$30 million in additional revenue with one competitive insight: A case study

How did one brand generate an additional $30 million dollars with one competitive insight?

How did the brand team uncover the competitive insight and took action on it?

In this article, you will discover what an Early Warning Intelligence Platform is and why it is a critical component of your product strategy.

The Genius Brand Team Story

This is based on a true story.

“He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a genius” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Genius Team was a global team responsible for the launch of a product with blockbuster potential.

The team had three main competitive goals. First, they were trying to catch-up with a competitor that had launched before them a product with the same mechanism of action. Second, they were trying to take market share from the established standard of care therapy. Third, they were trying to defend themselves from new competitors about to enter the market with products that had unique mechanisms of action.

In addition to the external environment, the Genius Team had to manage a lot of moving parts. They had to convince decision makers at the country level to invest in their product; they had to work with medical teams to develop and launch new clinical studies, and they had to communicate new clinical data to help the local brand teams launch the product.

From reactive to proactive

The Genius Brand Team was struggling to keep up with all the activities associated with launching a product globally and keeping up with the changes in the marketplace. The leader of the Genius Brand Team realized that her team was being reactive and to win she needed to change that. She wanted her team to be proactive and to figure out a way to take advantage of the market changes that were impacting all the market players.

The first step she took was to have a workshop to ensure everyone in her team had the same knowledge of the competitive landscape. Then they prioritized the competitors’ products, the competitors’ clinical trials and the events that might impact the landscape. Once they had done this they revised their strategy and assumptions.

The second step she took was the breakthrough for the Genius Brand Team. She decided to invest in an Early Warning Intelligence Platform (EWIP). The EWIP was built on the fact that all strategies are based on assumptions about the future. The EWIP process systematically monitored strategic intelligence indicators to continuously validate critical assumptions and monitor potential changes in the environment. The EWIP triggers “warnings” when the intelligence suggests that assumptions are not correct or identifies potential key events that will impact the strategy. The Early Warning Intelligence Platform provided the Genius Brand Team with the intelligence needed to be proactive.

The third step she took was to establish a cross-functional team to analyze the early warning intelligence and to develop contingency plans in case the early warning intelligence was confirmed.

From proactive to an additional $30,000,000 in revenue

Shortly after the Early Warning Intelligence Platform was established, the Genius Team received an early warning that a competitor product might be pulled out of the marketplace. The cross-functional team analyzed the intelligence and determined that this was a likely scenario.

The Genius Brand Team went to work by informing the relevant countries that a competitor product might be pulled out of the market thus presenting a business opportunity. The Genius Brand Team developed a strategy and communication plan to ensure that both sales representative and medical liaisons were aware of this potential business opportunity. Furthermore, additional investment was made in competitive intelligence to track and validate if the competitor was going to be pulled from the market.

A few weeks after the initial early warning the regulatory agency pulled the product from the marketplace due to patients’ deaths with the competitor product. The countries and respective field forces were prepared for this event. They quickly reached out to physicians that were using the competitor product and explained how to switch the patients to the Genius Brand Team product. This activity generated an additional $30 million in sales for that quarter alone.

Early Warning Intelligence Platform (EWIP)

An Early Warning Intelligence Platform ensures that the strategy remains on track with the changes in the competitive landscape. Also, EWIP helps to turn your organization from being reactive to being proactive and therefore minimize risk and maximize opportunities as we saw in the case study above. If you are interested in learning more about the Early Warning Intelligence Platform and how it can help your organization, please contact me here.

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About the author: Salvador Carlucci is the Founder of Atacana Group, a boutique agency focused on Competitive Intelligence and Strategy. He is the former Global Head of Competitive Intelligence for Roche. Prior to that, he was the Global Head of Competitive Intelligence for Novartis. Salvador started his CI career working as a CI analyst at a CI Agency.