Director, Field Operations

Deciphera is a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing important new medicines to improve the lives of people with cancer. We are leveraging our proprietary switch-control kinase inhibitor platform and deep expertise in kinase biology to develop a broad portfolio of innovative medicines.

In addition to advancing multiple product candidates from our platform in clinical studies, QINLOCK® is Deciphera’s FDA-approved switch-control kinase inhibitor for the treatment of fourth-line gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST). QINLOCK is also approved for fourth-line GIST in Australia, Canada, China, and Hong Kong.

Deciphera (NASDAQ: DCPH) is a publicly traded company headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Our state-of-the-art research facility is located in Lawrence, Kansas. 

We offer an outstanding culture and opportunity for personal and professional growth based on our “PATHS” Core Values:

• Patients – places the importance of improving the lives of patients and their caregivers at the forefront of every day’s work.
• Accountability – for our performance and the way we work with coworkers and other stakeholders.
• Transparency – in our intent and actions to both internal and external stakeholders.
• Honesty and Integrity – fosters trust and strives to deliver on our and the company’s promises.
• Stewardship – values and uses wisely the resources and investments provided to the company.

We are seeking a highly motivated, insightful, and resourceful field operations individual to join the Commercial Insights and Operations team.

Reporting directly to the Vice President of Commercial Insights and Operations, this highly visible role will have the rare opportunity to manage and evolve the Field Operations function as we prepare to launch Deciphera’s second Oncology indication in GIST.

Field Operations will serve as the business lead for customer targeting, field force sizing and alignment, field incentive compensation design and implementation, field insights and reporting, and fleet management. This role will guide the CRM system design to meet the reporting needs of all customer-facing teams, including Market Access, Sales, and Medical Affairs. In addition, the person in this role will actively influence commercial strategy and tactical execution by providing timely, unbiased, objective, in-depth intelligence about customer level performance. This person must be able to engage diverse HQ and field-based audiences in a highly collaborative manner, possess strong analytical skills with an ability to translate findings into actionable insights. As a member of the commercial team, this role serves as an internal consultant to Commercial and Field leadership to drive innovation and forward-thinking customer-focused solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Maintain (and evolve as needed) Deciphera’s field facing customer engagement model and field operations function
  • Leverage subnational data and market knowledge to recommend target profiles, optimal field structure and sizing
  • Design and deploy territory alignment process to ensure continued optimal field effectiveness geographically and across products as the portfolio expands
  • Ensure continuity of alignments across Medical, Market Access and Sales
  • Manage field roster and fleet
  • Maintain close alignment across Commercial Insights teams to ensure field and market data creation/capture and reporting serve strategic and tactical direction for the field
• Lead a best-in-class incentive compensation function
  • Facilitate the committee and processes to compliantly design, document and administer incentive plans
  • Design and administer compliant incentive compensation plans that appropriately motivates the commercial field team(s)
  • Develop tracking, attainment reconciliation and payout calculation process
  • Design timely and effective standardized incentive compensation reporting
  • Lead quarterly IC committee Discussions (present the proposal(s), address questions and obtain relevant approvals) from key stakeholders including commercial field leadership, legal, finance, compliance, and HR
• Participate in the Insights to Action working team to recommend value-added updates to the CRM across field sales, Market Access, Medical Affairs and Field leadership
  • Monitor team performance against key performance indicators and collaborate with commercial leadership to implement improvements
  • Partner with Advanced Analytics and Data Management to ensure integration of field data into the commercial data environment
  • Assist Training and Development with creation and implementation of systems training
• Serve as HQ liaison for field-based personnel, develop and manage field communications to efficiently triage data and system inquiries and ensuring field employees have the information, data and insights needed to be successful in territory
• Ensure timely and accurate collection, analysis, management, and dissemination of all field reports
  • Develop tools and dashboards that capture key performance metrics across all teams
  • Design and implement effective call planning and customer insights tools
  • Assist management in evaluating sales productivity/performance
  • Develop field activity, performance, and attainment reporting  
• Serve as a thought-partner to Commercial Insights & Operations and Field Leadership
  • Champion intellectual agility and use of analytics to refine long-term strategy and a flexible approach to execution
  • Demonstrate managerial courage to make and stand by difficult decisions
  • Display high degree of creativity and innovation in problem solving, proactively developing new approaches, processes, and methodologies to maintain timely, accurate and reliable field operations
  • Serve on cross-functional data governance team and help establish and maintain data and ensure data quality
• Oversee and execute a wide variety of adhoc initiatives and proactive analyses to identify issues/opportunities     
• Participate in Sales Leadership discussions to understand the needs of the sales teams and how to drive for solutions to operational challenges, address key questions through insights, and align incentives to motivators and areas of strategic focus. 

• BS/BA degree in business or related discipline.  MBA or other advanced degree preferred
• 8+ years of experience within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology or consulting industries.  Oral oncolytic or rare disease experience, including launch experience, is strongly preferred.
• 5+ years of progressive experience in field/sales operations roles, CRM systems administration, incentive compensation, and/or sales
• Hands on, in-depth understanding of designing, implementing assessing incentive plans in small markets and for launch products
• Strong analytical skills with the capability to appropriately define business issues; to comprehend quantitative methods and analytical techniques; to perform accurate analysis; to cross-check data and assumptions; to document and establish data trails; and to think creatively about different ways to analyze information
• Must be a true team player – authentic, humble, high integrity, able to build a positive team spirit and lead through the ups and downs of a launch, puts success of team above own interests and support everyone’s efforts to grow and develop
• Highly collaborative and able to build strong relationships with stakeholders at multiple levels in the organization
• Excellent interpersonal, oral and written communication skills, including ability to synthesize data and deliver a clear overview of commercial strategy, opportunity and risks for the Executive Team
• Demonstrated ability to adapt to changes in the work environment, manage competing demands and adjust approaches/methods to best fit the situation with maturity and professionalism
• Deep experience with pharmaceutical distribution data sets (e.g. Patient Claims, Specialty pharmacy, Specialty Distributor, Patient Access, etc.)
• Strong business acumen, critical thinking, along with technical and problem-solving skills
• Thrives in fast-paced, minimally structured environment, able to deal with ambiguity and can act without having the complete picture
• Effectively and seamlessly work at multiple “altitudes” within the organization.  Maintains a “no job is too big or too small” attitude necessary to succeed in a startup environment.
• Track record of forging productive partnerships throughout the organization including field teams, finance etc
• Demonstrated ability to develop a point of view through analytics and drive toward action
• Ability to self-direct projects and work with little supervision
• Experience managing vendor partners/consultants and leading project teams to achieve milestones and objectives
• Ability to travel (up to 20% of time with potential for more occasionally)

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY INFORMATION

Deciphera is committed to equal employment opportunity and values diversity. To ensure that we comply with reporting requirements and to learn more about how we can increase diversity in our candidate pool, we invite you to voluntarily provide demographic information in a confidential survey at the end of this application. Providing this information is optional. It will not be accessible or used in the hiring process, and has no effect on your opportunity for employment. This information will also be treated confidentially.  Our commitment to increasing diversity in our candidate pool does not affect our commitment to equal employment opportunity, including our ongoing commitment to make all hiring and other employment decisions solely on a nondiscriminatory basis.