Case Studies
CRO Client/Candidate System saves Clinical Research Organisation £900K every year
Introduction
Amanda is a Partner and Director of Operations of her Clinical Research Organisation (CRO) which specialises in oncology, rare diseases and advanced, cell and gene therapies.
She knew her Client/Candidate process was leaking time and needed to fix it
1DA designed and delivered an web system that streamlined her Client/Candidate process saving her £900K every year in lost revenue
Client Background
When a pharmaceutical client needs to test out a new drug, they often work with a CRO like Amanda’s.
The CRO is responsible for recruiting a specialized team of Candidates with a specific skill set (e.g. biologists specializing in diabetes research).
The team’s job is to test the new drug until it’s safe to go from human trials all the way to pharmacy shelves.
Once the Candidates have passed the Client interviews and the NDA’s and contracts have been signed by all parties, the project can start.
The Challenge of Client/Candidate Process
The Client/Candidate process was chaotic and Amanda wanted it fixed.
She knew being bogged down with so much unnecessary admin meant she was missing out on larger contracts.
After our discovery phase, we identified the following pain points.
Information was all over the place
11 different systems that did not talk to each other held all of the information needed to operate the business,
This was causing data duplication and lots of human errors, which meant more headaches for the team.
Finding Out The Current Status Of A Project Is Painful
Because different bits of information were scattered throughout 11 systems, trying to find out the current status of a project was a nightmare.
Switching between applications and comparing slightly different information was wasting valuable time.
£900K every year in lost revenue every year
The manual process of getting contracts signed off was costing £900K every year in lost revenue.
On average 10 days, every month was wasted on the manual process of emailing, printing, signing, scanning, sending by post, amending, and agreeing on contracts.
This had to change otherwise the chaos would continue
The Solution
The goal was to streamline Amanda's CRO workflow to increase profit and save 10 days per month in wasted time.
The solution was a custom software tool that worked with her client/candidate process.
Here are some of the main features.
Dashboard
This enabled a real-time business health check. With all her information in one place, finding out the current status of a project was a glance away.
Electronic Document Management
Being FDA 21 CFR Part 11 Compliant is a must for the pharmaceutical market so the software was built from the ground up with audits and compliances in mind.
Now, Amanda, her clients, and candidates amended and signed documents electronically.
Streamlining legal discussions was critical in clawing back some of that £900k in lost revenue.
Client & Associate Resource Management
This allowed Amanda to take full advantage of her network of specialist consultants.
The key feature here was to keep Amanda’s company in the minds of her clients & candidates by following up automatically at certain points in the process.
Forecast Project Cash Flow
Timesheet, expenses, and invoicing are now done the easy way.
Instead of trawling through hundreds of excel spreadsheets now, the Candidates entered their timesheet info with a few clicks and Amanda’s team no longer had to spend time converting currencies and calculating rates so people got paid correctly.
This enabled Amanda to forecast her cash flow more accurately allowing her and her team to make better decisions.
Project Summary
In the end, Amanda was delighted because she got the following benefits:
- Make Better Decisions with all her information in one place… accessible anywhere, anytime.
- Increase Revenue And Drive Profit by using data to identify where best to invest your resources.
- Fits her business with a tailored workflow that tracks the life-cycle of her projects.
- Save precious time with a streamlined workflow that tells you what action to take next.
- FDA 21 CFR Part 11 Compliant
- The business got paid faster by Clients and delivered new entities to market faster than ever before.
If you are a CRO and want to grab back wasted time and money in your Client/Candidate process then schedule a call today or fill in the form below.