The Secret to Outsourcing Success: Elevating The Supplier Ecosystem

“You can’t develop medicines without an ecosystem. Suppliers are probably one of the most neglected sections of the ecosystem.”
Tanya Momtahen, Vice President of Integrated Product Solutions at Thermo Fisher explains how understanding your supplier ecosystem is how to make an impact.
“The amount of money that's spent in the supplier world is daunting, to say the least” says Tanya  “yet too often key suppliers are treated transactionally.” While this attitude might make sense when procuring something that already exists “if it's services that are supporting research and development of a medicine it is crazy.”
Tanya spent nearly two decades at Sanofi, over which time she moved from research and development to becoming VP of global scientific and clinical procurement. 
She explains that she moved to procurement with a mission to champion the “neglected supplier world and truly partner with suppliers. That's how I convinced myself to go to into procurement.”
Moving to procurement Tanta faced “ many naysayers” but for her, changing how to partner with suppliers came with a moral responsibility
“I had a mission and the mission was:  if I work on a couple of products (in R&D), those are the only ones I can impact. But if I go and take over outsourcing and drive the suppliers to bring better solutions forward, I can affect many more medicines.” 
 “We owe the responsibility to the world not to waste money that can be spent on additional medicines.   It’s frustrating to see people killing products that may work because there's just not enough money to go around to develop them. Some of the products that are not so publicly known are the easiest ones to kill internally. But they also may be the ones that may work.“
Now working at Thermo Fisher and PPD, her role is to help sponsoring biopharma companies  get the most out of the wide range outsourcing services they offer. This has given her a broad perspective on how to make outsourcing work from both sides of the table.
Advice for negotiating transformational supplier partnerships
Here is Tanya’s advice for sourcing and procurement professionals to get more from their supplier ecosystem.
1. Understand the supplier’s business model
2. Move from transactional to strategic partnerships
3. Identify what’s really important for your business
4. Aim for a Win-Win 
5. Practise negotiations
6. Change come from the top