Healthcare

Global pharmaceutical company uses outsourcing to drive operational excellence and reduce trial time

Scope: Clinical Research
Geography: Global

Situation
The company’s trial targeted a single global protocol across five continents. The earlier traditional RFP style contracting produced unsatisfactory results and a need to re-bid. Its effort was hampered by unclear and inconsistent business objectives and requirements across the regional businesses, costing time and money.

Approach and Solution
We developed a solution to deliver high-quality services and reduce trial time at optimal cost. Specifically, we worked with finalist suppliers and the client’s different locations to develop common requirements. We then aligned service level specifications to the business objectives and reinforced them with positive and negative incentives. We were able to structure and negotiate a contract that, along with strong governance, promotes desired behavior.

Results
The solution improved the bidding process, built globally shared outcomes and resulted in service levels focused on key business objectives such as speed and predictability.  The process generated greater transparency into cost drivers and understanding of cost trade-offs in requirements, enabling the client to obtain higher levels of service at lower costs.