Create and manage opportunities

Create an opportunity to evaluate a potential deal with a partner company.

Overview

Plan availability: Essential/Advanced
User role required: Manager/Contributor (see details)

Check out what has changed with the new opportunity page layout.

Opportunities include the identification of the partner or asset, its evaluation, and the contracting until the deal signature.

Opportunities can target a specific asset or technology offered by a company (in the case of in-licensing, research collaboration, or asset acquisition projects), or a company (in the case of out-licensing or a company acquisition).

Check the detailed user rights regarding opportunities here.

Access opportunities

There are three ways to access an existing opportunity:

• Click Opportunities on the navigation bar to access the opportunity hub.
  
• Access the opportunity through an initiative.
  
• Use the Search bar.
  

What's inside an opportunity

• You can see if the opportunity is part of a private initiative with the red lock icon next to the opportunity name, and you can click View access to see the list of authorized users.
• You can see and modify the status of the opportunity.
• You can directly access the company profile by clicking its name on the top of the opportunity page.
• You can update the workflow.
• You can browse all information related to the opportunity in the different tabs: 
  • Overview: opportunity owner, creation date, asset, and opportunity types.
  • Summary: a free space to enter all kinds of notes. You can add customized templates to help you structure the opportunity summary.
  • Asset: all information related to the asset.
  • Attachments: all files useful to enrich the opportunity, including emails, publications and hyperlinks to external storage places. For hyperlinks you can choose the related icon in the drop-down list to visualize quickly the type of link: Google Drive, Microsoft Sharepoint, Youtube or default)
  • Tasks: to-do list to progress the opportunity and access to evaluations.
  • Meetings: meeting records associated with the opportunity.
  • Contacts: key contacts associated with the opportunity.
• You can access the Comments, Database, and Activity stream panels at the top right of the page.

Create opportunities

If the initiative doesn't exist yet, you will first need to create a new initiative.

Opportunities can be created individually - see instructions below, or imported in bulk - see Import opportunities.

There are three ways to create an opportunity:

• From the navigation bar

You can create an opportunity wherever you are in the application from the blue Create button at the bottom of the navigation bar. Click Create and select Opportunity in the drop-down list.

• From the opportunity hub

Click the Create button at the top right of the Opportunities page.

• From initiatives, companies, contacts, or campaigns

Go to the opportunity tab for an initiative, a company, a contact, or a campaign, and click the Create button at the top of the opportunity list.

• Creation process

After clicking one of the three Create buttons mentioned above, a pop-up will appear.

1. In the first step, enter the name of the initiative that the opportunity should be associated with and pick the initiative from the list prompted.
   

   When an opportunity is created from an initiative overview, in this first step the initiative is automatically pre-selected.

2. In the second step, enter the name of the company the opportunity will be associated with. Matching companies will be suggested both from your directory and Inpart Data. If the company doesn't exist yet, you can create a new entry.
   
3. In third step, enter the name of the opportunity. It can be a pharma asset, a technology, an organization, or a consumer health asset name.
   
4. In the fourth step, select the opportunity type (in-licensing, out-licensing, investment, etc.). This step only appears if you're a Manager user and the asset type of the selected initiative offers at least two workflow types.
   
5. In the fifth and last step, verify all the information you've entered. Use Create to simply save the opportunity and see a confirmation message, or choose Create and open to go directly to the newly created opportunity without any extra clicks.
   

Important notes on opportunity creation

• When creating opportunities from a company, a contact, or a campaign, specific behaviors apply to facilitate the creation process:

  • In the first step (Select an initiative), the default initiative is pre-selected by default.

  • In the second step (Select a company), if you're creating the opportunity from a company profile, this company is pre-selected by default to be associated with the opportunity.

  • In the last step (Summary):

    • If you're creating the opportunity from a campaign, the following fields will be displayed: Source = Campaign and Source campaign = [name of the campaign].

    • If you're creating the opportunity from a contact profile, the contact name will be displayed.

• If the company or opportunity name matches a record from Inpart Data, the company profile and opportunity classification fields will be automatically filled out by Inpart Data to simplify data entry.
• A user with a Contributor role can't select the opportunity type. If a Contributor user creates a new opportunity, a Manager user can update the opportunity type in the overview section. Until then, the opportunity type will be marked as To be defined.
  
