Vice President, Commercial Insights, Advanced Analytics and Forecasting

The U.S. Business Unit (USBU) is seeking a dynamic, senior commercial leader with extensive specialty and rare disease products experience to enable growth across the U.S. Business Unit portfolio by leading the company’s Commercial Insights and Analytics organization. Reporting to the President of the USBU, this strategic important role will shape the operating model, remit, and operational excellence of this newly created organization to enable the success of Takeda’s.

This position plays a pivotal role in driving the USBU Ambition - our three to five-year plan that details how we’ll deliver sustainable growth for our business while we continue to create innovative solutions for patients that drive our business forward.  

The VP of Commercial Insights, Advanced Analytics and Forecasting will be a critical senior commercial leadership role that will lead the creation and successful execution of a Center of Excellence (COE) that effectively meets business needs for

• Commercial Insights, including primary, secondary market research, standard commercial performance metrics and competitive intelligence.

• Advanced Analytics: including a rare and rare-like disease patient finding COE

• Forecasting: including demand forecasting and annual planning
  

While common in the pharmaceutical industry, an effective CoE for analytics will be a departure from USBU’s way of working and a significant part of the role will be establishing best practices and ways of working. The role will act as a senior thought partner to the U.S. Executive Team and provide recommendations and critical insights necessary to deliver on our ambitious goals.

What You’ll Do

• As a member of the USBU Executive Leadership Team reporting to Julie Kim, President of the U.S. Business Unit, the VP of Commercial Insights, Advanced Analytics and Forecasting will play a critical role in shaping this newly created centralized organization, including the organizational vision, structure, talent base, infrastructure, capabilities and operating model. The new centralized organization serving the U.S. business includes Insights & Advanced Analytics, Data Science/Patient Finding, and Forecasting.

• Lead the new Center of Excellence organization by optimizing team, assess and identify effective capabilities gaps, and ensuring efficiency by minimizing duplication of work, redundancies, and ineffective support.

• Create the workplan (structure, roles, budget, key activities, and deliverables, etc.), serving the U.S. franchise teams and New Product Planning, encompassing all areas of responsibility including market research, forecasting, competitive intelligence, advanced analytics, reporting, data science, and a newly formed patient finding governance model.

• Ensure the team is working effectively with cross-functional commercial partners in to maintain strategic alignment, produce high quality deliverables, and achieve performance objectives.

• Partner with Digital and Data teams to a) bring latest analytics and market research techniques to power the business, b) automate (where feasible) analytics so they are standardized and real-time.

• Develop and align executive leadership team on the newly created Patient Finding COE including scope of responsibilities, remit, governance, and staffing requirements.

• Recruit, motivate, develop, and retain a team of highly skilled commercial operations and analytics professionals.

• Partner with relevant teams to develop and maintain deep commercial insights through market research, competitive intelligence, and business analytics.

• Build and lead a high-performing market research and forecasting function that will serve as a primary source of business insight and planning for the commercial organization. To include primary and secondary market research, competitive intelligence, and forecasting.

• Build and lead a team of Data Scientists that employs advanced analytical models to proactively identify when patients approach key decision points and target support and information when it is most impactful.

• Partner with Finance to optimize and execute a quarterly “latest estimate” financial planning process to inform key downstream needs such as Wall Street guidance on net sales performance, production planning, incentive compensation, etc.

• Ensure successful agency/vendor partnerships.

• Develop and deliver presentations to senior leadership.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• BS/BA degree in business or related discipline. Advanced degree preferred (e.g., MBA, MPH, PharmD, PhD).

• Fifteen (15) or more years of experience within the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries including at least 5-7 years in forecasting, market research, or analytics senior leadership roles.

• Biopharmaceutical commercial capabilities at a leadership level is required.

• Experience in and understanding of other commercial functions (e.g., marketing, market access, sales operations, sales training, insights/analytics, business development will be an important consideration for this role.

• Experience building new centers of excellence teams, optimizing, capabilities building, and leading organization change.

• Experience in and understanding of other commercial functions (e.g., marketing, market access, sales operations, sales training, insights/analytics, business development) will be an important consideration for this role.

• Must be a true team player – authentic, humble, professional, flexible, and coachable – able to build a positive team spirit and lead teams through the ups and downs of drug development, puts success of the company and the overall commercial organization above own interests and supports everyone’s efforts to succeed, grow, and develop.

• Demonstrated ability to motivate and lead teams and have the managerial courage to make and stand by difficult decisions.

• Highly skilled in influencing cross-functional, highly matrixed teams, including interfacing with key internal and external stakeholders and with scientific and commercial teams.

• Fluent in a modern marketing tech stack overall, but with specific knowledge of data pipeline and analytics tools, combined with an ability to foster the increased use of such tools within the business

• Ability to build and communicate data-driven decisions including clear view of the pros and cons associated with various alternatives.

• Must be a resourceful, creative problem solver who seeks out, and is receptive to, new ideas and approaches to solving persistent challenges.

• Ability and willingness to work effectively and seamlessly at multiple “altitudes” within the organization. Maintains a “no job is too big or too small” attitude.

• Excellent interpersonal, oral and written communication skills (including ability to successfully convey insights and recommendations via PowerPoint), including ability to synthesize data and deliver a clear overview of the state of the business, drivers of performance, opportunities and risks, and recommended action plans. Strong executive presence and comfortable presenting executive leadership.

• Demonstrated ability to attract top talent with diverse backgrounds and to build cohesive, high performing teams.

• Demonstrated ability to adapt to changes in the work environment. Manages competing demands. Changes approach or method to best fit the situation. Able to deal with frequent change, delays, unexpected events, or uncertainty/ambiguity with maturity and professionalism.

• Exemplifies Takeda Leadership Behaviors: Thinks Strategically, Inspires Others, Elevates Capabilities and Delivers Priorities