Gone are the old days when procurement is seen as wallet guard and gate keeper.

Over the last decade, there has been a lot of changes to how procurement should act, adapt and align to internal and external stakeholders, and be perceived as business partner to enable innovations – particularly within pharma’s R&D.

“The problems facing research organizations today range from well-documented decline in R&D efficiency to the rising cost of bringing new products to market,” quoted from a recently published white paper from Scientist.com, a leading online marketplace tailored for scientists. “The Scientist.com marketplace was designed to enable researchers to ‘do more with less’ by saving time, reducing costs, improving access to innovation and ensuring compliance with internal and external regulations.”

Philip Ideson, Managing Director at Art of Procurement believed, in many ways, procurement’s challenges today are to expand their value proposition and metrics, become a trusted advisor and most importantly, embrace new technology to evolve their delivery model, particularly in the drug development program. It is imperative that procurement leaders align with business stakeholders to deliver the enterprise business goals.

Having worked at both large pharma and fast growing biotechs, Mark Davis, Principal at NegotiumBio, LLC resonated, and suggested procurement should not be merely seen as an operation function. If they can leverage financial acumen and market insights to provide stakeholder intelligence, which they might either not have the time or experience to factor into their decisions, that is true value add—and an amplifying tool that procurement can help empower stakeholders’ decision making processes for competitive advantages.

Transforming procurement, strategic sourcing and category management in pharma R&D requires multiple stakeholders’ collaborations—from organizational set-up to technology investments—but can ultimately benefit patients with more accessible and affordable medicines.