Bristol Myers Squibb - Driving scientific innovation with strategic sourcing and procurement

DRIVING SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION WITH STRATEGIC SOURCING AND PROCUREMENT

P R O J E C T

PA R T N E R S

COVER STORY

DRIVING SCIENTIFIC INNOVATIO WITH STRATEGIC SOURCING AN PROCUREMENT Brian Whitlock, VP of Strategic Sourcing & Procurement R&D at Bristol Myers Squibb on putting patients first by developing life-changing medicines.

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ON ND

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Headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is a global biopharmaceutical company with a mission to transform patients’ lives around the world by discovering, developing and delivering innovative medicines. ach year the company invests billions of dollars into Research & Development (R&D) and here to tell us more about the sourcing and procurement strategies empowering their endeavours is Brian Whitlock, VP of Strategic Sourcing & Procurement R&D at BMS. Brian has been at BMS for nearly nine years and leads a global team of sourcing professionals that manages third-party 4

relationships and sourcing strategies for the corporation.

“We’re a very large and complex organisation, supporting approximately 9,000 scientists worldwide which, as you can imagine, keeps us quite busy,” begins Brian. “Moreover, we’re enabled by thousands of suppliers. My team’s responsibility is working closely with our stakeholders in R&D, understanding their needs, seeking opportunities to

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partner externally with key providers and delivering a worldclass pipeline.”

Brian has worked in the life sciences industry for 23 years and his professional journey has greatly influenced his contribution to BMS. “I earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry with a concentration in biochemistry from George Mason University,” recalls Brian.

“It was in the winter break of my sophomore year when I responded to a job advert on the university career portal page, posted by a local organisation called Covance 6

Laboratories Limited. They were looking for part-time laboratory technicians and I knew very little to nothing about drug development at the time. I said to myself this would be a great opportunity for me to exercise my scientific abilities and learn a little bit about what it means to work in a professional laboratory environment versus just academia.

“So I responded to the job board and started with Covance two months later back in 2000. I was a lab technician doing genetic and molecular toxicology, which is basically a means by which we do cell-based assays to test whether a

“As a leader in R&D, we are big advocates of innovation and it's ingrained in our DNA” of my career. I’ve always had this yearning to know more and to learn more. I spent a lot of time networking, trying to understand what other groups did and how the work that I was doing fit into the broader drug development process. drug is harmful to the human body and what is its safety profile. I did that for about four years while I was earning my degree.”

Brian explains the most valuable takeaway from his experience at Covance was that it showed him what he wanted to do for the long term.

“Going into college I was set that I was going to work in a lab and I was going to do really cool science for my entire career,” says Brian with a smile. “But it took four years for me to realise that it’s not what I wanted to do for the rest

“Shortly after I got my undergraduate degree, I left the labs and went into a quality assurance role where I could interact with several different groups, build a greater appreciation for what they did, again, and start to put those puzzle pieces together. To make a long story short, I took a number of progressive leadership roles at Covance from relationship manager, to site lead, to division leader. I earned my MBA along the way because I had a real affinity towards the business side of drug development and getting involved in shaping an organisation. I 7

relished the chance to work with clients to deliver their portfolios.

Over the course of what ended up being just over nine years of tenure at Covance, I really wanted to get more into business strategy.

“In 2009, I left Covance when my wife and I moved to California, where I joined Amgen. This was my first entrance into a strategic sourcing role supporting R&D and over the course of five years at Amgen I ended up supporting most facets of the R&D value chain. By 2015, I had experience as a supplier, a sourcing professional but also as a stakeholder myself – what I call the trifecta. I was only in R&D during my final year at Amgen before BMS recruited me, and the rest is history.”

So how does BMS approach strategic sourcing while executing innovation and supporting highlevel company objectives in the process?

“BMS is considered a top quartile strategic sourcing and procurement organisation,” says Brian. “That means we have a multitude of capabilities that we enable the business with, whether it’s core sourcing, setting up sourcing strategies, delivering on those sourcing strategies or 8

ultimately partnering with leading third parties in the industry to further our business and to benefit patients.

“Another aspect of our sourcing capability is supplier diversity. We’re a massive proponent of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) at BMS. And that's not only D&I within our own employee base but with suppliers, patients, investigators, partner companies and small businesses.

