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Transcript
Given the times we're living and working in today's conversation about change management seems quite timely.
In a period of days, many of us were forced into significant changes to our work environment. New ways to conduct meetings and manage teams were met with a complete reassessment to company and personal goals.
Although we want to return to business as usual as we entered the second month of mandatory work from home guidelines, it feels that we've adapted to the situation.
The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has been acutely felt within the life sciences industry. Those with the scientific expertise to discover a vaccine have also been forced to change, but as we see and read the news, it has not slowed their productivity nor their mission.
Even when change is planned and incremental, it can be disruptive.
The concept of change management, more specifically operational changes within life science is what we're here to discuss today. To understand this, I'm joined by James Pavlovich, ZAGENO’s vice president of commercial operations. James is responsible for the onboarding process undergone by our customers and supply partners. Before ZAGENO, he held a number of senior consulting roles with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) where he oversaw the organizational transformations within the pharma R&D industry. His career began as an analyst for Pepsi where he was responsible for instituting change to its order fulfillment processes.
James, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you Greg.
So we've all experienced the difficulty of change through the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. Can you draw any parallels between this experience and what you and your team deploys systematically, over a period of time?
Greg, we're going through an unprecedented time that's really challenging to everybody, not just in the way we work, but in our personal lives, as well. And one of the things that we've done at ZAGENO, even prior to the COVID outbreak, is having the ability to onboard new customers remotely and be able to connect with them remotely via video chats and all of the tools that we're using now every day to run a business.
... one of the things that we've done at ZAGENO, even prior to the COVID outbreak, is to onboard new customers remotely and be able to connect with them remotely via video chats and all of the tools that we're using now every day to run a business.
So we've actually been doing this for quite some time. I think there's always a great opportunity to meet our customers in person and make that personal connection. But here ZAGENO, we're very well positioned to continue to support our customers in the way that we've done in the past. We're just doing it with all of our customers.
James, you've been overseeing change for many years and across different industries. So I'm interested in understanding if you think there are certain types of organizations that accept change better than others and more specifically, what kinds of people might be more adept at change?
Companies that have a very clear vision and communicate it effectively throughout the organization are the ones that handle change the most effectively. They're the ones that are always looking to make improvements and achieve their grand visions.
All of our customers have a vision that's focused on speed to scientific innovation. And so they're constantly looking for ways that they can achieve that; fortunately, our platform was built around achieving that exact vision statement.
So, when you have companies and you have a product or you have a solution that aligns, it really makes managing the change much, much simpler. So making sure it's a good fit is really important. And then from the people's side, again, it's really focused on those leaders that are always looking to improve, always looking to innovate, always looking for how they can get the smallest little edge on the competition. Those are the ones that tend to be very, very successful.
All of our customers have a vision that's focused on speed to scientific innovation. And so they're constantly looking for ways that they can achieve that; fortunately, our platform was built around achieving that exact vision statement.
ZAGENO is dealing with scientists, lab managers or sometimes procurement and finance teams who work within life science. What is unique about professionals in this industry?
The one common thread that I've seen in the life science industry over the last 10 years is that a lot of people that I meet have a personal connection with life sciences...with a disease...they have a relative or they themselves are a cancer survivor or have dealt with chronic diseases throughout their life.
And so there's a real passion around the work that they do and impact that they're going to make a difference for society. So, it’s always very rewarding and it's really nice to work with folks that share that common vision.
When you think about the scientists and the lab managers and what is their expertise, what have they been trained to do and you look at procurement and finance, their expertise, and what they have been trained to do, they're very, very different things. And so finding that common ground is really important. And I think that also ties back to having a clear company vision where everybody can rally around, this is what we need to set out to achieve. And when you do those things, it doesn't matter what background you have and what function you support, and if we're all trying to achieve the same goal, it makes managing the change much easier.
Let's divert for a moment to discuss customer success at ZAGENO. What are the specific responsibilities of your team?
- We talked to our customers and suppliers every day, which gives us a fantastic point on the industry.
- We work with our customers and suppliers to provide a great experience from the very beginning of onboarding all the way into a steady state.
- We want to make sure that they're maximizing the value on our platform.
- We want to make sure that the services that we're providing and the platform that we're providing are meeting their needs and achieving what they set out to when they agreed to work with ZAGENO.
I have a meeting later today with a customer; we're not only going to talk to them about how we can integrate with their new ERP system, but also how can we help them define a new business process that benefits the scientists and meets the needs of procurement and finance. So it's very important for us that we make sure that our customers have a great experience on our platform and with our services and they're realizing the value.
James, I assume your team experiences resistance from new users to ZAGENO all the time. What do you do to help scientists overcome any frustrations they're experiencing in learning about ZAGENO when they're preoccupied with something occurring at the lab bench?
