No two commercialization plans look the same. Unlike other key functions that operate with disciplined processes and a clear sequence of activities (e.g., clinical operations, regulatory affairs), commercialization must be tailored to a company’s aspirations, team resources, and capabilities, as well as whatever market dynamics are in play.
Consider these two examples. Both companies have a Phase 3 specialty asset and are preparing for their first commercial launch in the next 18–24 months. But their early choices have led them to very different places.
Company A has a first-in-class specialty asset entering a competitive class of therapies.
Given the drug’s novel mechanism and the high unmet patient need, they focused early resources on clinical development and regulatory success, delaying commercial input until proof of concept was established and the Phase 3 design was locked.
They now approach their PDUFA milestone with a newly formed commercial team and payer and prescriber insights suggesting mechanistic differentiation alone won’t support their access and pricing strategy. With just 18 months to go, they must divert resources from market development to fund new evidence generation and scramble to strengthen their value proposition and win payer and prescriber support.
Company B is also entering a competitive class of therapies, with a “fast follower” asset.
They recognized the market’s complexity early and built commercial input into their plan from Phase 2, using payer and customer insight to shape a clinical program designed for both regulatory and commercial success.
They now approach their PDUFA milestone with compelling Phase 3 clinical and cost data, and a value proposition already built to shift prescriber and payer behavior.
Variability Drivers in High-Stakes Decision-Making
Let’s acknowledge the many challenges emerging companies face: constrained capital, compressed timelines, lean teams, and limited information, just to name a few. Three additional forces are often layered on, and they frequently pull against one another when shaping commercialization decisions:
- Patient impact. Whether the drug reaches the patients it was developed for often comes down to how well commercialization is executed. That is a heavy, legitimate weight to carry.
- Business development, acquisition, or exit readiness. For many companies, commercialization decisions are made with an eye toward a future deal. That pressure can feel like survival mode and, compared to a pure patient focus, push decision-making down a different path.
- Market performance. Revenue and market share projections, competitive position, and reimbursement outlook, all affect stock price. And, in turn, the livelihoods of executives and employees. This adds a personal, financial dimension to already complex decisions.
The first force, patient impact, is widely understood and often emphasized in commercialization decisions. The other two pressures are frequently treated separately. In reality, all three may be present, something that can introduce bias and significantly shape decision-making.
The Service Provider Sprawl
When you couple high-stakes decisions with the fast-moving, entrepreneurial culture typical of an emerging company, efforts can quickly fragment. The desire to show progress across New Product Planning, Medical Affairs, Market Access, Marketing, and Commercial Operations often leads to widespread outsourcing of commercialization projects. Functional leads frequently explore vendor options on their own, without visibility into what other functions are buying or applying elsewhere. Hence, service provider sprawl.
Consider, for example, when the marketing team signs a claims data vendor to map the patient journey, only for Commercial Operations to select a different vendor months later to use claims data for determining the optimal field sales structure. Beyond the wasted time and budget, the company must now make high-stakes decisions based on two separate and potentially conflicting analyses. Will a third vendor be needed just to reconcile them?
When purchasing decisions are driven by tight deadlines, compelling pitches, or even fear of missing out, vendor sprawl can fragment the company internally, drive up costs, and ultimately send a disjointed message to the market.
Sorry, “Omnichannel” Can’t Fix It Later
There is a danger in believing that omnichannel can bring everything together in time for launch and resolve fragmented external messaging. It’s a term used so broadly today that it’s worth pausing to recap what “omnichannel” means:
Coordinated, personalized messages and interactions across every channel, delivering what each customer needs at each point in their brand experience.
It’s an appealing concept, but compelling messages and precise customer targeting can’t happen if teams and messages aren’t already working in sync. Omnichannel capabilities, while critically important, cannot overcome the challenges created by disconnected decisions and messages surfaced by different functions over many years.
Cutting Through the Sprawl
When it comes to tackling this kind of fragmentation, we have found that five disciplined (albeit unglamorous) practices hold up over time and in the face of complexity:
- Align before you activate. Omnichannel can amplify a coherent strategy, but it cannot create one. Before investing in channels, content, and customer engagement, ensure that functions are working from shared insights, aligned priorities, and a consistent value story. Integration must happen upstream — not at the point of execution.
- Build an integrated plan. At the outset, grounded in company vision, the asset, the market, internal capability, and real goals (not in whatever the most recent vendor pitch emphasized).
- Hold routine cross-functional check-ins. To assess the plan, interrogate the data, and provide visibility into the decisions being made and the results produced — rather than allowing each function to run independent reviews.
- Make room for the emotions and name them. Emotion is a normal part of high-stakes decision-making. Naming it (often called “affect labeling”) helps shift thinking to the rational part of the brain. That makes it easier to see where bias is creeping in, rather than spending energy pretending it isn’t there.
- Recognize that fragmentation rarely creates speed or efficiency. Even though it is often adopted in the name of moving fast.
Of course, these ideas are not novel. The companies that achieve commercialization success embrace the basics and have the discipline to apply them consistently, especially when pressure mounts and the temptation to skip them is high.
