Session Notes: From Blind Spots to Foresight – How Smart Resource Management Transforms Pharma Portfolio Steering

Apr 22, 2026
From Blind Spots to Foresight – How Smart Resource Management Transforms Pharma Portfolio Steering - Transcript
00:00:00
 
Vera Örså: there. Yes. Yes. Yes. I can Where is the mouse? Good. Right.
Vera Örså: Okay, everybody just that we start getting starting in time. Hello everyone. I know coffee is great. Let's get started. Oh, next keynote from Mark. Uh, from blind spot to foresight. We are staying on how how smart management transforms farmer portfolio steering which already sounds AI driven again. Is it AI setting the expectations? You try to explain me which company is who working for. I leave this to both of you to introduce. We will probably introduce us. Shall we wait a few more minutes or are we all back? Good afternoon to have a ke right after lunch right I know I tried my best to not make you feel asleep. Um welcome to from blind spots to slide and we are going to be speaking about resource management lately and how it can significantly improve your farmer portfolio steering. Just yesterday evening I decided to change a little bit the course of today's session and how to open uh today's session because I was thinking how I would do it just agenda boring.
 
 
00:02:58
 
Vera Örså: Then I realized oh right after lunch maybe I'm just trying something different and maybe it's also stupid but let's let's give it a try. So I was thinking about how to open and then the inspiration came in very unexpected by my neighbor. We had a chat over a beer. He's partner of the law firm explained a little bit of the difficulties with AI with new order and then he asked me Mark are you familiar with the IG Nobel Prize I said I had to admit no and I'm very sure you guys know know it all if not the IG Noble Prize an award given for unconventional scientific achieve funds that are supposed by their own definition to make people laugh and then think so robust but still a little bit silly sometimes. Okay. Then he elaborated. He said, "Marth, there is a group of researchers that was awarded with this prize for proving that organizations would be better off and more efficient if they would promote people entirely at random. Can you imagine that?" I still remember I was laughing and I thought this is
 
 
00:04:12
 
Vera Örså: ridiculous. That is not possible. Right? But then I think because he was like looking at me like this why and said robust mathematical models but the summary and the bottom line was that very simple our traditional ways of how we assess both capabilities. So skills and capacity are so often so disconnected to reality that a simple flip of a coin is more accurate. instead okay and our conversation took other directions this evening but the next day I was further thinking well aren't we doing the same thing in farmer PPM we are spending months for a perfect portfolio plan to only see collapse so clinical trial timeline shifts maybe patient recruitment takes longer than expected so today Pete and I we want to show you how to move away from this coin flipping approach over to a more sustainable resource and portfolio management. So this is what we are aiming for our agenda after a quick and brief intro. Uh I will start with the let's call it hypothesis the execution gap in our PTM then Pete will set the theme and walk you through the four major building blocks of Palmer resource management.
 
 
00:05:36
 
Vera Örså: He will speak about the volatilities clinical portfolios are subject to and introduces you to an integrated resource and portfolio management. On point four, we will attack team um and show you five real world challenges your weekly realities in farmer of which I picked to show you here live in stage how this should look like and then we'll wrap it up. All right, brief intro. My name is Mark Nekerman, German national from Hamburg, been living in Switzerland for over 11 years. Um, I'm a PPM consultant for 15 years now. And so my background unlike pets is not in clinical science. I admit that, right? So my science is really about resources. This is what we do. This is how I think and this is also what the company behind me is about. We are fully centered around resource and portfolio management and we are also strategic partner of a technology solution that is purposely built to address resource and portfolio management challenges worldwide with chemistry symmetry. Okay, over to you. So Peton um I did uh in clinical development operations build and run resource management for a living for almost 20 years uh covering the departments covering all of management of clinical tri of the clinical resources and the clinical data management.
 
 
00:07:06
 
Vera Örså: uh in 2024 I started uh my own limited as consultant type solutions and my experience really getting this uh set up in a good way uh make available to sponsors big and small to help them also I'm presented experts from different areas like procurement general operations to help especially smaller companies staying in getting the expertise they know and the hands on support to run their compound compound project to launch all the execution in karma ppm what is that let me start the journey with this perfect portfolio plan and let me pick that up because I started my my journey today with it green across the board funded budgeted everything looks good three months later six months later it goes and it happens everywhere. Why? It's not because of strategy. It is not because of budget. It is because we approved something that physically was never resource feasible in the first place. So my hypothesis is that I think you would all agree money alone does not deliver R&D. In farmer PPM or any ppm in this world, we need to consider two sides of the budget, right?
 
