Global Head of Pricing

OBJECTIVES/PURPOSE:

The Global Head of Pricing is a pivotal role that develops and executes Abbott’s global pricing strategy, guidance, governance and processes to fulfill our purpose Life. To The Fullest. The Head of Pricing will partner with the respective regional access teams, Global Access team, Policy, Government Affairs, Finance and HEOR to drive revenue growth through pricing excellence and accelerate access through value-based pricing strategies. This role will lead the Global Pricing Leads to develop the value and price guidance for key pipeline products and marketed brands. This individual will be a visible thought leader on cross-functional teams and is expected to make a strong contribution to the Global Access Strategies and ensure a franchise and portfolio pricing view.

• Shape and lead Abbott’s pricing guidance and governance and communicate it to internal and external stakeholders.
• Lead the development of Abbott’s pricing systems and capabilities with accurate and integrated data, to enable proactive insights, decision price forecasting and horizon scanning.
• Embed Pricing Excellence into Abbott at local, regional and global levels.
• Analyze external pricing trends and key IRP events to build a proactive mitigation strategy.
• Serve as the expert on global pricing, maintaining a high level of expertise on critical developments in the pricing environment globally and in key markets. Monitor events and situations that could inform and impact Abbott product pricing and reimbursement and communicate regularly with senior leadership on these topics.

ACCOUNTABILITIES:

The “Global Head of Pricing” will lead the Global Pricing team in the development of Abbott’s value-based pricing strategy across the portfolio and supervise global pricing operations and embed pricing excellence within the organization to ensure broad access while maximizing value and minimizing price erosion. This includes:

Strategic Pricing

• Key member of the Global Pricing Committee and is responsible for leading the price exception approval process.
• Leads the development and execution of global pricing strategies based on value-based pricing principles for key launch and marketed brands.
• Develops value and price guidance based on tiered pricing, sustainability, and value-based principles for key launch and marketed brands (responsible for leading approvals) in collaboration with Regions, affiliates and Marketing.
• Supports key pipeline assets with early price guidance, pricing analytics and launch planning.
• Ensures in-depth understanding of changes in pricing and reimbursement environment, regulations and policies of key markets and impact on Abbott products.
• Proactively addresses payer, HTA and policymaker challenges with price defense strategies to minimize price erosion.
• Builds innovative pricing and payment models in partnership with the Access Innovation team to create win-win-win situations for patients, payers and Abbott.
• Supports the development of pipeline strategy by providing insights and analytics to relevant global access, Regional teams and affiliate teams.

Value Setting and Preservation

• Provides consultative support to the business, including Franchisees, on all pricing related matters.
• Designs, implements and manages global pricing initiatives, new pricing algorithms and methodologies across Abbott EPD core markets.
• Leads the management of pricing systems and processes to capture opportunities, improve price realization, and improve gross to net for launch and in-line assets.
• Creates a best-in-class infrastructure for pricing/decision analytics by driving investment in and implementation of needed IT systems and technology training and support.
• Establishes and drives processes critical to price approvals and changes across launch and key marketed brands in partnership with Regions and affiliates, including overseeing the integrity of Abbott’s global pricing systems and dashboards.

Pricing Excellence

• Leads the development of Abbott’s pricing systems and capabilities with accurate and integrated data, to enable proactive insights, decision analytics (IRP, launch planning, LOE), price forecasting and horizon scanning.
• Collaborates with Regional, Area and affiliates access, pricing and cross-functional teams to ensure timely pricing data collection and validation.
• Informs the Long Range Forecasting and Mid-Range Planning activities with most recent pricing events to ensure accuracy and predictability of Abbott financial commitment.
• Develops pricing tools, price metrics, pricing reports to upgrade insights to enable strategic decision-making.
• Cultivates a value-based mindset into all strategic and operational pricing activities.
• Ramp up capabilities in pricing through skills development and training.
• Ensures cross-functional alignment with regards to key pricing decisions taken by the Regions and/or global Access & Global Integrated Marketing (GIM) teams.
• Supports price certification activities to enable timely Pricing and Reimbursement submissions across the globe.

CORE ELEMENTS RELATED TO THIS ROLE:

• Builds a best-in-class strategic pricing team concentrating on high impact value-added activities.
• Sets price guidance across all products and markets based on in depth analysis.
• Organizational design and key stakeholder collaboration as a game changer to ensure SLT alignment, seamless coordination between country, region and global teams, and also between Pricing, Market Access, Global Marketing, Medical, Office of Ethics and Compliance and Finance.
• Develops critical capabilities and advanced decision analytics to make informed investments and trade-offs for launch and in-market pricing decisions, including sophisticated tools for planning, reporting and decision making.
• Access to trusted, reliable information such as external referencing rules, up-to-date prices, reimbursement information, all in one centralized and accurate pricing database.
• Establishing Processes and Governance which define clear roles and responsibilities.
• Pricing KPIs to measure impact and improvement of pricing strategies.

DIMENSIONS AND ASPECTS:

Technical/Functional (Line) Expertise Maintains a high level of expertise on future trends in healthcare and critical developments in the pricing environment globally and in key markets. Monitors events and situations that could inform and impact Abbott product pricing and reimbursement decisions and develop strategic solutions to achieve sustainable access and minimize impact.