What does it mean for the scientist?
What does it mean for the company?
What does it mean to the lab managers, why are we doing this?
So our change philosophy is broken down into a couple of components.
One is leading with the business value. This is really ensuring that at the very beginning when we talk about why an organization has decided to use ZAGENO we are communicating:
- What does it mean for the scientist?
- What does it mean for the company?
- What does it mean to the lab managers, why are we doing this?
And making sure that everybody understands the value that we're providing and not so much, you know, this is the button you push and this is how you do it. But really leading with this is why we're doing this. And that really helps bring people together on a common thread around this is what we need to accomplish.
The other piece that we'd like to do is run with a live migration. And what this means is, as an organization going through a change like this, we're changing how they place orders for their lab supplies. So what we say is, okay, you're going to show up and come to training and we're going to turn off the old way of doing things. We're going to train you on the new way and as soon as you walk out of the room, you're going to use that new way going forward. And so it manages that expectation around, I understand how to do this, I'm now enabled to do this and now I'm actually going to do it. So there's no kind of break of two or three weeks between training when the system is actually available and goes live with them.
The other thing we do is we establish a feedback loop. So we want to make sure that we capture all of the feedback that the users have and we want to address them through a normal process.
So, we absolutely love hearing from our customers. We love hearing what ideas they have around how we can make our products and our services better. And we've worked with them to implement those changes and get their feedback. So, I think making sure that as we're going through this process with them as they have ideas that they feel that there is a safe place to have constructive criticism and we'll address it.
James, can you describe some of your onboarding playbook? More specifically, what are your team's best practices for successful deployments?
So, the first thing about onboarding is that it needs to be customer driven. So we think about if I'm a customer and I'm going through the order onboarding process, what is it? What are my expectations? How can I make this a really great experience for them? How can we make it easy for them and really get to the value as fast as we can. So we want to make sure that everything around the processes is very much focused on the customer.
The other thing we do is we constantly monitor it so we get feedback from the customers. We constantly look at all of the customers that we've onboarded and we think about ways that we can improve it. So, whether it's through creating new tools or changing how you're offering the customers, we're constantly looking at ways to improve. And that's been very, very important to us.
The other thing we do is we constantly monitor it so we get feedback from the customers...we think about ways that we can improve it....whether it's through creating new tools or changing how you're offering the customers, we're constantly looking at ways to improve. And that's been very, very important to us.
We conduct a lot of market outreach, so we look for other companies that go through a similar onboarding process, we try to learn from them as well. So, we really try to accelerate how we improve by not only monitoring what we look at, but also learning from others in the industry that have a similar onboarding process and things that we can do to actually improve that.
And how important is it that the leadership within a new customer site are also invested in the change?
Having leadership buy in is really critical.
In my experience, I've been on a number of programs where, when you're dealing with a cross functional project, like the ones that we see everyday, there are leaders that are not bought in and the best thing that you can do is bring them into the tent.
So, we make them part of the project, we make them a part of the solution so they can have their voice heard, have them help with how we can address the concerns that they have. And in my experience, that's been the most effective way to make sure that the program is successful and it achieves the goals that I've set out to do.
As we wrap up, I have a final question which brings us back to where we began about how COVID-19 has forced all of us to adapt. Have you taken any learnings from this period about how your team will deploy ZAGENO, moving forward?
This has been a great learning for us.
The one thing I would take away from this is that we're actually a lot closer to our customers now than before.I think part of it has to do with, early on in this pandemic, things were changing on a daily basis and we were in constant contact with our customers to understand the changes they were going through, how they were still planning to advance science, and advance the development of medicines and understanding what ways ZAGENO could support them.
So, I think that's one key thing that we've learned from this is staying close to the customers.
Having a good relationship even before a situation like this is really critical to make sure that we're all on the same page and we can continue to deliver value to them.
Having a good relationship even before a situation like this is really critical to make sure that we're all on the same page and we can continue to deliver value to them.
Well, this has been a very interesting look into both the strategy and the general nuts and bolts of change management and how ZAGENO is deployed.
James, thank you very much for your time today.
Thanks a lot, Greg.
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About James Pavlovich
James is ZAGENO's VP of commercial operations.
His career began as a support analyst for Pepsi Bottling Group’s Field Operations group, working on several different programs improving the order fulfillment process. Following Pepsi he held a number of senior consulting roles with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he further developed his business operations expertise with a particular emphasis on pharma R&D. During this period James managed organizational transformations utilizing innovative technologies to change the way these organizations operate. His previous clients included large pharmas, biotechs, CRO's and the FDA.
James earned his BS in Computer Science from Valparaiso University and his MBA in Management Technology from The University of Connecticut.
