Product Director: Phorums

Established in 2004, BioPhorum is a business-to-business membership organisation that has created an unparalleled environment for life science companies and executives, to collaborate and accelerate progress across the sector. The company uses a subscription model and has created 12 highly targeted “Phorums” (forums) with tailored content across multiple areas including Drug Substance, Drug Development, Fill Finish, Technology Strategy, Supply Chain Resilience, IT, Data and Digital, Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products, Quality, Regulatory, and Sustainability. BioPhorum’s expert facilitators currently lead more than ninety initiatives involving over 7,000 subject matter experts.

BioPhorum has built a diverse and extensive client base of over 150 organisations, including 18 of the 20 largest global (bio)pharmacos. Beyond pharma, BioPhorum has also built relationships with other types of life science organisations, including those that provide services across the outsourced value chain (e.g., CDMOs), and academia.

Over the last year, BioPhorum has established an exciting growth strategy, launched its first data product and completed an acquisition. Further growth opportunities are being planned in both the core Phorum business as well as adjacent markets. Against this backdrop, BioPhorum is looking to hire a Product Director: Phorums to partner with the Phorum leadership team to protect and grow existing Phorums, identifying future Phorum opportunities and bring new Phorum product offerings to market.

The Role

Overview

The Product Director: Phorums will report to the Group Phorum Director and partner with the Phorum leadership team. They will provide input to strategy and support the delivery of cross-Phorum initiatives such as membership policy and pricing, member satisfaction, and overseeing member collaboration tools. Additionally, they will be responsible for developing plans for existing Phorums to protect and grow them, as well as identifying future Phorum opportunities, ensuring viable markets exist with a critical mass of potential members to ensure commercial success. The Product Director will work collaboratively with the broader Commercial, Product, and Operations organisations to ensure alignment and smooth delivery of initiatives. They will also identify Phorum outputs for potential new product offerings, working closely with our content and data product teams to complete opportunity assessments and rapid prototyping to test their commercial viability.

Main Responsibilities

• Define and deliver a product strategy for the Phorum business that identifies how to protect and grow membership revenues and margins from established Phorums, new and emerging Phorums, and future Phorums — continually finding new ways and means of collaborating
• Provide strategic inputs to support the creation and update of the Phorum organisation strategy, ensuring the Group Phorum Director has the necessary market and product data and feedback (e.g., NPS), themes, and trends to define a clear and actionable strategy, both annually and longer term
• In collaboration with the Phorum leadership team, own the upkeep and maintenance of the BioPhorum membership and collaboration policies — ensuring these remain consistent with BioPhorum’s changing environment and drive consistent commercial outcomes
• Lead on Phorum pricing strategies, providing a clear and easily digestible pricing model that can be used by both the Phorum and Commercial organisations; lead on the annual pricing review process, inputting relevant and robust pricing data that lead to credible recommendations, supported by the organisation, while also developing the necessary support to enable pricing conversations with member organisations
• Map existing Phorums against the product lifecycle to be clear where each Phorum sits on this lifecycle. Define the product management actions required to protect and grow these Phorums, and especially for emerging Phorums, establish clear plans required to progress the maturity of these Phorums by following BioPhorum’s gated product management process
• Own the description of BioPhorum’s Phorum collaboration model and the top-level Phorum value proposition, working with the commercial team to ensure that this is represented strongly in our marketing activities

• Ensure BioPhorum has the commercial tools and collateral to describe the value proposition to the entire organisation (especially the Phorums). Develop and conduct the necessary training so that the proposition is understood, and members and potential members have a clear picture of how an investment in BioPhorum will deliver value to them

• Assess new Phorum opportunities, including potential market size, target members, pricing, and positioning. Ensure the market for the Phorum exists and can reach maturity in line with its business case by running early collaboration roundtables and developing relationships with key sponsors to develop a clear programme and value proposition based on user and buyer needs
• Manage the testing, creation, and establishment of new Phorums through the gated Phorum development process, ensuring delivery of the investment case and adherence to the Product organisation’s processes/standards. Build, own, and deliver the handover to the delivery team within a new Phorum, especially the incumbent Phorum Director
• Through the development of strong relationships with Senior Phorum Directors (SPDs) and Phorum Directors (PDs), build a scalable and repeatable approach/process to identify deliverables or outcomes within the Phorums that could be productised and monetised, including Proof of Concepts, senior-level roundtable events, regional collaboration models, and any other levers to grow the scope of BioPhorum’s collaboration products
• Define a scalable and credible opportunity assessment methodology that clearly determines the viability of Proof of Concepts (PoCs) emerging from the Phorums, ensuring time and resources are deployed with a high chance of traction
• Build and run the process for rapid prototyping for PoCs, ensuring strong member engagement, a clear pathway to early monetisation, and the ongoing commercial models are defined and agreed — making sure members fund PoCs and commercial risk is distributed across participating members
• Evaluate the competitive landscape to identify emerging competitive entrants, ensuring BioPhorum maintains a strong market position with clear benefits versus any competitors entering the market. Work with the External Partners Manager to ensure that partnership opportunities to minimise competitive threats are executed
• Identify partnership opportunities that can drive ongoing commercial growth, ensuring robust terms of engagement, clear accountabilities for all parties, and expected commercial outcomes

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Strong and proven experience in product or category management, within a membership, services or ‘people’ business, can articulate the nuances specific to  these markets including the strategic product requirements and how to deliver against these requirements operationally  
• Highly commercial and numerate, able to build commercial models and conduct the required analyses to make informed data driven product decision especially regarding the viability of potential products / services 
• Can operate in an agile format, build prototypes, iterate, and update based on market and member/customer feedback
• Experienced working within a private equity environment, ability to operate at pace, understand the importance of impact and driving outcomes for customers  
• Practical experience within the Bio-manufacturing, Pharmaceutical or life-sciences industries can translate industry nuances or situations into practical outcomes for BioPhorum and the Phorum organisation
• Highly organised, able to develop strong go-to-market and project plans and execute against them
• Strong collaboration skills — able to bring together a collection of ideas and concepts, make the best recommendations based on those inputs and able to hold-the-course to ensure those recommendations are brough to life
• Can think strategically, while acting pragmatically isn’t afraid of rolling up sleeves to ‘get the job done’ to a very high standard; has a strong bias to action — enjoys the ‘thrill’ of delivery and driving impact across a business
• Very verbal and written strong communication skills, able to influence a variety of personalities and personas
• Excellent presentation skills, able to build and present compelling stories, take people ‘on a journey’
• Creative thinker or “corkscrew thinker” who can demonstrate strong problem solving skills, can ideate solutions to problems quickly, able to express these ideas in clear digestible terms, turning ideas and solution into reality
• Ambitious on behalf of their portfolio – pro-actively builds propositions, assesses new opportunities and acts at pace to make quick decisions

Location

This is a home-based role within the United Kingdom. While BioPhorum is a UK based business, ad hoc international travel will be required at various points in support of the organisation’s annual events cycle.