• Leverages advanced knowledge of global pricing and health care policy landscape (competitor landscape, upcoming therapies and paradigm-changer events) and other key functional areas (health economics, access strategy, VBCs, policy changes) when providing inputs into the pricing strategy.
• Demonstrated success with identifying growth opportunities and driving an organization to capture value.
• Applies deep knowledge of global healthcare systems, key pricing mechanisms and latest pricing and reimbursement trends to support pricing decisions.

Leadership

• Strong executive presence and leadership skills including the ability to clearly and concisely communicate with Senior Management and Abbott Executive Team.
• Ability to influence/manage senior stakeholders across a global organization on strategic issues.
• Demonstrates strategic enterprise thinking, finding innovative ways to serve patients.
• Builds personal credibility and strong working relationships, breaking barriers and having influence across organizational and geographical boundaries leading to efficiency, effectiveness, and agility for optimized organizational performance.
• An outstanding communicator that can confidently present insights/recommendations to cross-functional partners and senior leaders across the organization.
• A strategic thinker and problem solver that can anticipate/identify changes in the healthcare and payer environment, identify key issues and value drivers for the portfolio and business, and translate information into actionable insights.

Decision-making and Autonomy

Decision making on global, region and country price levels and guidance with endorsement of Head of Global Head of Market Access Policy & External Payor Affairs.

• This role has a significant impact on Abbott’s reputation and revenue both on top-line and bottom line.

Interaction

• Reports to Head of Global Head of Market Access Policy & External Payor Affairs Established Pharmaceuticals.
• Key interface with SLT, regional access heads, Area and affiliate Access and Franchise Heads and GMs, Global and regional finance Heads.
• Builds advanced relationships with payers and policy makers based on a commitment to transparency and patient outcomes; collaborates on pricing and rare disease policy, new funding mechanisms, value-based contracting and access to medicines.
• Fosters strong partnerships with key stakeholders (GIM teams, Regions and Affiliates, Health Economics & Outcome research, Finance, Compliance, GMs) to ensure optimal pricing and access.
• Highly developed collaborative leadership skills, including consensus building, information sharing, and communication of priorities and expectations across functions in a matrix environment.

Innovation

• Visionary and forward-thinking with the ability to influence and effectively drive organizational change and continuous innovation.
• Ability to develop and implement breakthrough solutions based on trends, needs, opportunities and market direction within pharmaceutical industry.
• Ability to identify areas for process and systems innovation and implement change that will enhance the overall effectiveness of the team.
• Drives the development of innovative pricing strategies for launch products and marketed brands (e.g. Biosimilars, first to market generics, oncology portfolio, VBC models).
• Draws on unexpected or seemingly unrelated ways of thinking and operates from a framework of possibility.

Complexity

• Builds bespoke pricing solutions for multi-million-dollar corporate deals.
• Global pricing responsibility for all Abbott products.
• Makes decisions by developing innovative solutions to highly complex problems. Recommends courses of action and Influences the decisions of management/senior leaders.
• Leads in-depth quantitative and qualitative analyses and recommendations to management and senior leaders in complex ambiguous situations.
• Leads development and maintenance of complex IT Pricing infrastructure with high precision of data in the systems.
• Enables legally binding price certification submission sign off.
• Translates complex data into actionable pricing strategies and tactics.

EDUCATION, BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES AND SKILLS:

Required/Desired

• University degree required, advanced degree (MBA and/or PhD) in healthcare, business, finance or other relevant field preferred.
• 10+ years of healthcare experience; strong understanding of the pharmaceutical industry 8+ years, healthcare reform and external factors impacting the industry. Biosimilars and Generics pricing strategy experience is a great plus.
• 10+ years of market access experience; proven ability to represent all market access related functions (strategic access, value-based pricing, health economics, public affairs) perspectives in the development and implementation of pricing strategies.
• Minimum 4 years+ experience in managing global/regional pricing teams with a strong preference for direct experience in international reference pricing, biosimilars pricing and pricing policy, governance and guidance processes development and execution.
• Proven experience and skills in corporate finance and managing top & bottom line and making financial trade-offs.
• Demonstrated experience in highly strategic roles and leadership of cross-functional teams, processes, projects.
• Strong understanding of global healthcare markets (US, Europe, Emerging markets (LATAM, Middle East, Russia, China, APAC etc.) and payer environment, (e.g. HTAs, payer coverage and reimbursement, pricing and contracting, formulary management, health technology assessment and pricing policy). Ability to understand the organization’s strategy and apply it to pricing strategy and execution.
• Experience leading high performance teams at the global and local level; must be a strong leader that inspires and motivates the team.
• Has a passion to develop others, consistently looking for avenues to develop his/her team and share knowledge and best practices with stakeholders and partner functions and team.
• Cultural awareness, experience and agility working across cross-cultural differences with DE&I leadership skills.
• Strong analytical and decision-making ability, ability to synthesize complex and diverse inputs related to a problem, recommend solutions/preferred options. Ability to contribute to and influence corporate strategy.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:Periodic domestic and international travel required (20 %)