January rush: Proactivity or reactivity?

​This is my 4th year working independently under my own company, Fingerpost Consulting, and my 12th year as a ‘Market Access’ Consultant (as broad and vague as that term is!). Throughout that time, January has always been a quiet month. With this in mind, I tend to save this time for business planning for the year ahead, visiting clients to discuss potential opportunities and finishing off the few remaining strands of work resulting from December deadlines. Of course, as a freelancer, I’ve had ongoing contracts that required supporting, but nothing too strenuous.

I think you can see where I’m going with this, but this year has been the exception. I already knew that the month was going to be busy as by December we had committed to support an ongoing contract and three new outsourced payer research projects in Q1. However, the real surprise has come from the weekly, sometimes daily, requests and quotes to support other projects and contracts. And these have not just been requests for support from me, but for specific members of the Fingerpost team, including experts that we might be able to recommend, or for certain freelancers that we’ve worked with in the past. Most excitingly we’ve been approached to partner with other small agencies, helping them to expand their remit. The sudden demand has certainly taken me by surprise, particularly as given the time of year!
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It’s left me wondering whether the Fingerpost team are creating this situation or just reacting to demand which extends beyond our control. I’m happy with either, but I would love to know whether this  is going to blow over and be one of those ‘remember when we were crazy busy…?’ times, or whether this is here to stay and we need to think about ramping up our recruitment plan! I put it to the Fingerpost team in our weekly catch up, and here were some of our thoughts:

Reactive factors

• The increasing remit of market access

Understanding payer decision drivers has always been a key objective for traditional market access/HEOR teams and when I first set up as a freelancer, these are the clients that I thought would require my support. However, looking at our current client list we are now supporting more and more healthcare agencies (e.g. med comms, med ed, marketing strategy) to understand the global payer landscape and feed market access-specific recommendations into their projects. This appears to stem from the expanding remit of market access and the need to consider the payer perspective.

• Overflow of Q4

As December is a short month, it’s not unusual for projects to continue into January. Quite often there is a need to address comments on a deliverable or tie up a few final strands of a project. This year, ISPOR was slightly later in November which may have resulted in the slightly later commissioning of projects from conversations/meetings that occurred at ISPOR.

• Brexit uncertainty

This is purely speculative, but it seems like an easy excuse (i.e. Brexit must be to blame!) and if we’re looking at purely external differentiating factors, is one key difference with this year compared to previous years. Of course, there’s no evidence to prove a correlation, but one can’t help wonder if the current uncertainty surrounding the outcome of ‘Brexit’ is resulting in a rush to get budgets approved before March 29th.
 
On the other hand, we have been doing a lot behind the scenes to grow the business:
Proactive factors

• Building a targeted network of independent market access professionals:

We now have a database of 40 independent freelancers, 39 strategic advisors and 11 payers providing global coverage. Each contact is known to us, either through a previous working relationship or following a careful process of screening to make sure they reflect our values and reputation.  The purpose of our network is to help us pull together the required expertise to support the needs of each individual project we support. We also have access to a wealth of experience and expertise through the Kendal Network (more information here).

• Growing team

The recent additions of Victoria Wooldridge and Gina Furnival to the team have not only increased our capacity to manage more projects, but each also brings their own experiences and expertise to the team. Some of our clients have already started tapping into this additional resource, much to their advantage!

• Partnering with small to medium sized consultancies and agencies

As the business has evolved, we’ve focused more on working with small to medium size consultancies and agencies, rather than the big players who can easily draw resource from other areas of the business. By supporting with proposal writing, developing/delivering internal training and/or supporting deliverables, we have helped to generate further opportunities to work together.

• Delivering well!

The majority of our work is repeat business from agencies we’ve worked with previously. We are focused on delivering quality, getting the best outcome and are happy to step in when emergency support is required! This has resulted in a few late nights but it’s worth it to get a great outcome. We have now had a few instances where great outcomes have directly resulted in winning new business for our clients.
 
Most likely it is a combination of all factors, or it could be a complete coincidence, but once an analyst, always an analyst…. 😉
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If you’ve had a similar month, I would love to hear your thoughts on why that might be (you can comment below). Or, you may be in the position of expanding your business and are wondering how we could support you. We don’t just offer support and take on outsourced projects; we can help upskill your team too. For more information, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
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Catherine Bacon
cbacon@fingerpostconsulting.com
+44 (0)7584 067407