Forum Bioscience

Helping to establish a new life-sciences consultancy practice

Forum Bioscience has developed an outstanding reputation as providers of pharmaceutical, food and animal nutrition and health ingredients and finished products. Faced with increasing commoditisation and squeezed margins, the £100 million plus organisation, put to work its creative entrepreneurial juices to add more value to its clients by using the wealth of scientific, technical and commercial experience, research and knowledge by establishing a ‘life-sciences consultancy’.

Opportunity

To help the team at Forum establish a life-sciences consultancy practice.

Action taken by True North

Support in:

• establishment of the consultancy practice, including organisational structure, role and job definitions.
• development of programme and project management, process organisation and skills.
• establishment of business development methods for the practice including marketing communications materials, sales methods and the facilitation of business development reviews.

Results

Forum quickly established and launched their successful consultancy practice, creating a centre of excellence for consultancy services within the organisation.

Cora Ford, business resources director at Forum Bioscience: “We had lots of knowledge and skill and great relationship building ability but no prior experience of providing fee earning consultancy services to our clients. Our reputation rested on getting it right. Barry helped us design and implement something quickly and cost effectively, introducing practical rather than academic ‘models’ that fitted our need and culture. This prevented us having to learn from ‘expensive’ mistakes.”

What did Forum value most about the support provided? “You provided us with simplified and streamlined approaches and processes that were practical and easy to implement and operate. Barry was very determined for us to succeed and pointed out and helped us manage risks. He is passionate about helping people and teams succeed, and goes about his work in a very straightforward way”