Director, Field Force Effectiveness - Rare Franchise - ACADIA Pharmaceuticals

Please note that this position is based in San Diego, CA or Princeton, NJ. Acadia's hybrid model requires this role to work in our office three days per week on average. 

Position Summary:

As the Director, Field Force Effectiveness for the US Rare Disease franchise you will be responsible for leading efforts and your team to implement and administer initiatives and support services that are critical to maximizing the effectiveness of our field based teams by working in partnership with leadership, Sales, Marketing, and Patient Service groups.  This includes ensuring that the field teams are optimally deployed with the correct territory alignment, they are targeting the right customers with the right call plan, they are providing the right level of services to optimize the patient on-boarding journey, they have the right incentive compensation bonus plan that properly rewards/motivating their performance, and they have the right insights to elevate their performance. To accomplish this, (s)he will be responsible for effectively managing their team to determine the proper methodologies, generate the appropriate analytics, deploy sound strategies, implement efficient processes, and leverage appropriate tools/techniques needed to support field leadership to drive sales performance, patient onboarding, and organizational growth.  This position assumes a high level of competence and expertise in biopharma commercialization strategies including deployment, targeting, patient on-boarding/support services, incentive compensation, and field level analytics/reporting/insight generation. Additionally, as a leader within the Commercial Operations and Business Optimization team, this position will also work closely and partner with others in the group along with those from People & Performance, Legal/Compliance, Commercial Insights & Performance, and IT departments along with outside vendors to fulfill the responsibilities of this position.  

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead and administer the field deployment, sizing, and territory alignment efforts for the US Rare Disease franchise by partnering with sales, marketing, patient services and account management leadership to ensure that Acadia’s field teams are optimally deployed to achieve commercial objectives
• Lead and administer the field targeting and POA call planning/optimization process by working with commercial leadership teams to ensure that our field teams are focused on the right customers with the right contact frequency, by leveraging the right promotional to channel with the right discussion topic to ensure our patients have access and receive the best treatment outcomes from our products.
  • Leverage predictive modeling to increase and optimize field force effectiveness, customer experiences, and other business outcomes.
• Lead the design and the administer of the field incentive compensation, contest/award functional area for the US Rare Disease field teams by collaborating with internal stakeholder and vendors to ensure that plans are motivating, rewarding, and are align with business objectives:
  • Lead the evaluation, development, design and administer IC Plans, contests, and annual awards for Rare Disease field teams, along with their field management teams
  • Provide leadership around governance, inquiries, and approval process for IC plans, contests, and awards
  • Implement strategies and the administrative processes to ensure accurate performance and bonus/contest payout calculations.
  • Ensure timely communication and documentation to the field teams around IC/contest/award plans, IC goals, IC performance status reports(scorecards), and the administration processes
  • Collaborate with others on the COBO team and IT on data governance to ensure the consistent performance metric definitions are being utilized and that the necessary data integrations needed for IC are accurate, efficient, and reliable.
• Working with the CIP team, to help lead the US Rare Disease field-based performance analysis and reporting capabilities at a sub-national and customer level by working with sales, patient services, and national account leadership
  • Monitor and assess field and territory execution against key business targets to identify gaps and business opportunities, including the assessment of current business situation utilizing key sales performance dashboards and reports to provide insights and make recommendations to on market/ /customer opportunities and field force effectiveness improvements to ensure objectives are met in advancing patient care
  • Work with field and patient service management to assist in analyzing performance , facilitating business reviews, and examining the execution and effectiveness of POA and field based initiatives
  • Partnering with the CIP group to ensure reporting platforms and metrics/KPIs are aligned to achieve sales objectives and goals
• Provide input and support for the POA and Brand planning process and ensuring key outputs and initiatives affecting the field teams are implanted on time.
• Collaborate with CIP and the IT groups to ensure systems and data infrastructure (data warehouse), along with its governance/process, around alignment, targeting, incentive compensation, Veeva CRM, syndicated 3-party data, and sales force performance reporting capabilities are designed to support the US field force objectives and needs.
• Lead efforts, by partnering with sales training, to improve the business skills of the field management team and field personnel with the goals of; improved territory management, business acumen skills, and overall performance

Education/Experience/Skills:

Requires a Bachelor’s degree in marketing, health care, business administration or related field, or an equivalent combination of relevant education and experience may be considered. MBA a plus. A minimum of 12 years of progressively responsible experience within the pharmaceutical or biotech industry with demonstrated proficiency in biopharmaceutical field incentive compensation, field force deployment, targeting, field force performance analytics. Requires at least 3 years of combined experience working in commercial analytics, incentive compensation and/or field operations (ex. deployment, targeting etc.) roles supporting field-based teams. Requires at least 2 years of people management experience.

Must possess:

• Proven success in leadership position with the ability to establish a clear vision, strategies and initiatives to optimize the effectiveness of field base teams.
• Demonstrated success in optimizing field force effectiveness by leveraging performance metrics and implementing deployment, alignment, and targeting strategies
• Strong knowledge of incentive compensation plan design and administration
• Previous direct report management experience with the proven ability to establish clear expectations, motivate, manage performance, an coach others.
• Proven success building strong working relationships with field leadership and other cross functional partners
• Ability to think critically and form a methodical analytic approach to solve business problems
• Knowledgeable in commercial data warehouse concepts, industry physician/patient/payer level data, VeevaCRM platform, and reporting tools (PowerBI and/or similar analytics reporting software).
• Highly proficient with MS Excel and PowerPoint
• Well organized with a proven ability to multitask, prioritize, delegate, and manage shifting strategies/tactics/responsibilities in a dynamic, cross-functional teamwork environment.
• Strong interpersonal and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to communicate complex concepts and ideas to leadership and the field teams in a easy to understand and relatable terms.
• Ability to challenge the status quo and drive organizational action
• Travel approximately 20%

Scope:

Establishes strategic plans for designated function(s).  Develops methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for projects, programs, and people. Works on complex issues where analysis of situations or data requires an in-depth knowledge of functional area and related organizational objectives.  Erroneous decisions will have a serious impact on the overall success of functional area and may impact the long term success of the Company.

Physical Requirements:

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; climb or balance; stoop, kneel, crouch, see, talk or hear in a standard office environment and independently from remote locations. Employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 20 pounds.   Ability to travel by car or airplane independently overnight 20% of the time and work after hours if required by travel schedule or business issues.

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