Clinical Outsourcing

This area is where my I spend most of my working life.
It is an interesting arena to focus on today.
Pharmaceutical companies are huge spenders in R&D, hence the importance of getting the outsourcing right.

2 Good conferences are coming up soon.

1) Clinical Outsourcing Congress january 2008 in London
The Clinical Outsourcing Congress addresses the major strategic and operational issues involved in outsourcing. Issues to be addressed include:

• Assessing the true value of clinical outsourcing
• How do you identify your core competencies?
• How do you develop an operational culture that embraces outsourcing?
• Partnering with niche providers
• Improving the speed and quality of clinical trials
• Managing long and short term contracts
• Measuring and reducing risk
• Clinical trials in low cost countries


2) Partnerships in Clinical Trials 2007 - November 2007 in Amsterdam


They have some excellent speakers this year

John Micklethwait, Editor-in-chief, ‘The Economist’
John Sergeant, Author, Broadcaster and former BBC Political Correspondent
Richard Spoor, Vice President, Global Procurement, Merck & Co., Inc.
Mary Rose Keller, Vice President, Head Global Clinical Development, Shire Pharmaceuticals
David Roblin, Vice President and Head of Clinical Research Development Europe, PFIZER GR&D
Dianne C. Kikta, PhD, MBA, Vice President and Chief Global Clinical Team Operations, Wyeth
Paul de Koning, MD, PhD, FFPM, Vice President, Exploratory Development Astellas Europe R&D
Mark Carter, Global Alliance Leader – CRO partnerships, PDO Resource, Management Group, Roche Products Ltd, UK
Rene Sluijter, Global Head Alliance Management, Solvay Pharmaceuticals
Brent Gledhill, Head of European and Asian Banking, William Blair International
Inspiration speaker:
Simon Weston OBE, Inspirational Falklands War Veteran

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), the future of research

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO)
Probably the newest kid on the block.

Competitive intelligence – companies are increasingly wanting more detailed intelligence about their competitors which makes it easier compare and contrast and enables clearer positioning to assist in the bid process. Most of this data is not available publicly and is gathered by research. Previously this intelligence was considered too sensitive or client-specific to outsource but the pace of market change, limited internal resources, lack of enterprise competitive intelligence and the need to fill information gaps is fuelling this KPO market.

360 degree profile of the customer - corporates are looking to gain a tactical edge in the identification and pursuit of business by commissioning research on: organisation structure, centralised and decentralised decision-making and budget processes, vision, strategy, geographic footprint, technology spending forecasts, competitors' share of budget, SWOT analyses, biographies of the management team and financial performance analysis. Once regarded as the knowledge preserve of the business development or accounts teams, the gathering and analysis of strategic and tactical information on major existing or potential clients is now seen as a key battleground where marketing, not sales, owns the research budget and outcome. 360 Degree builds are being requested to: identify unrealised value in existing client accounts; map “cold-spots” - where a costly business development team should not focus their time and attention for at least 12-18 months and to discover “white space” where swift and effective engagement could give you the decisive edge.

Hot-spot identification - a granular examination of market segments using value chain analysis, gap analysis, concentration & profitability analysis, trend analysis, in order to isolate hot-spots. Historically this was undertaken either internally through consolidating industry-specific syndicated research providers or via a trusted management consultancy brand. Now however, large corporates are wanting fresh research from all relevant sources in order to build a unique hot-spot picture beyond the conventional-wisdom approach of traditional suppliers.

Emerging, growing and new market evaluations - to examine, explore and size the market potential for emerging and growing industries, for example: offshoring, digital rights management, customer intelligence software, location-based services, SOX compliance solutions, and so on. The skepticism that today's CEOs and investors have with existing forecasting models indicating exponential rates of adoption, irrespective of the market being examined, is driving firms towards to more rigorous approaches to qualitative and quantitative assessment provided by KPO suppliers.

