Industry Challenges
The medical-technology industry encompasses a diverse set of companies, many of which are facing similar challenges. To remain competitive in a changing environment, executives need to answer a number of important questions:
How can we transform our sales, marketing, and pricing to achieve efficiency and competitive advantage?
How can we protect our pricing power in an environment where clinical differentiation is decreasing, regulation and transparency are increasing (through health technology assessments, for example), and competition is intensifying?
How do we optimize our portfolio of businesses and products to take advantage of growth opportunities ushered in by new technology?
What can we do to capture rapid-growth and low-cost production opportunities in emerging markets?
How can we protect our existing business—and also exploit opportunities—during an economic crisis?
BCG Competencies
BCG works with medical-technology and medical-device companies across all topics and sectors. Our experts in this sector focus on the following key areas, among others:
Vision and strategy address all issues related to formulating and implementing strategy, including business unit and product-specific strategy as well as corporate development.
Executing and driving change are hallmarks of BCG's work, and we collaborate with clients on market evaluation, target assessment, and due-diligence support. We are a leader in merger planning and postmerger integration. We help deliver results through business turnarounds and customized profitability-improvement efforts.
Although research and development (R&D) spending in medical technology has increased, innovation productivity is declining. BCG helps clients focus on topics such as R&D process efficiency, launch strategies, and product-life-cycle management.
BCG's experience with new commercial models—including those for sales force effectiveness, channel management, pricing for competitive advantage, and product-life-cycle management—is transforming clients’ commercial organizations every day. We also help clients develop growth strategies for emerging markets.
Efficiency in operations is critical in today's competitive medical-technologies market. BCG works extensively on supply-chain and manufacturing-network optimization, service efficiency, and asset productivity, among other topics.