Out-Licensing Projects, In-Licensing Opportunities, R&D Collaborations and Acquisitions centralize all information and exchanges related to the evaluation of an opportunity. They allow users to follow opportunities from creation until final decision or outcome and include options for collaboration among users as well as outside the application.
This article focuses on Out-Licensing Projects.
Out-Licensing projects and discussions allow you to structure and organize your out-licensing deals. The out-licensing project is the starting point, describing the asset you want to out-license and overall details about the deal. Discussions with each interested partner or company are linked to the project. The Out-licensing Dashboard presents all your Out-Licensing efforts in a visual format.
The following graph summarizes the relationships between the objects in this module:
Out-Licensing Projects
- The overview tab contains general information about the project, including the name of the deal, the type, the priority, and the business unit.
- An out-licensing project can be linked to one or more assets. In most cases, you would link a single asset to a project.
- The discussions tab contains a discussion for each company interested in the opportunity or asset (see below).
Note: Additional tabs for linking documents, contacts, and other key information can be displayed on the out-licensing project (refer to the details under Page Settings). But generally speaking, most users track and organize this information on individual discussions, as each discussion is based on an interaction with a specific company.
Out-Licensing Discussions
Each out-licensing discussion has its own page with related details, including:
- A link to the parent out-licensing project as well as to the overview screen of the company that the discussion is with.
- The status of the discussion, which is used to follow the discussion through the workflow and map the discussion on the out-licensing dashboard.
- Fields to describe whether a CDA has been signed.
Note that when CDA = Yes, additional date fields appear for you to specify when the CDA was signed and when it expires.
You can create an discussion from the Discussions tab on the project, or you can create it using the Outlook add-in. The add-in is the more efficient approach if you are beginning to track your discussion based on an email you received from the other company; it allows you to both create the discussion and consolidate the email, any attachments, and any new linked contacts in the same action.
Workflow in out-licensing
You can manage workflow in the out-licensing module in two ways:
- Milestones can be added in administration and displayed on the out-licensing discussion or project, then displayed and managed in the workflow ribbon and tab. When milestones are entered this way, they will include additional features and better data for tracking and reporting: Initiate and complete dates, assignees, attachments, reminders, etc.
- Milestones can be added as list values in the Status field of discussions. This is usually the approach taken when a client's reporting requirements are light and they prefer to use the more visual out-licensing dashboard.
Out-licensing Dashboard
The out-licensing dashboard gives an overview of all out-licensing projects in the system as well as the number of discussions per project and per status. As you create new discussions and update existing discussions by changing their statuses, the changes are reflected in this table.
You can easily view the discussions that are linked to a out-licensing project by clicking the corresponding number in the blue circle. The system will display a popup as shown below:
The popup contains a link to the project and to each of its related discussions.
Note: If an out-licensing project and/or discussion is restricted and you have not been added to the Authorization list of that object, the name of the project and/or discussion will be listed in the popup, but it will not be linked.