The Challenge
A major pharmaceutical company hired CMK Select to manage all of its therapeutic compounds in early development, from proof of concept to regulatory submission. Upon realizing that the pharma company frequently hired multiple outside agencies to help produce major deliverables – oftentimes bringing on several new agencies at various points throughout a single project – the CMK Select team identified an opportunity to streamline the onboarding process.
As part of the existing process, senior members of the medical and marketing teams would conduct an hours-long on-boarding process concurrent with each new hire, to ensure each team member had a complete understanding of the project status. The new process initiated by CMK Select worked to improve efficiency by cutting down on the amount of time spent in redundant on-boarding meetings, as well as the replicated work that was being done by senior staff members as a result.
The Solution
CMK Select conducted a review and analysis of the existing on-boarding process. We observed the senior team members as they led their on-boarding meetings to gain an understanding of the content of these meetings and how they could be more efficiently utilized.
We determined that a single on-boarding meeting for all agencies at the start of each project would drastically cut down on the time spent in these meetings by senior staff, and we put a process in place to help make that happen. We directed our client at the start of each project to map out all of the work that needed to be done from start to finish, as well as to identify all of the agencies that would be needed to attain each deliverable. From there, they could plan one single meeting to onboard all agencies at the same time.
Finally, we set up a more streamlined communications process that provides each of the on-boarding agencies with digital copies of all work that has been completed to date, and then continues tracking all subsequent work, which can then be provided as a resource for additional agencies to reference.
Results
The single, comprehensive onboarding meeting produced multiple benefits, including saving approximately 10 man-hours of work on each project for the most senior team members. Rather than scheduling out multiple hours-long meetings, the client was able to schedule one meeting and bring all agencies up to speed in a single four-hour period. This new approach also allowed for a clearer explanation of each agency’s role in relation to the next, and it gave all of the agencies the opportunity to communicate with each other about what sort of work they would each be doing and what could be done in parallel to keep the project moving as efficiently as possible. This produced a cleaner and higher-quality end product, and because there were such open lines of communication in place from the start, it was accomplished without the need for multiple follow-up meetings later on.
CMK SELECT 