 
00:08:34
 
Vera Örså: One is the mind, the other one is the people, the skills, the capabilities that are actually delivering. And even bigger farmer players are now saying this out loud. I read this article Pete forwarded to me and I just fell in love with this specific sentence by GSK. As you would expect, I need to read it out loud. As you would expect, we are focused on allocating resources to priorities and using technology to maximize our scientific capabilities and drive productivity to accelerate drug discovery and research. Isn't that beautiful? Right? Isn't that what we are all here for? I love it. Right? It's also part of the mission of my session. Repeat together. That's why I brought it here. So, bottom line, only look at budget. You see half the story. Where is the execution yet? It's an iceberg flight. Okay. So, think about your last government portfolio meeting. You most likely spend 75% of your time with the 25% visible mostly tied to timelines, budgets, milestones, KPIs.
 
 
00:09:42
 
Vera Örså: But honestly, aren't we taking the 75% that are actually delivering R&D, the people, the skills, the capacity to all the programs? And this is exactly where portfolios fail. Now, where is the execution gap? The execution gap sits in the definition of resource management. We have three layers to consider really. We have one is strategic, second is tactical. You heard tactical before earlier in another speech. I love that. Um and operational. So it's really about the timeline and each one has its own purpose. Strategic long-term demand forecasting sourcing strategy decisions. practical is when you for the very first time map the upcoming and current demand against your capacities. The delta is the source for your decision in sourcing. Whereas the operational portion is the named resource assignments on clinical trials, tasks and studies. Right? Where it is in the transition from strategic over to operational somewhere there we get loss. Right? Because we design something, functions have to execute. And in order to get this iceberg out of the water, we need to get visibility and transparency on our resource pool that sometimes even more than the things that I'm writing down here.
 
 
00:11:08
 
Vera Örså: Base capacity, net capacity, availability, skills, competencies, roles, plan and actual for better forecasting. Do we need this for all time horizons? No. But for the tactical and operation we surely do. So this is setting this thing for P. Now to take you through the journey of the four building blocks in power. Yeah. So the four blocks blocks we have identified and I think first and foremost is really to understand your demand. If you're having really a portfolio of multiple projects or possibly also multiple therapeutic areas, you need to do it with algorithms that really translate the need on the changing need into resource demand by role over time. Otherwise, you won't be able really to steal your portfolio. Then you have the supply side and of course the supply side has a lot also of strategic elements. Do you need your strategy? How much do you want to use the full service? how much you want to run with internal resources and internal processes and how do you want to uh work with the fluctuation in demand with insourcing capacity or with FSP outsourcing or whatever that is the strategy but you really need to understand what you have in order to make sure that you can do the match and if where the rubber hits the road in the end is that if you have your trials you need physical people doing those trials in the roles needed and those need to be allocated.
 
 
00:12:43
 
Vera Örså: That's the allocation which is important. We think also for really good resource management you also need to track your restoring. You might say no clinical trial is running better because the study team tracked their times. I would argue you need it. You're getting some indication about overload or underload of your trial. So it's helpful. And if you want to improve, you want to improve your efficiency, you want to improve your models or whatever, that is the actual data that you need. Otherwise, you are not improving. That's what you typically want to do. And the capacity really to understand demand from your portfolio is that you can take your project with all of what belongs there and translate it into the different roles that you need over time. and do it for one project, you can do it for all for your portfolio. And because things do change, don't do it manually and don't do it by collecting Excel sheets. You need to have the ability really to have the algorithms that work for you.
 
 
00:13:46
 
Vera Örså: And yeah, working in clinical development or working on pharmaceuticals where clinical development is the most important part most of the time, you know, it is always volatile. So if you want to do your uh in September and then run until the end of next year typically it doesn't work because too much changes all the time. Timelines change. Uh the uh parameters of a trial change. Uh you have external you have hazards authorities coming with requests. You might have a safety event that is triggering you. You might have surprising competing trials coming up. You might not collect the events in the time you you expected. You need to either extend your trial or increase the number of participants. Things just happen and you need to be able to uh adapt to this and also adapt operationally to this as it happens. So kind of looking more closely on the different levels of resource management. the strategic resource management is really looking out strategically as a sales calendar or how does your portfolio look in two years and five years possibly in eight years and of course it's important and it's where also your PPM software really supports you to be able to do that and a lot of your strategies if you how much you want to use for example of course you would test on that level but then you need to get more uh fine grain to understand really for the upcoming quarters.
 
 
00:15:26
 
Vera Örså: What is it that is actually needed and also gives you time to look for and to talk to your external providers that you're getting the right resources in time. And eventually you need to make sure that what needs to be done at the right people being assigned to it have it done and give to those who do the assignments the right information to do. those levels is where we perceive it might not be everywhere but in general the pharma industry isn't that good and when we do have a gap and that is kind of this gap but you many companies do have the ppm level in place and DPM levels do have some kind of algorithms but if they are not detailed enough that they give really the level of information that a functional line manager in data management or in monitoring needs in order to uh really do their detailed planning then they do something different and if they're not getting the information what is the latest status. uh so they might be using inconsistent uh assumptions and in the end that leads to that you're not efficient enough and in the worst case that is not not to sell and in the end that you don't have the right resources at the right time and that you then facing delays where you overload your existing club run into more errors or kind of burn people out and that's kind of why you need an integration resources that for that really goes from strategy to operational.
 
