When a medical device company enters another market, it can be tempting to hand the new team the education used for the last launch and ask regional leaders to adapt it. The material may be accurate, but the people, channels, and support available in the new market are different.
What worked in the first market may also have depended on informal access to the people who built the product story. A newly hired commercial team or distributor partner elsewhere cannot rely on knowing whom to call for every clinical question, updated resource, or exception.
Global training infrastructure has to make two decisions explicit: what must remain consistent across markets, and what regional teams need to address locally.
The consistent foundation includes approved clinical and product education, requirements tied to each role, ownership of updates, and a record of required onboarding. Regional teams then need room to prepare people for their customers, channels, and operating conditions without creating a different account of the product in every market.
I have built global training infrastructure from the ground up across expanding international medical device businesses. The work required collaboration among Commercial, Medical Affairs, Scientific Affairs, and Marketing, along with delivery models that could reach employees and distributor partners in different regions.
Before entering a new market, leadership should know whether commercial employees and distributor partners have completed the training required for their roles. They should be able to access current approved product and clinical information, and know where to take questions they cannot answer.
A launch date does not establish any of that. The training infrastructure must be ready before those teams begin representing the product.
If your company or a portfolio company is entering new markets and needs support building that infrastructure, contact me at kelly@kellyelliottglobaladvisors.com.