In fact, BMS was just inducted into what's called the Billion Dollar Roundtable (BDR). This is a cross-industry group where the companies are recognised for sustaining a billion dollars or more of spend with diverse businesses.

We take a lot of pride in D&I with our suppliers and are happy to celebrate our BDR induction with our peers, employees and diverse businesses.

“As a leader in R&D, we are big advocates of innovation and it's ingrained in our DNA. Every day we work towards discovering or inventing new therapies that can benefit patients. Procurement plays a crucial role in this innovation.

People less versed in procurement may see it as merely negotiating, trying to drive costs down and getting contracts in place. In reality, a big portion of what we

do is understanding the trajectory that our stakeholders are on and helping them look around the corner, as I call it. Essentially we are very proactive as an organisation so we can not only help stakeholders foresee challenges before they bear consequences, but more importantly help be their eyes and ears in addition to the plethora of scientists in our organisation. What are the emerging technologies? Are there shifts in the way the industry can deliver medicines to patients?

How can we help our stakeholders

unearth those opportunities and then go after them?”

But Brian reiterates that the strategic sourcing, partnerships and R&D efforts he and his team facilitate all serve the overarching mission of BMS: to put patients first.

“We recognise there are very serious illnesses that plague mankind and there are patients waiting for life-saving medicines every day,” says Brian. “The mission of our organisation is 9

“We have really embarked over the last two years with an intense focus on bringing more medicines to more patients faster” to serve those patients. Over the course of the last couple of years now, BMS has recognised significant industrywide challenges, not only within our own pipeline and long-term trajectory, but also through several external forces – whether it’s geopolitical strife, supply chain challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, or 10

legislative and regulatory changes.

These are the headwinds that not only face our organisation but face our entire industry. But the one constant is that patients still need life-saving medicines.

“We have really embarked over the last two years with an intense focus on bringing more medicines

to more patients faster. There are a few ways that we’re focused on enabling this. Every group within the corporation is focused on adapting and helping the company enable that vision statement, but it’s of particular importance in R&D. On the research side, it's about how do we bring in new capabilities?

How do we leverage technology to help us improve the probability of technical and regulatory success (PTRS)? What we are aiming to do right now is to achieve a 20 per cent success rate of our early molecules that make it through the

pipeline. If we can hit 20 per cent, we will be an industry leader.

“On the development side of R&D, we are focused on reducing the cycle time it takes from a product that goes into the clinic to the time that product is approved by a regulatory body and then commercialised to patients that we serve around the globe. Our aim is to reduce that cycle time down to six and a half years, on average, to bring those medicines to market which would be a tremendous value driver for the corporation, for 11

our shareholders and ultimately for our patients.

“So those are the company aspirations and procurement has played a fundamental role in understanding those needs and the trajectory of the business, so we can explore the stakeholder’s ideas to meet these objectives.

We are far more than just an enabling function or a sourcing organisation, we are a thought

forward. He highlights BMS’s collaborative efforts with Syngene and IQVIA as emblematic of the business’s strategy for embracing partnerships.

“BMS has been a partner with Syngene for 25 years,” Brian explains. “We were one of the first biopharmaceutical organisations to partner in India back in the late 1990s. Many other businesses went to other geographies,

“BMS and Syngene have a relationship focused on research activities, laboratory activities that support clinical development, as well as early phase manufacturing capabilities” partner that leans in with our stakeholders to forge solutions for these challenging times. What we do best is we tap into the external market, we find ideas, tap other thought leaders externally and bring those into the organisation so that we can turn those ideas and best practices into our own solutions as well.”

On the topic of tapping into external partners and thought leaders, Brian stresses that the company’s partnerships are an empowering force driving BMS 12

whether it was Europe, North America or Asia, but BMS invested heavily into our partnership at Syngene, which is a company based out of Bangalore, India.

It is a relationship that we have nurtured and incubated. BMS and Syngene have a relationship focused on research activities, laboratory activities that support clinical development, as well as early phase manufacturing capabilities. Our relationship involves over 700 dedicated scientists at Syngene who are helping progress the BMS portfolio.

