"A non-value activity may also be defined as an acivity requiring time, space or resources for which a customer is not willing to pay."
But you are willing to pay and you do so FREELY. So please continue to pay and keep me employed and keep-up the spirit of "value-added" by your own actions.
You are a complete moron... Are you ever going to tell us which "value-added" job you fail daily at?
Sure, I will tell you my “value-add” jobs since it seems that you have completely stipulated that your profession is completely non-vale-added from the patient’s point of view by not responding to any pointshere, thus establishing their credibility ,but simply challenging my credibility in making them. It will also show you why I have a particular disdain for Novartis Reps in particular but have and am working at the expense of Pharma Reps in general, how your own companies have paid and do pay me and many other to use the fact that you are of limited value to them and how this has led you and your profession to be in the state that it is in. First my Bona Fides:
Just out of high school I was an Army Ranger and served in the first Gulf War (how this applies to this post later). A year after the war I got out and went to one of the top private universities in the country on a track scholarship. After graduating, my first job was as a sale rep at a newly formed Novartis where after 3 years of promotions I was given a pretty big job in marketing. After 3 more years I left and went to business school at one of the, at the time, top 5 business schools in the US for an MBA. After that, I got out and spent about 6 years in one of the largest International consulting firms in the world. For the last few years I have been at of one the many boutique consulting firms as a partner.
So, someone above questioned my “training” and the amount I earn - as you can see from my history I started out making what an average pharma rep makes and have made more than that ever since. Now in fact, I make about 4 1/2 times per year what an average pharma rep makes (I know both what, and how, and your “value propsition to the company and industry as I have both done the job, managed the job, positioned the product and gotten paid to advise on how to structure the entire organization) and have done so for the last 5 years or so. You also challenged the value-add of my work. I, my colleagues and many others in my practice have and now get paid allot of money to know how you are and are not, and to who and who your are not, value - add.
Someone also called me angry and basically told me to get a life. I am a bit angry and that helps motivate me and I will show how my experiences in the Army and the first war shows that and since I have earned lots of money and am on track to do so allot more I am very secure. My two children go to the private schools etc etc. We just got back from about 2 weeks biking in Tuscany and my many of my most previous posts were made via my iPad from there so I am very refreshed and ready to sit down and explain this to all of you now.
When I was in Novartis is sales and later in marketing I know that my value-add function was to create revenue through sales. After my MBA and coming back to Novartis to work on a few engagements my value-add function to Novartis was to show them how to increase the value-add of their sales and marketing functions. Basically efficiency / productivity = total costs of the functions / revenue generated by those functions which by definition this has an effect on the profitability of the functions. When we were paid to make these analysis's it was sill during the “Golden Years” of Pharma; the real heavy regulation was just beginning, the big non-conformance / whistle blowing lawsuits were jut really getting started and the bite from Managed Care / GPO etc was really just starting to hurt profitability at pharma. So all pharmas were engaging companies like us to look how to increase their overall profitability and my engagements were all, due to my experience and specialty in my MBA, on sales and marketing.
This was all value-add work to Novartis as they have and still do implement a “play-book” of strategies that have doubled the revenue / head count of sales and marketing folks and tripled the profitability. Remember, this is independent of total revenue generated by sales so, for instance, if sales decrease due to a drug falling out of patent protection and going generic they simply reduce the sales force to match the fall in sales. I am talking about taking a steady state process (no changes in the products in the market) and increasing the sales with the same number, or less, of sales and marketing people and greatly increasing the profitability of these sales. Even though we did this work for Novartis, other consulting firms did the same work for other pharmas. And not only that but those concepts are now part of the “DNA” of the organizations that for which we worked. In effect, I worked with others to create value by decreasing the non-value-add work of your profession. Your non-value-add is my value add.
Now, as I said I am a partner at a small boutique firm that is getting paid both by pharma companies as well as Fed and State Govts in order to implement the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obama Care. Just like my earlier work, that I was paid much more than anyone other than they guy claiming to be in the “1%-2%” of earners in the US, I am now getting paid allot to take my earlier work ever further. We are but one of dozens, soon to be hundreds, of consulting firms who work for the pharma companies as well as the govts to increase the value add of US Healthcare. And let me tell you, finding opportunities to do that is very easy. The govts are very interested in hearing how they can pay less for healthcare and get the same or more results and as I have said elsewhere pharma is the first US Healthcare industry and the cross-hairs, your leaders like Joe Jimenez, all know this and are paying us well in order to tell them how to make as much or more money with even less of you and someday, like Europe, almost know of you.
The biggest barrier to reducing much of the current sales and marketing functions and costs is that they all know that in many markets they only need those functions and associated costs in 2 areas - where they have the only and maybe even the best drug and so need marketing and sales in order to ensure that they get the most out of that market while they have these advantages. Then, if they have the second best drugs in that market they need you to push it as a cheaper alternative or as a part of a “bundle” with other more popular / effective drugs. Everyone in the room, by this I mean pharma leadership and us, know that sales and marketing isn’t needed in both of these cases and that with proper regulation the same effects can be achieved, they can make more money because any loss in sales will be more than made up for in the reduction of costs when they eliminate the costs in sales and marketing in those cases and the only requirement is that they don’t “unilaterally disarm”. When regulation is rolled out and protects the pharma companies profits but makes most sales and marketing obsolete there will be “winners and losers” among the pharmas but who those are will be result of lobbying clout and nothing else.
