Pharmaceutical New Product Planning Team Size Determined by Number of Brands Managed

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- With all of the activities that new product planning teams often coordinate, the staff size can be construed as relatively low, according to a new study from Cutting Edge Information.

Cutting Edge Information’s recent study, “Pharmaceutical New Product Planning: Building the Framework for Brand Commercialization,” revealed that when comparing staffing trends across various company sizes, the numbers alone do not paint the entire picture. In fact, one determining factor for calculating new product planning team size is the number of brands that they manage.

The average number of brands managed per new product planning FTE at large companies is approximately three, with small to mid-sized companies averaging 1.3 brands per FTE. These numbers, however, do not indicate the actual number of brands that one new product planning employee manages, but rather a normalized metric to represent for a typical new product planning team’s staffing needs.

With the exception of large pharmaceutical companies, the data show that many surveyed companies fall within a narrow range of brands per FTE. This narrow range signifies that the staffing needs for larger and smaller pharmaceutical companies, at least at the brand level, are relatively similar. For the majority of companies, 1.0 to 2.5 FTEs per managed brand is the ideal staffing range for new product planning teams, according to Cutting Edge Information’s data.

“Pharmaceutical New Product Planning: Building the Framework for Brand Commercialization,” (http://www.cuttingedgeinfo.com/research/portfolio-management/new-product-planning/) features detailed data on new product planning’s early commercialization efforts including team structure and reporting lines, budgets and staffing—encompassing staff education levels, background and compensation metrics—and business development efforts. This study is designed to help pharmaceutical companies:

• Increase new product planning resources to support growing brand responsibilities as developing products move closer to launch.
• Communicate and work with clinical teams to insert commercially focused data collection into clinical trials.
• Facilitate easy transition of brand responsibility between teams by leveraging new product planning team members’ expertise.
• Leverage new product planning teams’ scientific and commercial expertise and unbiased perspectives to support business development groups.

For more information about new product planning benchmarking, contact Cassie Demeter at 919-403-6583.