On the heels of significant restructuring and expansion in 2018, PrecisionValue continued to evolve during 2019 and early 2020 — a process that included a name change from Precision For Value. To maintain its preeminence among payer and access firms, the agency birthed a value transformation practice and expanded its focus on population health.
PrecisionValue co-president Kelly Wilder says the new practice was created less in response to client demand than to fill what it perceived as a market void. To put it more simply, the agency chose to invest in itself.
“We wanted to make sure we had a team within our organization that’s not directly working with clients, but is instead being forward-looking and asking, ‘What is happening in the marketplace right now? What services should we design to be able to address that?’” Wilder explains. “We’re not afraid to have what others would consider non-billable staff working on something very strategic.”
It’s that very forward-mindedness that PrecisionValue believes elevates it above the payer and access fray, now populated by many more players than there were when the agency opened its doors in 2003. Wilder points to the agency’s access experience team, staffed by 30 people who arrived at PrecisionValue from PBMs and other organizations that make market-access decisions, as a unit that’s custom-tailored to today’s value and access climate.
“Our agency was created more than 15 years ago with that exclusive focus, and we continue to really geek out on that,” she says. PrecisionValue’s revenue surged just more than 20% during 2019, to $63.1 million from 2018’s take of $52.5 million. While head count dropped by 13 people, to 227 at the end of 2019, Wilder attributes this to an overdue realization of administrative efficiencies. The agency revamped its accounting and project-management systems, and streamlined its workforce to prioritize employees with specific talents and skills.
PrecisionValue similarly evolved its roster in 2019. While it shed a handful of clients — the agency no longer works with Becton Dickinson, UCB Pharma, Kaleo, Avexis, DSI or Insmed — it replaced those assignments with work from Pharmacyclics, Sunovion, BeiGene, Eisai, Dexcom, Kyowa Kirin, Acacia Pharmaceuticals, Actelion and Acer Therapeutics. Client mainstays include Amgen, Sanofi and Eli Lilly.
According to Wilder, the year’s additions and subtractions were motivated by a conscious decision to focus on courting smaller organizations.
“We’ve been an agency that has had top 25 clients for a really long time. That’s been our bread and butter, and we’re still working with those companies,” she explains. “But we know that growth is going to come from working with a lot of smaller companies as well.”
Moving forward, when the worldwide disruption caused by the coronavirus has mitigated, expect PrecisionValue to turn its attention to a broader range of therapeutic areas, with gene and cell therapy, rare diseases and biomarker-specific treatments ranking high on its wish list.
The best marketing we saw in 2019…
We love the HPVWise campaign Precisioneffect created with MSD to encourage parents in the U.K. to get their boys vaccinated for HPV. The campaign does an amazing job motivating action to “fight cancer” while side-stepping all the barriers around HPV being sexually transmitted — though there’s plenty of great education on the website and communicated through social media. — Kelly Wilder
From the June 01, 2020 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
