Business Innovation Priorities for Today and Beyond

Business Innovation
Priorities for Today and Beyond

In the year ahead, regulatory professionals are focused on getting products into customers’ hands as quickly as possible, breaking into new markets, and advancing their company’s sustainability and digital transformation efforts.

As they plan for the next five years, their ambitions broaden, with many focused on increasing operational excellence, making their innovation to market more agile, expanding into new
categories, and improving the regulatory profile of their products globally. In both the near and longer term, increasing transparency will be a critical focus area for regulatory professionals.

Given the upheaval of the past year for businesses globally, many of these key priorities have become even more important, especially improving operational excellence and accelerating digital transformation.

After a tough year for many global businesses, companies are focused in the short-term on maximizing growth and efficiency.

A majority of regulatory professionals report that their organization’s top priorities include bringing products to market faster and more efficiently (61%) and expanding into new regions (59%). This is true across the industries surveyed and at all company sizes.

But growth is not the only goal – companies are adopting a more holistic view of success.

More than 60% of regulatory professionals indicate that expanding their company’s sustainability commitment is a top objective, while another 55% say that increasing transparency is on the agenda. These priorities have expanded the responsibility of regulatory affairs to incorporate more holistic product stewardship.

Current Business Goals

Adopting and deploying digital technology to increase efficiency and virtual collaboration is vital.

Nearly 3 in 5 regulatory professionals (57%) – including 62% of those in the food & beverage category – indicate that accelerating their company’s digital transformation is a key priority this year, with another 39% saying it has become more vital than ever due to the pandemic.

Whether it is replacing manual processes with digital ones or bringing in newer technology in place of older systems, such solutions may spark new types of innovation, which is a key focus area in the longer-term for many regulatory professionals (more on this in the next section).

57%

Of Regulatory Professionals Report that Accelerating Digital Transformation is a Key Priority this Year

Food & beverage businesses are especially focused on increasing agility.

Regulatory professionals in the food & beverage space are more likely than their counterparts in consumer goods and chemical to indicate that making their innovation to market more agile is a top priority for this year (61% vs. 46%).

Making Innovation to Market
More Agile is a Top Priority

When it comes to goals specifically related to regulatory compliance, more professionals report that increased efficiency – more than anything else – is a priority.

Professionals’ top regulatory compliance goal for the year is increasing overall efficiency (36%).

About one third also want to review and approve dossier documents more efficiently, identify and eliminate bottlenecks, better identify requirements to implement a business request, increase ownership and accountability over regulatory and compliance tasks, and increase transparency of workflows and approvals.

Regulatory Compliance Goals

Looking beyond this year, increasing transparency has emerged as a key business goal looking forward for the next 5 years. How to achieve transparency will need to be considered alongside the traditional regulatory affairs priorities of accelerating innovation and expansion, and revamping operations to become more efficient.

Regulatory professionals indicate their top priorities for the next 5 years include furthering existing priorities such as making their innovation to market more agile, increasing operational excellence, expanding and improving the regulatory profile of products globally, and expanding into new product categories will continue to be critical focus areas in the longer-term. The survey results indicate that consumer demands for transparency are flowing through to business priorities.

Food & beverage businesses are especially focused on driving efficiency in the long-term.

Regulatory professionals in the food & beverage space are more likely than their counterparts in consumer goods and chemical to markets indicate that bringing products to market faster and more efficiently is a key longer-term goal (58% vs. 41%).

Business Goals For The Next 5 Years

Existing business objectives have shifted to become top priorities as companies endeavor to provide essential products and services to customers despite the tumult of the past year.

As companies strive to stay above water – and even potentially grow – in a chaotic and uncertain environment, certain business goals are more urgent than ever. Regulatory professionals believe that increasing operational excellence (42%), advancing digital transformation (39%), and increasing transparency (37%) have all become more important because of the pandemic.

COVID-19 disrupted existing business operations, exposing the true cost of legacy technology and moved Digital Transformation up the priority list. Surprisingly, digital transformation now ranks higher in priorities than bringing products to market faster. This points to the importance of modern technology as an enabler.