Head of BD Operations

Job Title:
Head of BD Operations
Job Number:
35293
Location:
Brussels, Belgium,

The Head of BD Operations will will be tasked with leading operational commercial activities.
Your objective will be to advance business development opportunities, sales leads associated with defining, understanding, and validating market interest to ensure concrete revenue capture from the R&D assets.
This includes development-as-a-service, out-licensing of drug product assets, co-development partnerships utilizing our design to delivery platforms, and validating potential new service offerings in life sciences and biotech.
These activities span multiple market segments, including prophylactic and pandemic vaccines, advanced therapeutics and livestock vaccines.
You will work closely with Senior BD Directors, and cross functionally across the organization to drive and advance revenue-generating and/or value-creating opportunities, including close collaboration with Marketing and R&D on both offering definition, market feedback to inform technology development programs, and on execution and capacity planning.
Where appropriate, you will also play a role in referring potential leads to our other commercial businesses (CDMO, tech sales, advisory).
Responsibilities
Leadership & Management:


Lead a team of BD Managers, Associates, and Assistants, overseeing day-to-day operations, mentoring, and aligning team objectives with business goals.
In charge of capacity planning for BD team:
assess BD Team capacity, prioritize tasks based on revenue potential, allocate resources, monitor progress and make necessary adjustments.
Align on capacity planning with R&D (execution of BD leads) and with commercial businesses (for referrals).
Align with finance team to update Operational Business Development budget forecast (Opex), under VP BD oversight.
Manage Operational Business Development budget and approve external invoices, in line with internally policies.
Optimize team performance, enhance productivity, and ensure successful objectives delivery.
Onboard, mentor and develop team members by setting clear objectives, ensuring that necessary tools and resources are in place, and continuously monitoring progress.
Review and assess performance of BD team members on their operational and organizational objectives.

BD Function Building and Operations:


Coordinate with Marketing and Technical teams to ensure materials, BD trainings, understandings and sales messaging is well defined, well utilized, and market feedback is appropriately given to inform technology development programs.
Define, review, challenge and implement BD processes for effective function management, balancing good documentation practices with clear process without hindering operational efficiency.
Utilise existing tools including CRM and contribute to internal governance.
Ensure company representation at relevant industry events, conference, and tradeshows, including coordination with Communications and Inside Sales to ensure appropriate organization and preparation of team members, travel according with company policies, etc.
Collaborate with Senior BD Directors to assess, prioritize, allocate resources to support execution and manage specific BD opportunities - including interface with corporate governance.
Ensure appropriate use of defined tools and standards to assess BD opportunities and ensure adequate information to support strategic decision making for the Executive Committee (and at times, Board of Directors).
This includes valuation modelling, assessment of terms, assessment of resource requirements and market sizing for specific BD opportunities.
Ensure BD team are appropriately trained to use these tools and support BD Directors adequately, and that application of tools and decision making is consistent.
Work cross-functionally to define and advance collaboration opportunities with the appropriate governance.
This may include:
opportunistic M&A; novel corporate structures, funded innovation (grant programs for R&D), and in-house innovation programs - working with the New Ventures department or other internal and external stakeholders
Align with BD teams from other Commercial Businesses to support cross-selling and, if necessary, transfer or support of sales leads.
This includes aligning on attendance and key targets or outcomes for relevant conferences and periodic alignment where there are multiple sales leads associated with the same customer/ account.
Ensure consistency of messaging and clarity on commercial goals and offerings to both current and potential customers, as well as key stakeholders including global health accounts.
This would be in alignment with Marketing and under the guidance of the CBO.
Support Marketing to ensure appropriate information flow from BD activities to define the offerings, including interface between voice-of-customer, market intel and feedback, and adequate BD trainings.

Operational Excellence:


Oversee operations planning, market research, customer engagement, and the preparation of business cases, budgets, and revenue forecasts.
Own BD governance, the framework of rules, practices, tools and processes that guide how BD activities are managed and controlled.
Collaborate with BD teams, align on conference targets, and manage sales leads.

Financial Oversight:


Develop and manage budgets, forecasts, and financial plans related to business development activities.
Monitor financial performance against targets, identifying areas for improvement and implement corrective action.
Ensure adequate information for bottom-up sales projections and financial planning, including use of CRM and iterating BD pricing/proposal experience into financial projections.
Coordinate grant submissions and other funding opportunities, including integration into near-term financial planning.
Ensure appropriate use of tools to assess top-down value capture, including coordination with Investment and Finance on valuation modelling.
This includes long-term assessment of grant funding opportunities.

Required Skills
Qualifications:


MBA or related advanced degree, strong scientific orientation and proven experience in the pharmaceutical/ biotech / life science industry
Minimum of five years' experience in a business development role within Life Sciences, Pharma and/or Biotech; solid technical background
Demonstrated track record in leading and mentoring a team of BD professionals, setting clear goals and performance metrics, with a proven track record of achieving targets
Excellent presentation and communication skills, and the ability to influence and work successfully across varied audiences (colleagues, scientific and technical leaders, financial institutions, lawyers, pharmaceutical and business partners, collaborators, customers, and senior executives)
Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities; creative problem solver who can help implement the future strategy of the business
Comfortable operating in an environment of uncertainty and developing, communicating and advancing a vision and execution strategy to achieve defined goals
Proven track record of driving business growth and forming strategic partnerships
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