Create and Manage Opportunities

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

Overview

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 main list of opportunities.
  
• 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, Inova Data, 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. Instructions can be found here. There are three ways to create an opportunity:

Via the Navigation Bar

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

Via the Opportunities Main Page

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

Via Initiatives, Companies, Contacts or Campaigns

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

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 fourth 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.

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

1. On step 1/4, 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. On step 2/4, enter the name of the company the opportunity will be associated with. Matching companies will be suggested both from your directory and Inova Data. If the company doesn't exist yet, you can create a new entry.
   
   
   
   
3. On step 3/4, enter the name of the opportunity. It can be a pharma asset, a technology, an organization, or a consumer health asset name.
   
   
   
   
4. On step 4/4, verify all the information you've entered and click Confirm.
   
   

If the company or opportunity name matches with a record from Inova Data, the company profile and opportunity classification fields will be automatically filled out by Inova Data to simplify data entry.

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 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, please refer to the Initiative article.

Import Opportunities

To create opportunities from an external import, please refer to the Import Opportunities article.

Export Opportunities

You can export opportunities from the main list of opportunities. Click the ellipsis button at the top right of the Opportunities page and select Export opportunities. An Excel export will instantly be downloaded. You can either export the list of all opportunities or apply a filter and export only the filtered opportunities. 

Filter Opportunities

You can use the quick filters available on top of the list of opportunities, such as All Opportunities or My Opportunities, your custom filters or the Types and Status fields.

For advanced filtering, click the All filters button to open a filtering panel on the right of the page. From here you can filter opportunities based on all the fields that they contain. Click Apply filters at the bottom of the panel to apply your filtering preferences.
You can save a custom filter to be able to use it on a regular basis. For that, click the ellipsis icon next to All Opportunities, and click Save as new filter. 

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 Inova Classic.

Only users with a Manager role can see and use the Kanban board.

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

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 secondarily by alphanumerical 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.

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

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 the 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).

Delete Opportunities

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

Detailed User Rights Regarding Opportunities

All the rights below are conditional to the fact that 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).