Don't Put your Gross to Net Solution on an Island: Why Big Pharma is Moving Away from Pre-Built Point Solutions

By: Mike McCarthy, Rob Ririe & Tara Rockers

In recent months, we’ve seen a significant shift in how pharmaceutical manufacturers are approaching their Gross to Net (GTN), demand forecasting, and broader commercial planning needs.

Once a favored route for rapid deployment and narrow use-case wins, pre-built point solutions are now being reevaluated—and in many cases, replaced—as companies recognize the limitations of isolating business functions on digital islands.

The Market Is Moving: From Rigid Tools to Flexible Platforms

Let’s start with a real-world signal: Multiple large pharmaceutical companies are actively moving off pre-built tools. Others have already made the leap and are seeing success in demand forecasting on a platform approach.

What’s driving this shift? It's not about abandoning technology. It's about choosing technology that doesn't box you in.

Why Pre-Built Doesn't Cut It Anymore for Gross to Net in Pharma

Pre-built tools sounded like they made sense as a speed-to-value proposition when pharma manufacturers started scrutinizing their approaches for GTN forecasting over the past 10 years. But today, manufacturers face highly specific, highly varied needs:

1. Product and Market Complexity:

   The way a product is distributed, contracted, and reimbursed changes everything—from data inputs to the functionality required within your forecasting model. A one-size-fits-all app doesn’t work when your business model is built around unique channel dynamics that frequently vary across your product portfolio.

   
   

2. Data Fragmentation:

   Whether it’s physician-administered or retail, hospital or pharmacy, the type of product and the setting dramatically affects what data is available—and what format it’s in. You can’t afford a solution that forces your data to conform. You need a system that adapts to your data reality.

   
   

3. Rigid Architectures Break Process Flow:

   We've seen it firsthand—pre-built solutions that couldn’t handle the process granularity or methodology needed by a manufacturer. One client had to rip apart an entire app because the packaged architecture couldn’t support their required forecasting flow. Flexibility is everything.

A Platform Is Not a Product—It’s a Foundation

Here’s what decision-makers are realizing: When you invest in an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) platform, you’re not buying a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution. You’re getting a flexible platform.

That means:

• You don’t just solve GTN. You solve GTN and demand forecasting and accruals and supply planning and any number of other planning use cases.

• Use-case-specific data management becomes part of your model, not a separate, painful afterthought.

• Your business processes drive the flow of your modeling solution—not the other way around.

At one of the largest pharmaceutical companies, for example, our team stood up a complete pre-deal analytics environment in an EPM platform, including a data hub that allowed for clean, automated, and connected analysis. That type of cross-functional connectivity doesn’t exist in siloed solutions.

The Power of Unified, Cross-Functional Planning

The reality is, most business functions today still don’t talk to each other. Sales, finance, supply chain, and commercial teams operate in disconnected ecosystems. That’s not just inefficient—it’s risky.

A point solution might get one team halfway up the mountain. But to get everyone to the summit together, you need a unified approach.

This Isn’t Just Talk. We’re Seeing It in Action.

At Pharosity Consulting and Twelve Consulting Group, we’re enabling multiple manufacturers—including top pharma customers—to bring together demand forecasting, GTN channel forecasting, pre/post-deal scenario modeling and accruals analysis in the way that’s actually tailored to the specific needs of their processes, methodologies and product portfolios.

Why does this matter? Because, for instance, accruals don’t happen in a vacuum. You need to know the channel forecast to set the right accrual rate, but you also need it to inform your accrual true-up analysis in conjunction with GL balances, sales, and payment actuals from your ERP. This means multiple business functions sharing their results on a single platform where it all comes together.

Don’t Buy a Solution That Solves Only One Problem

If your team is evaluating a GTN solution—or any point solution—ask yourself:

• What happens when you need to change your process?

• Will this solution still work if your data changes?

• What’s required to streamline with another department in need of access or alignment?

And most importantly: Is this solution setting you up for scalability and connection—or isolating you further?

Want to talk about how your GTN, demand forecasting, or accruals process could evolve? Reach out to Mike McCarthy and Tara Rockers to get started.

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Next Up: What Is Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Why It’s the Smarter Starting Point for Gross to Net in Pharma

In the next post in this series, we’ll dig deeper into what makes EPM the right foundation for GTN specifically—and how our team at Pharosity and Twelve builds models that not only solve the immediate problem but set the stage for transformation across the business.