Question

Hi,

I would like to have answer in the below case.

Step 1. In groups of three to five students, assume that you are a consulting team to a family business. The family has ased an inheritance to acquire a medium-sized pharmaceu- dical company. Last year, sales were down 10 percent from the previous year. Indeed, business has declined over the past three years, even though the pharmaceutical industry has been growing. The family that acquired the business has asked for your help. Step 2. Your task as a group is to rank the priority of the Market research New-product development Human resources Product promotion Quality assurance Sales Legal and governmental affairs Office of the comptroller al functions in the order of importance for assign-ten functions, sharing your reasons Step 4. As a group, discuss the order of importance for the ing additional resources to improve business in the future. Step 3. Individually, rank the following ten functions in order of importance, and make a note of your reasons: priority should relate to the company's strategic needs. Step 5. How does the groups reasoning and ranking differ from your original thinking Step 6. What did you learn about organization structure and design from this exercise?

Answer 1

The sales of this particular organisation has been declining even though the industry has been growing.So we assume secondary research has given us this data. Now we must look at primary research . In a pharmaceutical industry the marketing is very different from other industries.Here your marketing is not directed towards the actual buyer or user of medicines that is the patient. You are targeting the physician who would be prescribing these drugs. So your survey needs to be directed towards the doctor to find out why he is not prescribing your drugs. Alternatively what drugs he is prescribing. If we come to new product development, we again need to understand a market gap that is in which therapeutic segment there is lack of efficacious drugs. So we go to the same set of respondents the doctors and try to find out where we should focus our R &D.

If I am to rank different departments in terms of importance , I would choose the following order.based upon strategic needs.

The most important in new product development. In the pharmaceutical industry you need a blockbuster drug to gain market share . This can only happen if you are constantly focusing on R & D.

The next most important department is quality assurance. In a healthcare industry, quality is of paramount importance.

The next more important department is market research because it will give you trends on where to focus your research.

At the fourth position would be Sales .Sales is the lifeblood of any organisation.

Office of the controller becomes the next most important department as drug industry is a highly regulated industry .

In highly regulated industries legal issues are paramount ,so legal department becomes my next important department.

Government Affairs would be next followed by Human Resource Development.

Do we need additional resources to grow business in the future . But we need to determine where we need to add additional resources . Should it be in R & D or Sales . R & D and Sales would be the two core functions as they are directly contributing to revenue.

In terms of deigning organisation structure , we are looking at a divisional structure reporting to a central command . On one hand we may develop capability as we looking at stability . However only month , we can see if a local structure is effective.