NEW YORK—Seeking a more streamlined business development process for pharmaceutical companies, Vertical*i, a provider of innovation management solutions, has teamed up with Thomson Scientific, a research information provider, to create a Web-based platform designed to enable multi-project, collaborative business processes.
The partnership will combine Vertical*i's Application Suite for business development, licensing and alliance management with Thomson Pharma's extensive drug pipeline information.
According to Guy Henninger, senior vice president of business development for Vertical*i, the interface will deliver an end-to-end solution for streamlining the business development operation in pharmaceutical companies.
"In an increasingly competitive landscape, pharmaceutical companies need a way to identify promising new drugs quickly and evaluate these opportunities efficiently before their competition beats them to the negotiating table," Henninger says. Henninger adds that the interface is intended to solve competitive struggles between big pharmas to create promising new compounds.
"Ultimately, when it comes to creating new compounds, it comes down to the merits of the deal, but often times, the person who gets there first has the competitive advantage," he says. "The combination of data from Thomson and the streamlined execution capabilities of Vertical*i will allow those companies to get to the deal phase faster."
The new interface—Vertical*i-Thomson Webservice—consists of technology components from each company and provides a connection that allows Vertical*i users to initiate a search for drugs in Thomson Pharma from within the Vertical*i application. Users can then directly import the data into a business development opportunity. From there, users can track and manage all deal-related information and use the collaboration capabilities of Vertical*i to execute the deal.
"We've had several customers in the past who said they used Thomson data for classification of drug compounds," Henninger says. "They were manually entering that data into Vertical*i system or just importing it through Excel files. They asked if there was a way to create an electronic interface."
The conversation that ensued was both technical and business-related, Henninger says.
"In the end, we put together a sales cooperation agreement under which both sides have developed the interface and offer it to their customers," he says.
Jon Brett-Harris, EVP of pharma/chem markets at Thomson Scientific, also praises the companies' synergies as a competitive boost for life science companies.
"Our clients have always enjoyed the richness of our content and the ability to research the most up-to-date intelligence on the drug discovery and development pipeline," Brett-Harris says. "The Vertical*i-Thomson interface provides a seamless way to turn this intelligence into action."
The partnership will combine Vertical*i's Application Suite for business development, licensing and alliance management with Thomson Pharma's extensive drug pipeline information.
According to Guy Henninger, senior vice president of business development for Vertical*i, the interface will deliver an end-to-end solution for streamlining the business development operation in pharmaceutical companies.
"In an increasingly competitive landscape, pharmaceutical companies need a way to identify promising new drugs quickly and evaluate these opportunities efficiently before their competition beats them to the negotiating table," Henninger says. Henninger adds that the interface is intended to solve competitive struggles between big pharmas to create promising new compounds.
"Ultimately, when it comes to creating new compounds, it comes down to the merits of the deal, but often times, the person who gets there first has the competitive advantage," he says. "The combination of data from Thomson and the streamlined execution capabilities of Vertical*i will allow those companies to get to the deal phase faster."
The new interface—Vertical*i-Thomson Webservice—consists of technology components from each company and provides a connection that allows Vertical*i users to initiate a search for drugs in Thomson Pharma from within the Vertical*i application. Users can then directly import the data into a business development opportunity. From there, users can track and manage all deal-related information and use the collaboration capabilities of Vertical*i to execute the deal.
"We've had several customers in the past who said they used Thomson data for classification of drug compounds," Henninger says. "They were manually entering that data into Vertical*i system or just importing it through Excel files. They asked if there was a way to create an electronic interface."
The conversation that ensued was both technical and business-related, Henninger says.
"In the end, we put together a sales cooperation agreement under which both sides have developed the interface and offer it to their customers," he says.
Jon Brett-Harris, EVP of pharma/chem markets at Thomson Scientific, also praises the companies' synergies as a competitive boost for life science companies.
"Our clients have always enjoyed the richness of our content and the ability to research the most up-to-date intelligence on the drug discovery and development pipeline," Brett-Harris says. "The Vertical*i-Thomson interface provides a seamless way to turn this intelligence into action."
