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Perhaps you run a small business and have a belief that you simply don’t have the time to consistently monitor your competitors and your market as you should. Keeping the business afloat is paramoun

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

t to you, and hiring additional staff to address this area isn’t an option at this juncture. Consultants aren’t an option either because they’re costly, or your company can’t sacrifice the time nece

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

ssary to properly educate an outsider about your inner business workings. For any of these situations, there is an alternative if you truly want to keep tabs on your competitive landscape: have your

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

current employees take responsibility.

Tasking your existing employees with developing competitive intelligence for small portions of the overall endeavor isn’t that time consuming, and it will all

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

w them to feel like they are part of the strategic planning process. If your company has a sales or marketing department, these employees serve as the ideal candidates for undertaking competitive an

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

alyses. They should be familiar with the market to begin with and have contacts throughout the territory which may provide some inside information. To think your sales or marketing staff doesn’t co

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

mmunicate with a competitor or two is rather na?ve—it happens, and it’s a reality you can use to your company’s advantage if it’s encouraged instead of frowned upon.

What kind of information do you

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

need from each employee as it pertains to the competitive landscape? Capturing the following competitor data is a good start:
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• How your company can take adva

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

tage of their weaknesses
• How your company can minimize potential threats from the competitor
• Product and service offerings & changes
• Pricing structure & fluctuations
• Plan

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

s to expand or consolidate operations
• Management & staffing changes

Most top sales and marketing reps will know this kind of stuff inside and out (on your strongest competitors) without

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

having to do a ton of “homework,” but that doesn’t mean the information is being shared throughout the ranks. Often times it’s not, and that’s a contributing factor as to why there is typically a gr

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

eat divide between the top and bottom performers. This presents an opportunity to improve overall sales performance in addition to other benefits mentioned in this article.

Once you’ve gotten your

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

mployees to gather and analyze competitive data, how are you going to efficiently distribute it amongst the ranks? Why not host mandatory weekly strategic meetings to feed this information into your

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

organization’s collective mindset? As co-workers demonstrate a solid understanding of a specific competitor or issue, they become the so-called defacto in-house “expert” on that competitor or issue

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

which their co-workers will value. It will raise mutual respect levels and give employees the opportunity to develop better presentation and teaming skills. Other workers will follow suit, thus in

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

creasing your entire company’s competitive intelligence. Choose to focus on one competitor or issue per week, and the meetings won’t infringe too much upon the normal work day. The weekly strategic

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

meetings could be conducted over lunch, as an internal lunch and learn, where you order food for all in attendance in exchange for their undivided attention. Yes, you’ll have to pay some money for f

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

ood, but it’s cheaper than hiring additional staff, and it raises the bar across the board for your organization to become a more competitively focused entity.

To summarize, the resources are likely

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

within your reach to gather and distribute competitive intelligence throughout your organization if you desire to make this important for your organization. Smaller companies simply don’t devote en

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

ough attention to expanding their competitive intellectual capital, and this is a creative way to get more people involved in your strategic efforts and team build while maintaining some cost control

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Many people say they want their own business, but have no idea what's involved in such an endeavor. Having your own business is nothing like having a job, and most peoples experience is with having a job and working for someone else.

Just as the car crested a hill it stopped. The engine went silent and the car just coasted. Thinking quickly, Simon managed to steer onto the shoulder of the road before he came to a complete halt. It was only then that he noticed the needle of the fuel gauge resting comfortably at its lowest position.

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