Alliance Strategy Analysing the Continuous

Alliance Strategy

Analysing the continuous and intense competition on the pharmaceutical market, most of the managers try to find alternative and better solutions to consolidate their position on the market, but also to have the possibility to launch new products sooner than other companies. This is one of the reasons for which they appeal to different management solutions. However, this is never done testing them, because otherwise a real imbalance could be caused, and even worse, they could lead to bankruptcy.

Through a strategic alliance with Excel Research, Century Pharmaceuticals wants to achieve a higher level of efficiency, speeding up of the regulatory approval process, bringing new drug therapies to market. Excel will also improve for Century Pharmaceuticals the process for its submissions to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for new drug products and also work on investigational new drugs (IND) that are not ready for clinical trials but still are overseen by the FDA.

In my opinion, Excel Research answers perfectly to Century Pharmaceuticals strategically alliance needs, accomplishing the main reasons on a "fast cycle" market, which are: "speed up development of new goods or service, speed up new market entry, share risky R&D expenses." The main result of this strategy is not that the company could develop very fast new drugs and new technologies; this can be called a secondary positive effect. The main positive effect is that the company can adjust the time for the patent life of the product and especially for all the test which came after that one year period (the usual period to apply for a patent), tests which bring a lot of costs for the company and which also obstruction the company to get earlier liquidities from getting its new products out on the market. In terms of real time, for the period that the company must follow, until the product can get out on the market, we cannot speak only of a year and a half or a year and a few months, but for a period that can go up to some years, delays which can cost firms billions of dollars.

My answer to the first question is, "yes," this case is a complementary strategic

Alliance. The answer for this question can be justified starting with the explanation of the term, "strategic alliance," which comes from "cooperative strategy," which represents "a primary type of cooperative strategy in which firms combine some of their resources and capabilities to create a mutual competitive advantage." Concerning the type of complementary strategic alliance, it is a horizontal one, because it is formed "when partners who agree to combine their resources and skills to create value in the same stage of the value chain," it is focused "on long-term product development and distribution opportunities" and "the partners may become competitors which requires a great deal of trust between the partners."

The answer to the second question is "no," it's not a "competition response strategy" because the two companies are not really competitors, even if the profile for both company is pharmaceutical. Excel research can be consider in this case as an ally, a support for Century Pharmaceuticals, and even as a consultancy company that works for C.P.

The answer to the third question is "yes," it can be an" uncertainty reducing strategy" because if it functions as it is established, it can reduce the uncertainty about the period of time for the new products to get on the market and also to discover new unmet needs in dermatology and other therapeutic arenas, all of them at lower cost.