Tracking industry developments - subscription based or ad-hoc service to large companies for tracking specific developments in a particular domain, for example, M&A, new product launches, executive moves, adoption curve of emerging technologies, market share and rankings. We are finding that there is rapidly growing demand for this type of customised service as an alternative or complement to syndicated research services. This is a KPO monthly reporting process providing: earlier insight; internal time and cost savings from outsourcing the triangulation and distillation of data from multiple sources; and deeper market and segment analysis.

Outsourced marketing team members – additional research project team members to help on time-critical work. This is the inevitable result of getting close to clients via KPO work in described in all of the above categories.

KPO is still maturing, but as a subset of business process outsourcing, it is becoming more prevalent within market research circles. The key of course, is the need for up-to-date and accurate information. This is driven not only by a proactive desire to use better intelligence to gain market share, but as a defence against new entrants and the need for compliance in an increasingly highly regulated business environment.

Business process outsourcing

An interesting and relatively misunderstood area of Outsourcing is Business Process Outsourcing(BPO)

According to Wikipedia.
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the contracting of a specific business task, such as payroll, to a third-party service provider. Usually, BPO is implemented as a cost-saving measure for tasks that a company requires but does not depend upon to maintain its position in the marketplace. BPO is often divided into two categories: back office outsourcing, which includes internal business functions such as billing or purchasing, and front office outsourcing, which includes customer-related services such as marketing or tech support.

BPO that is contracted outside a company's own country is sometimes called offshore outsourcing. BPO that is contracted to a company's neighboring country is sometimes called nearshore outsourcing, and BPO that is contracted within the company's own country is sometimes called onshore outsourcing.[1]

The most common examples of BPO are call centers, human resources, accounting and payroll outsourcing.

Use of a BPO as opposed to an application service provider (ASP) usually also means that a certain amount of risk is transferred to the company that is running the process elements on behalf of the outsourcer. BPO includes the software, the process management, and the people to operate the service, while a typical ASP model includes only the provision of access to functionalities and features provided or 'served up' through the use of software, usually via web browser to the customer. BPO is a part of the outsourcing industry. It is dependent on information technology, hence it is also referred to as information technology enabled services or ITES. Knowledge process outsourcing and legal process outsourcing are some of the subsets of business process outsourcing.


According to dataquest the Top 20 BPO's in India are:

* Genpact
* Transworks
* IBM Daksh
* TCS BPO
* Cambridge Solutions
* WNS Global Solutions
* Wipro BPO
* Convergys India
* Firstsource Solutions
* HCL BPO
* Aegis BPO
* Infosys BPO
* EXL Services
* Outsource Partners International
* Sutherland Global Services
* vCustomer
* HTMT Global
* 24/7 Customer
* Aptara
* e4e
* MphasiS BPO


Remember you do not have to chose an Indian provider. Companies onshore can provide what you want a decent price without the hassle of using a company in a different timezone.

One I would like to mention is
Xchanging
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Type Public
Founded 1999
Headquarters London, United Kingdom
Industry Customer Administration, Human Resources, Procurement, Finance, Accounting
Employees 4,000+
Website Xchanging Business Processing Services

Xchanging is a business processing services company working in the financial, insurance, manufacturing and retail sectors internationally. The company handles large, complex back-office business processing in the areas of customer administration, human resources, procurement, finance & accounting.

Founded in 1999 by David Andrews, Xchanging today has more than 4,000 employees located in fourteen countries, including Australia, Belgium, France Germany, India, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Portugal Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Who ever you chose please do your research comprehensively and do not cut any corners because they will come back to bite you.
Enjoy.

