges through qualitative discussions with all stakeholder groups. This followed the surprisingly uncommon strategy of taking all stakeholders on the same journey simultaneously, bringing representatives together with their peers to identify the purpose, processes and perceptions within the Triangle.
Walking in each other’s shoes
The game-changer came in phase two. Even if some of the proposed solutions could have been identified by the stakeholder group they impact, it’s the very fact that all stakeholders have been involved in the thought process that maximises the solutions’ probability of acceptance and ultimate success,” the HCA explains.
The results pinpointed specific challenges and solutions for each stakeholder group:
Business partner challenges: quality vs. cost
Business partners struggle with balancing quality and cost containment:
- Rigid cost controls without accounting for qualitative differences lead to inequitable comparisons between agency partners
- Cumbersome due diligence procedures for new agencies strain team resources
- Misalignment between procurement practices and business objectives creates friction
- Limited data-sharing from agencies hampers effective benchmarking
The suggested solutions include identifying shared values and examining best practices from outside the sector.
Procurement challenges: perception issues
For procurement, it’s about both process and perception:
- Unclear responsibility boundaries within the Partnership Triangle
- Lack of understanding from business partners of the value of approved procurement strategies
- Poor compliance with processes due to lack of understanding and high turnover in business partner roles
- The constant push-pull between best value and considerations like supplier diversity
Cross-functional strategic working was proposed to align on transparent engagement practices and develop consensus on agile pricing solutions and the impact of AI.
Agency challenges: squeezed from all sides
Agencies report feeling financially pressured and lacking true partnership status:
- Limited transparency about business challenges and opportunities
- High resource costs for participation in procurement processes
- Emphasis on cost over value impact in vendor selection
- Feeling trapped between a rock and a hard place when procurement and business partners can’t align internally
Standardisation of industry-wide credentialling and stronger partnerships between professional associations emerged as potential solutions, specifically between procurement associations and the HCA. Drawing on best practices outside of pharma, such as the work of the WFA Sourcing Board will certainly provide pointers here.
The foundation: better understanding between stakeholders
Foundational to all solutions was the need for better understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities. The HCA’s process highlighted the acute knowledge gaps between stakeholders. Multi-stakeholder training and opportunities to “experience being in each other’s shoes” were suggested to bridge these gaps.
“This process of building awareness of the perspectives and challenges of partner stakeholders allowed ideas to be developed that, by definition, were understood and accepted by all,” the HCA notes.
The way forward: trust, transparency, and shared accountability
The vision is clear: build trust between all stakeholders to enhance business relationships and improve outcomes through transparency and shared accountability. The strategies include:
- Better highlighting procurement and business partner roles to foster deeper understanding of responsibilities and decision-making
- Establishing best practice playbook for optimal partnerships
- Engaging with wider stakeholder communities to extend awareness
This programme continues to build on these insights both strategically and tactically. The HCA encourages all stakeholders within the Partnership Triangle to use these insights to optimise business partnerships for collective success and sustainability.
Will it work? That depends on each stakeholder in the Triangle. The insights are robust, the direction is clear, but as with any relationship advice, the real test comes when it’s applied. What’s certain is that continuing with siloed thinking will lead to the same suboptimal results we’ve seen before.
Maybe it’s time we all tried walking in each other’s shoes.
To get involved, contact the HCA at the-hca.org
This article is based on research conducted by the Healthcare Communications Association (HCA) with input from Kayhan Binazir, Global Medical Director – Respiratory Pathogens, GSK; Sabrina Gomersall, Founding Director, POP Health; Duncan Lewis, Chief Operating Officer, Arc Bio Communications; Annabelle Sandeman, Chief Growth Officer, Publicis Health, London; Helen Thompson, Director of Procurement Consulting, Helen Thompson Consulting Ltd; and Laura Wilson, Head of Commercial Strategy, Bedrock Healthcare Communications.