Key Metrics to Measure Success in Partnerships With Specialty Distributors: Natalie Bedford

There are both quantitative and qualitative metrics that will help determine the success of collaboration between drug companies and their specialty distributors, said Natalie Bedford, senior vice president, US pharmaceutical distribution services, McKesson.

Transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What key metrics should companies track to measure the success of collaborations between drug companies and specialty distributors?

Metrics is always an interesting question, because there's so many different ways that you can measure success in any performance of any business in any industry. When I think about the collaborations and our strongest partnerships with manufacturer partners, I would think the key metrics really come in 4 areas. One is around supply distribution and core operations. The second would be around financial and business performance. The [third] would be about product and market awareness and reach. And the fourth would be about the strategic relationship.

As you can imagine, the metrics in those 4 buckets range from many being very quantitative on numbers that you can measure and point to success, but then there's also [metrics] that are very qualitative, but are just as important, because they help both partners together figure out where they need to continue to invest to meet future objectives and goals.

Let's talk about each just a little, if we could. If you think about the supply chain and operational efficiencies, they’re the things that I think most people think about first when they think about specialty distributors. It's time to be able to distribute. How quickly do customers get their metrics? What are your service levels? They're all pieces that are core to the business that we do today…

Next move to financial and business performance. The way that I remember when I was on the manufacturer side, some of the things that we looked at are how, by using this distribution partner, did our penetration grow? How will we be able to leverage that customer base? How are we measuring the success and performance of those customers on an ongoing basis? I think another piece is also, when they bring products to market, what's our ability to quickly help support adoption in the marketplace for this product vs the competitors? Again, there are hard metrics that I think both parties want to understand and feel.

When you go into product reach and market awareness, I think that's where you start to see a mix. You've got something like your typical consumer NPS [net promoter] scores, where you can measure how we're performing to our downstream customers, and they are critically important, because we do take that feedback to help inform and improve and better our processes to a specialty distributor to meet their needs. But there's other things. The feedback on the tangible things I talked about earlier on. How quickly are we getting them product to market? What are the challenges that they see when we're first bringing it? How do we work through supply shortages? We build in organic mechanisms to the way that we do business, so we get that feedback back to make sure that we understand that our penetration in the supply chain, both upstream and downstream, is we're maximizing the impact of potential that we can have.

The fourth around strategic relationships, in many ways, that's the most important. Because at the end of the day, if a manufacturer partner needs to select a few specialty distributors, which is critical in this space, because you don't need to, because of small patient populations, to have a relationship with them all, the strategic part is really important. How are we working together to make sure that we understand what the mutual strategies and future priorities are strategically so we can invest together, we can plan together, and then align around go-to-market strategies to ensure that success?