Our CEO Erik Nordhoy talks about the new partnership

SAI MedPartners has recently taken on a strategic investment from Northlane Capital Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on the healthcare sector. This investment will provide growth capital to enable SAI to accelerate key initiatives to strengthen our client engagement model, augment our suite of services and further expand our global footprint.

Why is this the right time for SAI to take on an equity investor partnership?

I really believe we had reached an inflection point in our journey, which has been characterized by rapid expansion and double-digit revenue growth for over a decade. Our established global footprint, leadership position in the core strategic intelligence offering, and portfolio of nascent new offerings will all benefit tremendously from the additional capital and thoughtful external perspective that this partnership with NCP brings.

What does it mean for the future of SAI?

From a strategic perspective, the growth capital will help us become a better thought partner and allow us to broaden the range of services that we can provide to our clients. Since our inception, SAI has been laser-focused on keeping clients apprised of threats and opportunities within the competitive landscape in which they operate. However, our clients are increasingly seeking partners who can also incorporate other elements of decision support such as forecasting, market access, and pricing strategy development. In short, clients seek partners which can provide a more strategic perspective that incorporates many of these elements. And while we have already developed some of these internal capabilities to fulfill our clients’ needs, we see a fantastic opportunity to deploy capital to accelerate that effort.

What can our clients expect?

Clients can, first and foremost, expect the same level of commitment, responsiveness, and high-quality strategic intelligence partnership which they have come to expect over the years. Beyond that, our new partnership will accelerate critical initiatives which will enable more effective client engagement tools, knowledge-based content assets, and additional services. The acceleration of IntelliTraQ 2.0 (our proprietary portal platform) and additional content data assets to augment our exciting CellTraQ and GeneTraQ data offerings are only two examples. Our clients are looking for a smaller number of strong partners to support their strategic planning needs effectively and broadly. The capital deployment capability of NCP’s investment will enable us to do that.

The SAI talent factor

SAI’s foundation and success in the market are, and always have been, built on the exceptional talent, experience, and passion of our team. As we look to expand our offerings, the additional capital we now have available to us will support the aggressive acquisition of talent specific to different functionalities and strengthen our key therapy area teams. SAI is committed to continuing to build deep functional and therapy area expertise in key areas of growth within the pharmaceutical sector from a human capital perspective. We are excited that Northlane Capital shares our vision to invest in the recruitment and retention of the very best talent available.

How are we leveraging the investment to expand SAI’s Asia team?

Within our competitive set, Asia is a strategic differentiator for SAI which allows us to provide a truly global support capability that is unique and of tremendous value to our clients. There really is no other competitive intelligence provider that has a comparable footprint in the region which, for us, is anchored in our team of over 40 full-time employees between our Beijing and Shanghai offices. Our new partnership with NCP provides an opportunity to “double down” on our Asian leadership position by expanding the range of functional offerings to our clients in China and promoting further geographic expansion into Japan and other markets within Southeast Asia.

Strategic investment priorities

As an organization, we are intensely focused on the execution of our three-year plan to drive growth along three dimensions. First, we are doubling down on the investments we have made in our TheraTraQ content databases, IntelliTraQ platform, and syndicated offerings. Second, we are expanding our adjacent offerings in forecasting and portfolio strategy, market access and pricing strategy support as well as targeted qualitative market research. Third, we are aggressively growing our geographic footprint, particularly looking at Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Our ultimate objective is to firmly establish SAI as one of the world’s leading broad-based strategy support partners for our clients. Successful execution of the three-year plan will take us a long way toward achieving this goal.