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Managing the most important asset in R&D—Resources that enable your portfolio
Overview
The last two years have introduced substantial disruption to ways of working. Resignations are skyrocketing, organizations have shifted to hybrid working models at-scale, and while there is increased access, there is unprecedented competition in the war for talent. These factors have put more pressure on resource and talent management to retain their top performers, meet portfolio demands in a changing environment, and to recruit the key skills required to deliver a next-generation digital organization.
Pharma R&D organizations need the ability to quickly understand their competency requirements and bench strength, evaluate the productivity of the workforce, and proactively hire for key differentiating skills that are required to deliver against the R&D pipeline. This paper will explore tactics used by biopharma organizations to optimize resource decisions, and provide keys to success for building an accurate, scalable, and agile resource management capability in your organization.
What is resource management in R&D?
Put simply, resource management (RM) is the ability to master demand—how many people you need—and supply—how many people you have. A leading practice RM capability dynamically predicts demand based upon the portfolio book-of-work, and highlights capacity bottlenecks for key skills & roles that are in short supply. It provides insights to leaders to hire the right people, and optimize allocation of team members to deliver the highest impact work.
Insights enabled through effective resource management include:
- Rapid understanding of my people—how many I have and their key skills & experiences
- High confidence in short-term (12–18 months) and long-term (2–5 years) resource needs
- Proactively making in-source vs. out-source decisions based on capacity & skillsets
Implications of ineffective resource management include:
- Effort is spent on lower-priority, less valuable projects
- Not having enough people, resulting in burn-out, attrition and short-staffing
- Quality risks from not having enough of the right people to deliver the work
- Short-sighted portfolio decisions that have a negative downstream portfolio impact
Effective resource management is supported by four core capabilities: supply management, time reporting, demand forecasting, and in specific cases, named resource allocation.
Importantly, these capabilities must be supported by a strong organizational vision, consistent definitions and methodology, a cohesive operating model, and intuitive data visualizations and analytics that provide insights.
Headcount / supply management
The ability to understand number and type of resources across the portfolio to compare against demand and utilize strategic headcount decisions
Time recording
Measurement and analysis of effort spent by resources in R&D to ensure effort alignment with strategic priorities
Demand forecasting
The ability to generate an estimate of future resource needs required to support the overall portfolio of projects in R&D
Named resource allocation
The capability to efficiently assign and schedule resources within and across functions to balance workload and prevent overutilization
Aligned vision, methodology and operational model
Information organized and shared via a trusted central portal that helps functions, projects and operations support day-to-day operations
Reporting and Analytics
Information organized and shared via a trusted central portal that helps functions, projects and operations to support day-to-day operations. The capability to efficiently analyze resource management data to inform business events i.e, business development, scenario planning, functional capacity analysis, sourcing strategy, etc.
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