Planning Tools and Tactics to Achieve Cross-functional Alignment

By Michael Caso, Managing Partner

In my last post, Challenges/Barriers to Stakeholder Integrated Plan Development, the need and execution outline for a cross-functional “Vison Workshop” was introduced.  This workshop forms the foundation of short-and long-term stakeholder planning.  Once the consensus on cross-functional objectives are identified for the next 1 to 3 years, you are ready to begin tactical planning designed to accomplish your targets.
There is no shortage of companies with electronic tools to facilitate stakeholder planning and tactical execution.  Monocol, Pharmaspectra and PulsePoint all have stakeholder tools. Whether you are in the early stages of Stakeholder Engagement and require tactics like identification, profiling and mapping or in more advanced stages of engagement, the tools you utilize to document the tactics developed by the cross-functional team should demonstrate a number of characteristics:

• Utilizes the “KISS” Principle (Keep it Simple Stupid) - The level of simplicity will vary depending on:
  • The commercialization stage of the product (early/mid/late-stage development or post-launch)
  • The company experience in the marketplace
  • The number of cross-functional disciplines involved in the planning
  • Manpower and financial resources available to facilitate the planning and execution process
• Cross-functional‒friendly
  • Is sensitive to the lexicon and tactics of your stakeholder planning team?
• Commercialization stage adaptive
  • Can easily mirror the objectives of the Vision Workshop rolling 1 to 3-year plan
• Facilitates and tracks a continuum of engagements with KOLs
  • Identifies a progressive level of collaboration based on mutual interest and benefit
• Capable of tracking (and measuring) activities from strategic to transactional engagements
  • Interactions at annual congresses or KOL offices

So, let’s get specific about some simple tools for planning that will help to ensure cross-functional alignment for Stakeholder engagements.  My organization, Omni Healthcare Communications, has made a number of these available on our website (https://www.omni-hc.com/tools.html).  Several of these key tools are addressed below: 

• Stakeholder Engagement Plan Template – A basic general template that can accommodate cross-functional planning.  Once all of the individual team member plans have been created using this document, a consolidated plan can be established.
• Stakeholder Analysis Matrix – This template expands the traditional thinking of external stakeholders as only HCPs to additional influencer categories of government, societies, patient advocacy groups, etc.
• Individual Stakeholder Analysis – As stated previously, there are many organizations that can support your needs for identifying, profiling and mapping stakeholders.  The systems they provide can create great volumes of data on an individual target.  However, this Individual Stakeholder Analysis template should be sufficient for initial use.   
• Tactical Plan – Once stakeholder strategies are identified by segment, it will be critical to identify tactics designed to accomplish those strategies.  The tactical plan template will help to ensure that strategies and tactics (by stakeholder segment) are linked.  The strategies and tactics should be updated with the annual plan.
• Engagement Planning – Two templates are provided—one for centralized, strategic engagements and another for transactional, MSL interactions.  The forms can be useful in identifying collaborative opportunities between your organization and the targeted stakeholder.
• Engagement Tracking – Again, there are many highly sophisticated tools available.  However, the basic needs of documenting your interactions can be accomplished with the MS Access Database, Stakeholder Simple Database, which is available on our Omni-HC.com/tools.html page.

Ok, we’ve now looked at the history of stakeholder relations, challenges/barriers to integrated plan development, as well as planning tools to achieve cross-functional alignment.  Our next series of posts will focus on various ways to engage external stakeholders, whether they be strategic or transactional.