  

Display opportunities as a Kanban board

The Kanban Board is available only for users that have the full workflow feature. This feature isn't available to users connected to Inpart Classic.

Required user role: Manager

Go to the Opportunities main page and click the table icon at the top of the list.

If you use several workflow types for your opportunities (e.g. In-licensing, Investments...), you'll have one Kanban board for each one of them. By default, you have at least a To qualify board that covers all the opportunities that are currently in their early stages (Identification or Triage) before being distributed to the relevant workflow type.

Each Kanban board is split into several columns representing the different stages of the workflow, and each opportunity is represented as a card under the right column. These cards display the opportunity name, the company associated, the initiative name, and the status of the opportunity (Active, On-hold, Declined, or Closed). 

The cards are ordered first by priority level, with the high-priority opportunities showing at the top of the list, and then secondly by alphabetical order. The order can be reversed if your goal is to view first the opportunities with no priority, so that you can prioritize them.

Click the cards to open the quick view of opportunities in the right-side panel.

Important: Please note that you can't move a card from one column to another. You need to open the opportunity and update the workflow.

Add customized templates to the opportunity summary

Customized opportunity summary templates can help you describe the deal being evaluated with its structure and strategic rationale. The template is to be selected at the initiative level and is the same for all the opportunities contained in this initiative.

First, to add your own customized templates, go to the Administration page, in the Templates tab. In the Opportunity summary templates section, click Create, name the template, select the related asset type, and enter the summary text. The Default Summary template is here to give you an example of a template, but it can't be selected as a summary template in opportunities; you'll have to create your own templates.

Then, you have two options to apply the template to opportunities.

If the initiative is already created, go to the related initiative, click Edit, and select the template. You also have the possibility to select None to leave the opportunity summary empty.

If you're creating a new initiative, see Create and manage initiatives.

Reassign opportunity ownership to other users

You can reassign the ownership of an opportunity if you're a user with a Manager role.

Click the name of the current owner at the top of the opportunity overview. A drop-down list will appear with the list of users you can select. You can only reassign an opportunity to a user with a Manager role (even if the initial owner had a Contributor role).

Modify the partner company

This can be useful in the following cases:

• A company acquires the current company of the opportunity. You can update the opportunity's company to the new acquiring company.
• Two companies merge to form a new entity, including the current company of the opportunity. You can update the opportunity's company to the new entity.
• A spin-out company is created from the current company of the opportunity. You can update the opportunity's company to this new spin-out company.

Click the more option button at the top of the opportunity page and select Edit.

The following pop-up will open. You can remove and replace the current company with another company from the drop-down list. If the new company hasn't been previously created in Deal, you need to create it from the company hub.

Click Update. A new pop-up will open.

Click Yes, update asset company if you want the company related to the asset to be updated in Deal's background data. Click No, keep same asset company if you want to keep the previous company related to the asset profile in Deal's background data. 

For Organization-type opportunities, this confirmation pop-up is skipped, and the asset is always updated to match the new company. This can be seen in the Details tab, Organization asset section of the opportunity.

Important notes:

• Only one company can be selected.
• You can't leave the company field empty.
• Once the company is changed, the event is recorded in the opportunity's activity stream (Company changes to xxx).
• If the new company was previously selected in the Related information tab of the opportunity, the related company link is removed.
• The profiles suggested in the Database side panel of the opportunity will be replaced by the profiles related to the new company.

Link opportunities, companies, or agreements to an opportunity

In case you're evaluating the same asset, technology, or organization in different opportunities based on geographical areas or clinical indications, for instance, you can link these opportunities and companies together for a more efficient follow-up. If an agreement has been created, it can also be linked to the relevant opportunity.

All the linked elements are listed in the Related information tab. Click Add in the desired section and select an existing element to link it here.

Once you've linked an element in the initial opportunity, this opportunity appears as well in the target opportunity, company, or agreement.

Manage the opportunity workflow

See Navigate opportunity workflows in Inpart Deal.

Delete opportunities

Click the more options button at the top right of the opportunity overview and select Delete. A pop-up will open asking for your confirmation.

Detailed opportunity user rights

All rights below are conditional on whether the initiative is public or private. If an initiative is private, the rights apply only to the users who have access to the initiative.

If you're a Manager, you can perform the following actions on all opportunities whether you own them or not (and whether you own the related initiative as well).