Outsourcing 101

Outsourcing 101

Outsourcing has become a "charged' word. It is an important concept to understand because of its business applications (both for corporations and for small businesses) and because of its political implications. The following is intended as a primer on the main topics related to outsourcing. We have included a (hopefully) balanced summary of the "offshoring debate" without a definitive conclusion as we do not intend to take a political stance on this issue.
Definition of OutsourcingOutsourcing is the act of obtaining services from an external firm.
Business Process OutsourcingIn the corporate environment, the term “outsourcing” often refers to a particular type of outsourcing, business process outsourcing (BPO). BPO occurs when an organization turns over the management of a particular business process (such as accounting or payroll) to a third party that specializes in that process. The underlying theory is that the BPO firm can complete the process more efficiently, leaving the original firm free to concentrate on its core competency.
Roots of Outsourcing The concept of outsourcing was first made popular by Ross Perot when we founded Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1962. EDS would say to a potential client, "You are good at designing and manufacturing widgets, but we are skilled with managing information technology. We will sell you the IT services that you require, and you can pay us periodically with a minimum commitment of two years.” Today, EDS is a multi-billion dollar company with over 70,000 employees and is only one of many global BPO firms.
Offshore OutsourcingOffshore outsourcing, or “offshoring”, refers to outsourcing to firms in foreign countries, often to take advantage of labor arbitrage. In the past 10 years, business process outsourcing contracts have increasingly been given to firms in developing countries. Typically educated workers in developing countries, such as India or China, work for a much lower wage than do similarly educated workers in developed countries, such as Japan. Savings from the lower wage rate must exceed the increased costs of management and risk associated with offshore outsourcing for it to be economically viable.
The Politics of “Offshoring”Offshore outsourcing has recently become a hotly-debated issue in the national media. When the American economy began to pull out of recession in 2001, unemployment did not decrease as expected. Offshore outsourcing was blamed as a contributing factor to this “jobless recovery”. Information Technology was a particularly soft sector, and many American programmers lost their jobs to lower-paid foreign counterparts. Many economists however have recently conjectured that the higher-than-expected unemployment numbers were not the result of offshore outsourcing, and that offshore outsourcing has actually had a positive impact on the American economy. Undoubtedly the debate will continue into the presidential campaign.
The preceding article has been registered under a Creative Commons license. Courtesty of The Outsourcing Times (www.blogsource.org).

Definitions

Lets try and define some of the terms.

Outsourcing became part of the business lexicon during the 1980s and refers to the delegation of non-core operations from internal production to an external entity specializing in the management of that operation. Outsourcing is utilizing experts from outside the entity to perform specific tasks that the entity once performed itself.
The process of outsourcing formalizes the description of the non-core operation into a contractual relationship between the client and the supplier. Under the new contractual agreement the supplier acquires the means of production which may include people, processes, technology, intellectual property and assets. The structure of the client organization changes as the client agrees to procure the services of the outsourcer for the term of the contractual agreement.
The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of labor, capital, technology and resources.

Outsourcing involves the transfer of the management and/or day-to-day execution of an entire business function to an external service provider. The client organization and the supplier enter into a contractual agreement that defines the transferred services. Under the agreement the supplier acquire the means of production in the form of a transfer of people, assets and other resources from the client. The client agrees to procure the services from the supplier for the term of the contract. Business segments typically outsourced include information technology, human resources, facilities and real estate management, and accounting. Many companies also outsource customer support and call center functions, manufacturing and engineering.
Outsourcing and offshoring are used interchangeably in public discourse despite important technical differences. Outsourcing involves contracting with a supplier, this may or may not involve some degree of offshoring. Offshoring is the transfer of an organizational function to another country, regardless of whether the work is outsourced or stays within the same corporation[2][3] . With the globalization of outsourcing companies the distinction between outsourcing and offshoring will become less clear over-time. This is evident in the increasing presence of Indian outsourcing companies in the U.S. and UK. The globalization of outsourcing operating models has resulted in new terms such as nearshoring and rightshoring that reflect the changing mix of locations. This is seen in the opening of offices and operations centers by Indian companies in the U.S. and UK.
Multisourcing refers to large (predominantly IT) outsourcing agreements.
Multisourcing is a framework to enable different parts of the client business to be sourced from different suppliers. This requires a governance model that communicates strategy, clearly defines responsibility and has end-to-end integration.

Welcome to Inside Outsourcing

This blog is going to focus on Outsoucing and Contract Management.
Please join me on my journey through this fast paced industry.

About Me:
I work for a major Pharmaceutical company in Europe.
Please post via the comments a little about yourself.

Special attention will be paid to Clinical Outsourcing. I believe this is the only "Clinical Outsourcing Blog"