 
00:17:08
 
Vera Örså: So in five cases, one thing is kind of your BDNL department was successful. They have been getting a post uh phase 2 compound for you and you're expected to run a phase 2 program in 12 months. What does it mean kind of do your existing portfolio? What happens if you're in it or you have execution delays? You of phase three trial has recruitment issues or is not connecting the number of events and you need extended. What does it mean? Or your phase two trial kind of doesn't give you the results you expected. Then you probably can't start the phase three trial when you want to do it, if at all. What does it mean? What are the resources that you might not need that you already planned for? And in order kind of to have your functional line managers really work effectively and efficiently, do they have updated resource demand on the level of granularity they need at their fingerprints or and for your budget planning? Do you really have a good grip to what is actually your insourcing or outsourcing need?
 
 
00:18:20
 
Vera Örså: So you can have really informed discussions with your providers. And if you are needing Excel files to be sent around and to be combined somewhere, you likely don't have the information you need to wait with it. You're creating a lot of effort on the way. Yeah, thank you so much. Um, so back on these five real world challenges, these are waking realities in Parma based on also Pete's own experience. Um, and instead of now doing something live, we decided to show you a pre-recorded snippet of something because we expect that maybe you don't know Wi-Fi is broken or whatever may happen. So, um, we picked the first two as they seem to be the most common ones, portfolio expansion and delay, adding something and facing a delay due to maybe patient recruitment that is again taking longer than expected. In order to show you how this could look like for specific customers already um we want to make yourself at home here first before I hit say uh sorry play we are currently in the what is simulation scenario module of tempest resource that means it's like a laboratory that's fun right we are not changing live data we just are feedback through the functions and everything that is being planned in our model scenario that we might want to share or not.
 
 
00:19:53
 
Vera Örså: Okay, so far so good. In the other screen, because this is a two split screen, we see work, right? It could be clinical studies, in this case, rolled up by phase and then rolled up by program or compound or the other way around, program, compound phase, and then the clinical trials. In the lower screen, we see resources utilization in form of a heat map. tell planetary red bad green good yellow something in between right then and we see it on a monthly basis we want to see it on a quarterly basis yearly basis also no problem why not even saying that you remember these three layers we are speaking all the time about an integrated resource and portfolio management you see this here already without me even hitting any play button because everything rolls up from individual change resources assignment on nonclinical work, non project related work, absence business usually you name it as on top to functional level two roles right everything is connected in the operation tactical and strategic level okay now I hit play we take from what was it called next dema um a compound a phase three program and add it to the portfolio it's gray Why?
 
 
00:21:15
 
Vera Örså: Because it's not yet activated in terms of it's not consuming capacity. I want to do it consciously and steally I do so include look at what happens December 26 onwards monitor study data manager study huge problem immediately on the fly doing a simulation and just check if maybe the start of this program by a month or two earlier is just making the life better or worse on the fly. The second thing the the second real world challenge is we are facing a delay right. So patient recruitment again we are going to another study another trial and we want to see the impact what happens if we expand the duration of the trial. What does expansion means shift algorithms are pulling the resource demand is changing over time. We see immediately the impact and also the delta now is the basis and the foundation for the communication with the functions because integrate right the functions see what executives decide and executives use what functions plan integrate no spreadsheets no manual merging and consolidation all right so basically I I forgot to say something this is the difference between firefighting portfolio management and actually um something that we would refer to from blind spots support side like our entire presentation anyways.
 
 
00:22:47
 
Vera Örså: Okay. Um algorithms everything that you are explaining here these models are dynamically updating when key assumptions change and we are now calling them drivers very positively. Pete was calling it out with volatility scary. You never know, right? But these drivers are impacting both timelines as well as the amount and the volume of the need of the resources you have. And instead of manually replanning anything, you guys have it maybe already, but this this is something that you really need to have algorithms that do demand estimation over time, adjusting your milestones, adjusting um your plan. The bottom line here is for again allowing to make decisions that functional managers can execute and vice versa. This is why we are calling the integrated approach. Okay, if you miss out on this kind of transparency, visibility, what what happened? I'm not going to scare you now, but the simple thing is happening, right? We are trying to compensate. How would this look like? We are hiring buffer capacities or the just in case scenarios.
 
 
00:23:58
 
Vera Örså: Second thing, what we would potentially do is sourcing in the panic mode rather than in a conscious decision approach. We would maybe also delay delay trial starts at ramp ups just to be on the safe side and four potentially overload keys. That is the worst because these people get frustrated quickly and they leave attrition rates go up. In the end everything is leading to only two things. Costs go up, predictability goes down and really please do never ever blame again functions and execution. This is not a problem of execution. This is a problem of missing visibility between portfolios and functions and vice versa. Okay. What can you do about it? This yeah how can you close it? You can close it with enabling technology first and second also with domain expertise. We can help with resource management expertise from our team. Pete Tyson with high solutions with pawntop experience

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