CANTON, Mass. (PRWEB) February 26, 2015
The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), the world’s leading professional association dedicated to the practice of alliance management, announced the finalists for the ASAP 2015 Alliance Excellence Awards to be presented on Tuesday, March 3, at the 2015 Global Alliance Summit at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Florida.
Awards will be presented in the categories of Individual Alliance Excellence, Alliance for Corporate Social Responsibility, Innovative Best Alliance Practice, and Alliance Program Excellence. Finalist companies and organizations include Medifast and Medix, National Grid and Earth Networks, Sanofi and ImmunoGen, The Dow Chemical Company and The Nature Conservancy, Novartis and Malaria No More, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, Philips, Bayer HealthCare, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
“These prestigious awards honor exemplary business collaborations that create innovative organizational models and celebrate achievements in strategic alliance management,” said Michael Leonetti, president and CEO of ASAP. “They applaud progressive leadership and exceptional company-wide performance in major corporations, mid-sized enterprises, start-ups, and public-private initiatives across a diverse array of industries. Collaboration is often a winning strategy in business, and the performance of these partnering finalists proves it’s a valuable strategy for boosting profits and customer satisfaction, increasing new market segment penetration, and having a positive social impact.”
Past winners have received Alliance Excellence Awards for significant strides for increasing revenue, creative business models, product/service/technology enhancement, advancement of the profession, etc., that have positively impacted many facets of business—including marketing, sales, R&D/joint product development, regulatory affairs, strategic sourcing and services, and the channel. All winners shared three key achievements:
Creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that has evolved the art and science of alliance management
Compelling and measurable results
General persistence in overcoming obstacles
Individual Alliance Excellence
The Individual Alliance Excellence Award is given to a company that has excelled in planning, implementation, and results for a single alliance. The alliance may be between two companies or multiple organizations in the category of small-to-midsize company alliance and/or emerging alliance. The partnering finalists are:
Medifast and Medix: Combatting the growing global health problem of obesity, Medifast’s clinically proven, portion-controlled weight-management program is a winning combination with Medix’s pharmaceutical obesity products. Medix recently acquired weight control centers in Mexico City, Texas, and Florida, where Medifast is sold—significantly improving profitability by increasing their locations worldwide to 28. Creativity was a key component to their success: The first clinic was set-up in a tractor trailer to reach clients.
National Grid and Earth Networks: The utility company National Grid procured and donated 55 weather stations to schools and first responder sites in a partnership with Earth Network’s weather monitoring equipment distributor WeatherBug. The project provides free, accessible, local weather information to communities while improving storm response and power restoration, which saves local businesses and customers millions. Multi-partner involvement and extensive community participation, combined with increased sales and expansion, makes the project exceptional.
Sanofi and ImmunoGen: Established over a decade ago, this robust, ongoing R&D relationship has survived many corporate changes while advancing Sanofi’s presence in oncology biologics by developing collaboration products, as well as the transfer of ImmunoGen antibody-drug conjugate technology use of antibodies. Alliance management best practices played a critical role in managing multiple failures during their efforts to align and advanced eight products. This alliance demonstrates the possibility of a big pharma (more than 100,000 employees) successfully collaborating with a small biotech company (less than 300) through all stages—discovery, development, manufacturing, regulatory, and clinical trials.
Alliance for Corporate Social Responsibility
The Alliance for Corporate Social Responsibility Award is for partnerships that make a profound, measurable, and positive social impact. The principal objective of the alliance is social impact, not profit—although profit, especially if used to fund program expansion, is not discouraged. The partnering finalists are:
The Dow Chemical Company and The Nature Conservancy: A $ 10 million contribution from the Dow Chemical Foundation is funding this alliance to create a framework for protecting nature better by developing a methodology to identify and measure (or value) tangible benefits of ecosystem services. The process will integrate that valuation methodology into corporate decision-making processes—a first where a non-governmental organization and major corporation are working together to change corporate practices to provide a framework for other companies to model.
