In the Future, Companies Will Be More Flexible and Genuine!

We know that, in the future, companies will be significantly different, with employees having a more relevant role in defining how they want to work.

Profile

With a professional career full of achievements and difficult challenges and more than 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry, Paulo Teixeira, Country Manager of Pfizer in Portugal, has held several positions of increasing responsibility in the areas of Sales and Marketing in the Abbott, Grünenthal and Wyeth companies.

And over an eight-year career at Pfizer, he has led the Global Established Pharma Business Unit since 2013.

Paulo Teixeira graduated in Sociology at the University of Coimbra, holds an Executive MBA from the ISCTE-IUL INDEG Business School and has achieved a Master’s degree in Marketing Management from Instituto Superior de Gestão.

We thank you for the opportunity and the challenge of putting current issues in the especially volatile world in which we live, we suggest that we begin our conversation with your current challenges.

What are the main challenges of your current responsibility?

In the perspective of what I see as my main mission, the great challenge is to ensure that the Portuguese have quick and equitable access to the benefits that the innovation of our medicines and vaccines bring to their health and well-being.

For this, it is essential to work together, cooperate and partner with the different parties involved – authorities, health professionals, patients, caregivers, among others.

In this sense, it is essential to ensure alignment and a unified voice, in a company with a matrix structure, organized in independent and very diverse business units.

The search for a balance between short-term “pressure” and a medium-term strategic vision is a real challenge.

Lastly, I mean what is central – people. Ensuring that we have the skills necessary to respond to an ever-changing environment in the company, to reconcile each employee’s individual expectations in the time we spend on “more with less”, to ensure that every person who works at Pfizer is motivated and committed with our mission with health in Portugal.

In your industry, what big current trends would you highlight?

We are living through an admirable era of medical research and scientific progress that will result in future advances and cures that will transform the lives of millions of people in the coming years.

We are witnessing a paradigm shift towards prevention, diagnosis and cure. In addition to precise/personalized medicine, it will be possible, for example, to predict the likelihood of the diagnosis of certain diseases, and to be able to act in prevention and even cure, making diseases of today become the care of the past.

At the same time, pressure on health systems, with limited resources to respond to growing health care demand and citizens’ expectations, has led governments and taxpayers to increasingly focus on the real-life outcomes of product use and procedures, on the basis of which they measure success, and on which the remuneration of firms depends.

The greater scrutiny and demand on the value of the answers we offer, technological evolution, a new concept of health care, the entry of new players, among others, impose a new business model and organization. The fastest-adapting companies will be those that will survive.

It certainly recognizes the current challenges faced by companies in the areas of Business Analytics (BA) and Business Intelligence (BI), which is also the core business of REBIS in the market and one of the main concerns of CEOs worldwide.

In the context of BA and BI, what is the relationship of your company with the data and the critical information for the business?

We have witnessed a significant expansion in the volume and diversity of clinical information in recent years, a trend driven in large part by continued innovation and the large-scale use of electronic medical records, high resolution imaging and genomics.

This ever-evolving new data ecosystem provides a critical opportunity for business decision-making at all levels: optimizing innovation, improving research efficiency and clinical trials, and providing new tools for healthcare professionals, consumers, regulators and investors.

Only what can be measured can be changed. The challenge is to be able to strategically guide the selection of data to meet the needs and priorities of the business.

It is still in the capacity to integrate, surpassing silos of information that often result from the existence of organizational silos. Managing and integrating data generated at all stages of the value chain, from research to real-world use, is a critical requirement for companies to get the most from innovation.

What implications will such trends have on business and people?

Achieving the benefits of Business Analytics and Business Intelligence will require a change in the way companies organize their decision-making process.

Strong leadership is essential to respond to the initial resistance to a model that bases its decisions on data and less on internal knowledge.

It is necessary to provide companies with a mix of skills – management, statistics, programming, data management, etc., and systems that ensure the rapid dissemination of information and results, making them an effective management tool.

In general, what is the distinguishing factor that stands out in the relationship between companies and their clients?

Knowing the needs of customers is critical. The way each company manages to meet those needs will be what distinguishes them. The skills of business intelligence and business analytics are fundamental at this point.

In today’s world, where the information available is colossal, “filters” are required. It is necessary to transform all this data into information that supports the decision-making of companies in differentiating areas and that provide a clear competitive advantage.

For you, innovation is …

For us at Pfizer:

“Innovation, more than being ahead, is being by your side.”

To innovate is to respond to people’s expectations and needs, providing them with something precious for a full path: health and well-being.

And in the future, in 2030, what will companies be like?

They are bound to be very different. We are moving towards a more collaborative way of working, with partners very different from those with whom we have worked so far. There will be a great technological dependence.

They will be less hierarchical, more flexible companies, in which employees will have a greater role in defining the way they want to work. I believe they will be more genuine, reflecting a sincere concern with society in its actions and decisions.