For more details, visit www.syngeneintl.com or write to us at bdc@syngeneintl.com © 2023 Syngene International Limited, All Rights Reserved.

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“IQVIA is a very large and sophisticated global drug development organisation,” says Brian. “We do a multitude of activities with IQVIA focusing on their positions of strength. IQVIA support a number of facets to delivering our clinical portfolio.

In the industry, IQVIA is very well known for data, whether it's patient or real-world data. Beyond their data expertise, we also have a strong commercial relationship

with IQVIA as well that helps inform our value access and pricing, our brand teams and our broader commercial leadership.”

Looking ahead to the future, Brian shares his vision for where he and his team can best support BMS as an organisation moving forward in a holistic array of endeavours that go far beyond the traditional sourcing or procurement functions.

“We do a multitude of activities with IQVIA focusing on their positions of strength. IQVIA support a number of facets to delivering our clinical portfolio”

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“For me and my team, our focus is enabling our stakeholders,” summarises Brian. “When I speak to my organisation, I ask what does success look like? Yes, we have savings objectives. We have supplier diversity objectives. We have compliance and employee engagement objectives. Those are all incredibly important. But at the end of the day, what does the organisation look to procurement to do most fundamentally? In short, it is to enable the business.

We help it move with speed and flexibility. We identify and nurture strategic partnerships. This is what my team has been focused on and what our primary focus is for the near future and in perpetuity.

“Now savings, diversity and innovation all come with inherently robust and strategic partnerships within the business. We do not lead conversations with ‘Okay, we must save $10 million,’ or ‘We need to go identify a diverse supplier’.

It's about understanding the needs of the business. I think 17

that has really been our recipe for success: we do not come to the table with a hidden agenda. We're transparent. We are authentic. It's about what does the R&D organisation need and sometimes it's helping them understand what they need.

“With Bristol Myers being such a large complex biopharmaceutical organisation, what we’re trying to do is to operate in a more nimble and more effective manner, which ties directly to our company mission of transforming patients’ lives. One of the things that procurement can achieve, not only within my segment of procurement but procurement more broadly, is simplification.

How can we reduce contract cycle times? How can we enable the business to buy against pre-negotiated relationships? What does a self-service procurement model look like? How do we help the organisation navigate risk? All of these questions are essential for our future work in procurement.”

For more information visit bms.com.

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e u l a V Added BEING PRESENT: A WORK IN PROGRESS

“What I really try to spend my time on, and it's a work in progress, is to be more in the moment,” says Brian. “I strive to live life and be present. We should take those experiences and use them to shape who we are and who we want to be, to make the most of the rest of our limited time on this earth.

“For instance, I attended the Chief Procurement Officer Summit in Miami in early November.

Traditionally I have declined these opportunities. I’d tell myself that I'm too busy. But I'm really starting to make a shift this year by spending less time just blazing through my emails or frantically tackling my to-do list.

I am working on taking a step back, networking and seeking to understand the learnings and challenges of others. What I've started to appreciate is that this shift is making me a more holistic and effective leader. It's been very fulfilling.”

Connect with Brian

GIVING BACK

“I'm a little past the midpoint of my career,” says Brian. “So I am now looking at how I can give back beyond just the day-to-day in my job.”

For Brian, this entails working with non-profits in his local community in New Jersey, USA. But he recalls how it was his 12-year-old daughter who provided him with the inspiration to act and helped him begin his journey of giving back.

“My oldest child is 12, she’ll be 13 in January 2024,” says Brian. “In 2021, she started a food drive in our neighbourhood. She did it all by herself. She made her own fliers and seized the initiative. We helped where she needed it, say with driving around, but she ultimately owned it. She collected over 800lbs

of food and donated it to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.

“Seeing my daughter’s efforts actually led me to getting more involved in the nonprofit sector myself. I now sit as a member of the Board of Trustees for a local organisation called NonProfitConnect New Jersey. As an organisation, we provide leadership and resources to either existing or prospective nonprofit leaders, but also to existing or prospective board members for local nonprofits. I spend a lot of my evenings working for the organisation.

“It’s incredibly rewarding and it’s also an eye-opening reality check. There are people out there who really need help and resources, so working with NonProfitConnect New Jersey has been a fantastic way of giving back.”

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bms.com

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