The sky’s the limit: growing together at Ashfield In2Focus

The sky’s the limit:
growing together at Ashfield In2Focus

Growth has been a constant by-word for Ashfield In2Focus, seen not only in its meteoric rise to the top of the CSO market, but also through the company’s own commitment to the personal growth of its employees. And as the industry’s reliance on contract services increases, a world of opportunity awaits at Ashfield In2Focus.

Change continues to colour the global pharmaceutical industry. The rapid onset of a shifting customer-base, increased scrutiny of healthcare budgets and a drive to contain spiralling R&D expenditure has led pharma to the consultation room, where its operational efficiencies have been thoroughly examined. The global economic downturn has only added to the symptoms. In response, the collective industry has prescribed a significant dose of restructuring as mainstream companies, both large and small, seek to redefine their sales and marketing strategies. This has had a negative impact on headcount across the sector, with the salesforce, naturally, among the casualties. And so we reach a dichotomy: big pharma is getting smaller.

“If you want to have a long-term career, the best company to go to in the whole industry is Ashfield In2Focus.”
Andy Holgate

Well, almost. The cull across the industry is not ubiquitous. In fact, while most of the sector has been taking the surgeon’s knife to its workforce, one company keeps getting bigger: Ashfield In2Focus. The industry’s efforts to refine its sales and marketing model have driven an increased need for flexible resource and stimulated further reliance on outsourced services. As the UK’s leading provider of contract services for the pharmaceutical industry, Ashfield In2Focus is well-placed to reap the rewards. What’s more, for its burgeoning workforce of talented and experienced sales and marketing professionals, the opportunities enabled by such growth are there for all to see.

Strength in breadth

The past 12 months have seen Ashfield In2Focus continue to expand its service offering. It has diversified its portfolio, bolting on new services to complement its traditional sales services. Last month, parent company United Drug announced the merger of two of the companies from within its Sales & Marketing division. The union of Universal CIT and Procon to form UniversalProcon Ltd in the UK (and UniversalProcon Inc in the US) creates a powerful force in the world of healthcare event management. Prior to this, in April, United Drug acquired Business Edge Solutions and Training (BEST) Ltd – a provider of personal, sales and team effectiveness training programmes. BEST not only augments Ashfield In2Focus’s already impressive training resources for its own employees, but, crucially, allows the company to provide innovative training programmes to its clients. These developments have led to the creation of more jobs and even greater opportunity for career progression within Ashfield In2Focus.

Special Ones – a profile of an Account Manager Atul Patel is an Account Manager at Ashfi eld In2Focus. Having worked previously as a general medical representative, he describes the transition into a more specialist role and the support he has received from his employer. “I am a Key Account Manager working in a very specialist setting. Most of my customers are NHS consultants in gynaecology, which means that I am now in more of a specialist hospital role, where my product is most applicable. In addition to seeing consultants, I also need to see individuals who control hospital finances. I have to tailor my messages to those who hold the purse strings and this changes depending on how individual hospitals buy products – it could be the supplies department, purchasing or pharmacy. The core skills required are Key Account Planning and prioritising. How do you determine which hospitals are key accounts and then, how do you plan to see them? Organisational and communication skills are vital. I also need to present economic arguments to customers, as well as clinical messages. How is my product going to save the NHS money in the long run? Ashfield In2Focus provides perfect support for these roles. They help you develop a broad range of skills, some of which you may already be using in a more general role, but they also give you the opportunity to do so much more. So many companies are downsizing and people are worried about job security. But Ashfield In2Focus is consistently looking to recruit people, and that provides the reassurance that there is opportunity there. And if you put yourself forward and have the skills, or are prepared to gain the skills, those opportunities can be realised .”

Evolution meets revolution

Ashfield In2Focus’s growth over the past decade has been a mixture of evolution and revolution. Building on firmly-established foundations and the continued investment of its parent company, the company has adapted to the dynamic and changing market environment and matched service provision with client need. In the process, it has established a breadth and depth of service that is unrivalled across the CSO market.

“Our broad service-offering gives us a distinct edge,” says Dan Piggott, Operations Director at Ashfield In2Focus, who this month takes up a new post heading up operations in the US. “We have a number of services that are unique to our business and aren’t replicated by any other CSO – and they are all vital. We are the only organisation of our kind that has a Medical Compliance department, including a Medical Director. In today’s environment, such expert support is essential, particularly when you are running things like nurse programmes. Equally, our new Commercial Solutions department does a lot of analytical work so that we are able to advise companies on the best use and placement of their sales teams. When we work with clients we provide a robust business model that offers strategic insight as well as tactical solutions. We are able to support our clients, and our employees, so much more than other companies in the market. Fundamentally, our own evolution has been very fluid. When the market has changed, we have been able to change with it and provide services that match client need.”