The Faux Facts that you guys cling to about the US tax code and the costs of US Health Care and the way it is organized and the results of it vs the benefits of the way that Western Europe may make you feel good and acts as talking points for politicians who use it to oppose Obama but no one, behind closed doors when talking seriously about the future of healthcare in the US, use them. The US Health Care industry carefully and gingerly support some politicians and opinion makers in order to both slow the changes and maybe shape the outcome but they don’t really oppose it. In fact, like I said they are paying many people like me to help them both understand the coming changes as well as understand how to implement it. They know the value-add people like me gave them in the past (that is but one examples, others were, for example, how to keep the reduction in the production from research and development from killing them. I didn’t say fix it as that is more of a scientific question that they are all grappling with now and are famously losing, so my colleagues just helped them reduce the damage from the cost of these failures. Which the changes in US Health Care economics will greatly change for example, many second best or even tertiary drugs and treatments) to reduce you and your costs while increasing sales. Some politicians, especially Republicans will take your money and votes publicly and some maybe are even the really stupid ones may actually what you say about “socialism” and “big govt” but most. behind closed doors know that the current US Healthcare System is the largest, most highly regulated and least efficient sub-economy in the world and since it is created by govt regulation and is so destructive it must be changed. The only question is who says and does what while it is and how long it takes. The reason why the Republicans are so affraid of the inevitable changes is that they were once for them (See the Heritage Foundation support until the 2008 election of Obama and Romney’s implementation of “Romney Care” in MA before the Republican party changed their stance on it) and now are against it. If they are so adamantly against it, it isn’t because they will not work as, after all, if they didn’t you could just sit back, watch them get implemented and fail. Then run against them and win.
So why am I saying this? First is because it is of almost no cost to me. I take the few hours a week to “show you your doom” while taking time from my engagements that your companies and bosses are paying me for and taking time from my studies for my law degree which will mean that I can take and even more active role, and get paid much more for it, in this effort in the future, and with so many people who fit my description doing the same thing that I am doing there is no way anyone can associate me with these posts. And anyway, if they did, it would really effect my professional relationships as most people and organizations that I deal with agree with me.
The real reason I am posting these is my experience in both the military and early experience in Novartis. As I said earlier when giving my Bona Fides and said that before I went to college I was an Army Ranger and served in the First Gulf War. As such, I was attached to an armored calvary scout brigade so we were always a little ahead of the big Army push across the Western Iraqi desert but were also very up-close and personal to the war and got to see more of Bahrain and Iraq than most. But before the ground war kicked-off and while we were waiting in waiting in the desert in Eastern Saudi Arabia and swung to the West and shoved off into the desert to go after the Republican Guard we got to listen to Saddam’s propaganda. How his forces would “set the desert on fire and that you would see our bodies in the flames”, how the Iraqi National Guard would, “destroy all the US and Coalition Cowards” etc, ect which was funny at that point since they didn’t know that we had the capability and make a run straight to the the Iraqi National Guard and really bloody them. When we had fought through the cannon fodder of the regular Iraqi Army we wanted to finish off the National Guard but the war ended before we could fully engage them. In any case, the Regular Iraqi Army was basically chewed up and I remember taking prisoners who were saying, “We saw the doom that you rained down on us from the air and we just wanted to give up quickly before you killed us all”. And the few Iraqi National Guard that we captured, and who were the guys that basically committed the atrocities in Bahrain were also very eager to give up and survive after “seeing their doom”.
It is the arrogance, smugness, since of entitlement, lack of any remorse at trying to actually earn their place in the world due to a system set up by Saddam and a lackadaisical disregard for the harm that they were doing to others in the face of the facts otherwise while they themselves greatly benefitted that I found when at Novartis. So, I really enjoyed getting to come back and begin to dismantle the world that I saw much of the company living in. I got to see the results of beginning to correct a small part of those wrongs while earning a living. And just like the Iraqi soldiers who “saw their doom” I get the satisfaction of showing you yours while I help facilitate that, metaphorical doom.
So, unlike the Iraqi soldiers you may not die in your foxholes or tanks but, with the help from your bosses, your defeat has already been going on for years and is continuing to accelerate and you may get to celebrate the fact the Wall Street recognizes this and rewards Novartis with increase in stock prices and benefit as long as you work here and have a job. But here is the bottom line - despite your clinging to Faux Facts otherwise, reality is against you and now the dynamics of politics is against you and is increasing and will get only worse. Your bosses pay me and others like me to work against you while making them more money and then lobby politicians to structure the regulations in the company’s favor and against you. A few more years, more consulting that gives them strategies to remove more non-value-added functions like you while preserving their profits and for all intents and purposes you will be gone and the war will be in full swing.
So you asked what my “value-add” job is? It is the same that one that I have had since I left Novartis and that is removing non-value-add processes, function and people like you and I get paid very well, and get much satisfaction out of it.
