#FutureReadyHealthcare
Indegene Partners with a Global Pharma Company to Build a Scalable GCC Operating Model
The Customer
A major biopharmaceutical organization set out to readily take full ownership of its commercial operations. Central to this effort was the Global Capability Center (GCC), designated as the operational backbone of the organization. To enable this shift, they needed to establish several commercial functions from the ground up and expand others within the GCC— making it essential to design a robust GCC operating model to ensure business continuity and growth.
The Challenges
The organization faced a combination of strategic and operational challenges.
Need for new capabilities – Several core commercial functions such as forecasting, competitive intelligence, data engineering, and others had to be set up within the GCC to support independent operations; a critical milestone in scaling GCCs effectively.
Limited depth in existing functions – Existing commercial functions lacked the required skill mix, delivery maturity, and scale for standalone execution.
Organizational fluidity – Governance structures were still being shaped, leadership roles were evolving, and service models had yet to stabilize.
High operational demands – At the same time, the GCC was expected to provide seamless support to a diverse and global stakeholder base, including Portfolio Leads, Brand Directors, and Platform Owners. The team had to manage a complex mix of challenges: aligning cross-functional stakeholders, onboarding talent swiftly, integrating new processes, bridging knowledge gaps, and maintaining operational continuity across a global product portfolio.
The Solution
We co-led the transformation of the GCC by delivering a highly structured, agile, and scalable solution tailored to meet both immediate operational demands and long-term strategic goals. Our approach was anchored in three pillars: designing GCC operating model, developing and enhancing capability, and establishing process governance.
We first introduced a Core-Flex operating model to balance stability with agility:
Core teams: were assigned to deliver steady-state activities for reliable execution of recurring processes.
Flex teams: were composed of specialized resources deployed for variable or high-priority tasks to enable agility and scalability based on evolving needs.
Using this model, we built and scaled the following core commercial functions within the GCC:
Forecasting: Delivering forecasts for products or regions by collaborating across teams.
Business analytics (BA): Conducting market and sales analyses for decision-making at global, country, and regional level.
Data engineering: Standardizing data, creating business rules, templatizing processes, and streamlining data governance.
Competitive intelligence (CI): Gathering competitive intelligence from primary and secondary sources for insights.
Incentive compensation (IC): Deploying incentive programs with commercial teams and advising on platform solutions.
Field force operations (FFO): Driving data-backed projects across market-brand combinations to enhance sales performance and field behaviors.
Insights and analytics (I&A): Leading cross-functional consulting projects by integrating input from forecasting, CI, BA, FFO and functions like finance, procurement, regulatory, sales/marketing, and medical.
To build internal capability, we implemented a comprehensive talent acquisition and management process. This included multi-level screening and onboarding, and tailored training programs. These covered forecasting, CI, Power BI, Alteryx, therapy-area knowledge, and business communication to ensure resources were deployment-ready.
We set up regular progress reviews, structured reporting, and collaborative issue resolution to stay aligned with business goals, while co-developing SOPs and mapping skills to business needs for sustained performance.
Notably, we co-created an Innovation Council—a joint working group with the client focused on engineering workflow improvements, building SOPs, automating recurring tasks, and eliminating redundancies across reporting and analytics.
Outcomes
Within the first month, the GCC achieved operational steady state. By the third month, we cleared all backlogs of key deliverables.
0% ↑
Efficiency through targeted process improvements
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Productivity in key areas, such as CI reporting, product feature tracking, and business intelligence dashboards
0% ↑
Global commercial operations team size through structured onboarding processes