Novartis/Malaria No More: The Novartis Malaria Initiative has been at the forefront of providing life-saving antimalarial treatments without profit since 2001. Teaming up with Malaria No More, the partnership created a highly successful Power of One fundraiser that uses mobile technology and social media for their public education/fundraising campaign. The campaign is being studied for replication in other areas of public health because it has been so successful in closing the treatment gap, especially with access to treatment for children—the most at-risk group.
Innovative Alliance Best Practice
The Innovative Alliance Best Practice Award is presented to a company using new, individual alliance management tools or processes that have an immediate and powerful impact on the organization and/or discipline of alliance management. These tools or processes are not comprehensive alliance programs but additions to existing portfolios that address specific elements of alliance management such as measurement, training, conflict resolution, general communication across-the-partner ecosystem, or similar facet of the discipline. The finalists are:
Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson: Their globally accessible Alliance Scorecard and Assessment Tool can be used by one or multiple alliances to capture key strategic, operational, financial, and relationship metrics in a single assessment program, which allows participants to monitor progress individually or across the portfolio. Prior to the creation of this tool, most alliance data was captured manually or via surveys and was limited in relationship data, while this tool allows for a more advanced, holistic view.
Philips: Using a structured two-step approach to create a joint brand identity for an alliance, the company designed a framework and methodology that defines the most appropriate co-branding to prevents conflict, enhance effective communication between partners, and support an equal and well-grounded relationship. The process can be used as a best practice model by other organizations.
Alliance Program Excellence
The Alliance Program Excellence Award is given to organizations that exceed expectations by consistently implementing and managing alliance portfolios and demonstrating consistent success of those alliances over time. Winners build programs on creativity, efficiency, an integrated suite of processes, tools, professional development/alliance professional certification, and other elements. The finalists are:
Bayer HealthCare: Bayer invested significantly over the year into an Alliance Capability Enhancement Project to drive a partnering mindset and alliance best practices deep into the organization to achieve significant value through strategic alliances and other collaborative ventures. The results are significant: Their partnerships have resulted in significant growth in revenue, R&D and operational productivity, efficiency and cost reduction, market access and performance, optimization of key alliance relationships, and other benefits.
Takeda Pharmaceuticals: With approximately 50 percent of its pipeline partnered, Takeda evolved its alliance management practices significantly over the last two years by creating a Center of Excellence (COE) to reach more broadly across functions and geographies. By fully integrating the company, alliance practices are now shared with their alliance management professionals throughout the globe. The company also developed toolkits and a global Center of Excellence where members share best practices and tools for training, management, and research. An on-line portal and enhanced communications tools also have furthered the goal of global alliance management integration.
About the 2015 ASAP Alliance Excellence Awards
Award finalists in each category are selected by the ASAP Alliance Excellence Awards Committee led by committee chair, Annelouise Goodermuth, director, alliance management, strategy, science policy and external innovation at Sanofi. This year’s winners and other news from the 2015 ASAP Global Alliance Summit will be reported on the ASAP blog site http://www.strategic-alliances.org/blogpost/1143942/ASAP-Blog and via press release in March.
About the 2015 ASAP Global Alliance Summit
Held this year on March 2-5 at Hyatt Regency Orlando, the annual ASAP Global Alliance Summit is the world’s largest gathering of alliance, partnering, and business collaboration professionals. For more information or to register for this year’s summit, visit http://www.asapweb.org/summit.
About ASAP
The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) is the only professional association dedicated to elevating and promoting the profession of alliance management and partnerships. Founded in 1998, the organization provides professional development, networking and resources for cultivating the skills and toolsets needed to manage successful business partnerships. ASAP’s professional certifications include the Certificate of Achievement-Alliance Management (CA-AM) and Certified Strategic Alliance Professional (CSAP). Active global members include AbbVie, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Capgemini, Cisco, Citrix, Covance, Dell, Eli Lilly and Company, IBM, the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies, KPMG, Merck, Microsoft, Mission Pharmacal, NetApp, Novartis, Sanofi, SAS, Schneider Electric, Takeda, Verizon, VMware, The Warren Company, and Xerox. A complete list of global members is available at http://www.strategic-alliances.org.
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