The special ones

One such area has been the growth in the number of specialist roles the industry has sought to fill. Companies across the sector are filling their product pipelines with specialist products. This, coupled with the need to navigate an evolving and ever-complex NHS environment, is changing the face of pharmaceutical sales. A new breed of medical sales professionals is emerging and the market is dictating a more strategic, rather than noise-led, approach.

“We are seeing growing demand for more specialist roles,” says Andy Holgate, Business Unit Director at Ashfield In2Focus. “These roles are deployed where there is a specialist product, normally in acute care, and the need to sell into a very defined, specialist unit. There are some very innovative and interesting new molecules coming through and these will require a more systematic approach to selling to break down some of the barriers that exist in hospitals where formularies are rigidly applied.”

Across the board, the market is changing and this is precipitating a new model of selling and requiring different skillsets among sales professionals. “Some of the biggest companies in the market are now deploying ‘environmental’ or ‘integrated healthcare’ specialists that have the skills and experience to sell to narrow, specialist customergroups. Others are looking to develop an Account Management approach where they sell to a wide range of stakeholders within a health economy and, in some cases, across primary and secondary care. In both cases, this requires a different breed of sales professional.”

The much-vaunted Account Management approach is, of course, not a new concept to Ashfield In2Focus, having been a key component in the innovative introduction of Regional Account Directors (RADs) in the early 2000s. Whether labelled as ‘Specialists’ or ‘Account Managers’, this new wave of sales roles requires experienced, high-calibre sales professionals. “Companies invariably want someone who has sold in a specific sector and knows the customers,” says Dan Piggott. “From our perspective, it’s about looking at skillsets and capability. If you haven’t sold in a specific, specialist market, you’re going to need the capability to take on the clinical data that’s required to sell effectively in that environment because, by definition, it’s a specialist role. The expectation of the customer that you are selling to is going to be high.”

Supporting personal growth

Ashfield In2Focus provides unparalleled support to equip its employees with the skills required to succeed in the modern market. Its commitment to training and developing its staff, along with a long-standing philosophy of promotion from within, is well-established. “Our people are our greatest asset,” says Dan Piggott. “We have to make sure that they are skilled and have invested considerable time and effort to ensure that they are. The Ashfield Academy, which is a management development programme, is really paying dividends. We also have the Emerging Leaders programme, which identifies senior management of the future, and the Achievers programme, which is our skills-base programme. These initiatives not only support people in the job they are doing now, but also prepare them for jobs further on down the road.”

The acquisition of BEST has enhanced Ashfield In2Focus’s training capabilities. BEST specialises in working with sales management, from first line managers up to Director level. “The philosophy is that if you develop the manager, the impact down the line to the representative is huge,” says Mark Pringle, Director. BEST concentrates on three key areas: Leadership Effectiveness, Team Effectiveness and Personal Effectiveness. “Leadership is a really interesting area, but often very little time goes into developing true leadership skills. We use a variety of psychometric tools and are licensed to run courses such as the prestigious Situational Leadership II from Ken Blanchard. When it comes to Team Effectiveness, we make a clear distinction between tradition ‘team-building exercises’ where groups learn to bond, and what we do – which is to look at how teams function. We do a lot of work with Intact Teams – for example, rather than take a manager on a ‘Building High-performing Teams’ workshop, where they learn the skills of being a better team player, we run that type of programme for a whole team – so you have the manager and all their direct reports participating.“

BEST’s Personal Effectiveness initiatives provide training sessions for managers and follow them up with innovative one-toone Coaching Clinics, where individuals are encouraged to share their problems and receive independent third-party feedback. While the majority of BEST’s work will be provided as a service for pharma companies, Ashfield In2Focus employees also benefit from its expertise. “We provide internal programmes and also run the Academy for high-performing representatives,” says Mark. “Given that BEST also operates in other sectors, we are able to bring best-practice programmes to Ashfield In2Focus, keeping training up-to-date.”

Opportunity knocks

Clearly, the benefits of working for Ashfield In2Focus can be distilled into one word: opportunity. “We have a constant desire to build opportunity,” says Andy Holgate. “For almost ten years we’ve had a culture of promoting from within, nurturing talent and encouraging people to rise through the ranks. We are investing so much in bringing new services into the organisation and as those businesses expand and demand for those services increases, the number of roles that we have to fill is only going to increase with them. This is an enormously exciting place to be. For people who have the right attitude, there are not only some great jobs here at Ashfield In2Focus but, more importantly, there are some great careers waiting to be built.”