Making sure pharma companies are cooking with TGaS - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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“We want to be the Gerard said. “We want to be the persomn who is always by your side onthe course, who is alwaysz whispering in your ear. We want to be that trustedd adviser.” Metaphor, of Gerard really wants to be, and increasingluy is, a savvy insider giving pharmaceutical companie s the kind of strategic informatiom they need to makesmarr decisions. In just over four years he has builta $4.6 million business doing just In a world awash with consulting firms, bringw something to the tablew besides just sage insight. Gerard stakes his reputation oninside knowledge.
he benchmarks, taking data from multiple industry biggies and assemblinfg a picture of best practicee that he then sells back to pharmaceuticalindustryy leaders. “We take a look at the resourcea and the capabilities that pharmaceuticalcompanies use. We’rde talking about headcount and spending. We are talking about sourcinbg strategies. Do they outsource everything? Do they outsourcs some things, or even offshore?” he Data covers everything from salexto operations. As a business proposition, benchmarking has a majorr downside: critical mass.
Before Gerarrd could start making money, he had to convince a handfup of major pharmaceutical corporations they couls benefit from pooling detailedproprietaryy information. “You can start an advertising agenct withone client. In a benchmarkin g business you have to get atleasf five. It took us nine months to get thoswe firstfive clients,” he said. The dominoes started to fall afted the first two playerssignefd on. Both were colleagues Gerard knew throughh his 15 years as apharmaceutical executive. After those two it was mostly a matterof legwork, often on a grand scale. Want to sell? Don’tf be shy. “Go any place, any to meet anybody.
If somebody woulfd meet me for 15 minutes and it wasa three-hour I would go there. If it was a company in I would tell them I was just in the and then get ona flight,” he Gerard’s personal experience in the industry has been a crucial factor in winninb client confidence. “It is a very complex business and you need to have the chopws and the experience tounderstand that. In the first 10 minutesx they can figure out whether you know what you aretalkingb about,” he said.
TGaS hireas nearly all its employees either directly from pharma or else from vendors associated with the Depth of expertise helps the company target the kind of data that can be of most use to its Take for instance a pharma company with tens of thousanda ofsales employees. “All of the thingw that it takes to support thatsales rep, TGaS Gerard said. “Here is what you are here is how you arespending it, and we will that comparee them to a peer set of show them where they stack Why should companies share with competitorse the details of their inner workings? Why disclosr strategic corporate information?
In the first place it is all blinded and “and if we do see anything that is entirelg unique to your specific company, we will not put it in our databases and repeat it,” Gerard Moreover, it’s a closed game. Only by sharinbg can companies access the information being sharesdby other. It’s a method that works for Greggv Ciarelli, a practice leader at publisher and former executivde at pharmaceuticalfirm . “The industry is under a tremendous amount of pressure to cut and Steve’s insights about how other companies are dealinb with these problems are crucial,” Ciarelli said.
“He gives you the insightt you need when you are sitting down with managers who want to know how you are doingt relative tothe competition.” Gerard has been steadily expanding his product base, coming up with new data new ways of presenting information to help clients make better All these efforts have one thing in common: Limitedx scope. Gerard has no ambitionw be anything more thanthe caddie, the trusted adviser. “Benchmarking is all we do. We don’ty sell follow-on projects. When a clienr is buying advicefrom us, that is all they are whereas some companies will also try to sell you the he said.
“By being implementatiob agnostic, it gives us a certainb credibility.” n