In the world of emerging biopharma, building a standout brand or executing a flawless launch often takes center stage. But behind every high-performing organization is something far less glamorous yet equally vital: Operations to keep these functions running. Operational excellence doesn’t require fireworks—it needs clarity, consistency and a relentless focus on the fundamentals. The best operations teams stay agile, adaptable and focused by doing the basics right, repeatedly.
The real-world stakes of getting emerging biopharma operations wrong
Operations may live in the background, but its impact is front and center when things go wrong. Consider these real-life scenarios:
- A vice president of commercial ops finds out a rep was wrongly awarded a trip to Hawaii, only to trace this award back to data quality issues during incentive compensation processing.
- A senior director of IT battles frustration when business users abandon systems due to poor stability and missed service level agreements (SLAs), opting instead to develop shadow IT solutions.
- A senior director of analytics scrambles to prepare for the earnings call without access to the right data elements. In a world where agility is key, these delays can mean missed opportunities.
- A company launching its first-ever product decides to build a data management platform themselves only to realize they’ll need to add several team members to run day-to-day operations and platform upkeep.
The consequences of poor data, broken workflows and reactive processes are not just operational headaches—they directly affect strategic outcomes. Forty-five percent of commercial leaders admit that delayed data access has cost them potential wins. Meanwhile, 65% of sales operations time is still spent on manual tasks, leaving the door open to inefficiencies and human error.
Emerging biopharma companies have a few additional challenges to tackle:
- Constraints on the operations budget and the number of people they can hire for running operations. Maintaining homegrown platforms requires a lot of people and ongoing investment, which can quickly increase the launch budget required.
- Reliance on several siloed point solutions that increase the integration complexity of the ecosystem, leading to poor agility.
How can companies combat these challenges? Simpler, integrated and automated solutions can provide a bird’s eye view of the latest status of operations and visually highlight problems and delays. Once these are identified, an operations analyst can then triage quality issues with data providers and proactively communicate to field and HQ teams about potential issues in reporting.
Building a well-oiled machine: Introducing ZAIDYN® Operations Observatory
ZS’s ZAIDYN Operations Observatory group is designed to turn operations into a competitive advantage by focusing on four foundational pillars: Quality, agility, transparency and governance. It integrates experts, proven processes and technology to keep biopharma operations running smoothly:
- People: ZS brings deep pharma knowledge, a flexible delivery model (from managed services to self-serve) and on-demand talent
- Processes: Everything is measured and continuously improved with robust governance frameworks and scorecards
- Technology: Advanced workflow automation, integration with systems like Veeva and Salesforce and embedded AI proactively resolve issues before they disrupt operations
AI in biopharma operations: An agentic framework
What sets the ZAIDYN Operations Observatory apart is its agentic AI framework. The framework isn’t made up of one-off capabilities—they’re integrated into the entire operational life cycle, ensuring seamless and intelligent performance at scale. Emerging pharma companies are uniquely positioned with the opportunity to leapfrog in the age of agentic and generative AI. And they don’t necessarily have to overhaul foundational operational capabilities before they can start leveraging these newer capabilities:
- Self-healing agents can autocorrect processing failure and maintain SLA commitments
- Anomaly detection agents can flag inconsistencies in data or dashboards before they reach end users
- Smart Assist technology allows business leaders to query operational data in real-time using natural language
ZAIDYN’s AI-powered analytics engine is already transforming emerging biopharma operations.
From use case to business value: 2 archetypes of success for emerging biopharma organizations
While AI capabilities are essential, the real value comes from applying them with discipline across end-to-end operational processes. Here are two examples where ZS has helped clients unlock transformative value:
- Launch-ready in three months: A client needed to deploy a commercial reporting solution before a product’s launch in 90 days. By leveraging ZAIDYN’s out-of-the-box modules (standardized data adapters, canned dashboards and extract templates), ZS enabled a seamless rollout and postlaunch analytics support. The “design-to-operate” approach ensured launch readiness with long-term sustainability.
- Vendor transition and scale-up: Another client faced poor service from a previous vendor: slow manual processes, frustrated users and systems deemed unfit for growth. ZS executed a lift-and-leap transformation using our well-honed vendor transition framework—overcoming sparse documentation, limited stakeholder availability and legacy complexity. The result: scalable systems with built-in automation, reconciliation frameworks and renewed user trust.
Simplicity is power in emerging pharma operations
Operational excellence isn’t about flashy features. It’s about disciplined execution, adaptive frameworks and intelligent systems that empower teams to focus on what matters most: building great products and delivering for patients. When operations get the basics right consistently, intelligently and at scale, it stops being a back-office function and becomes a strategic engine for emerging biopharma growth.
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