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Return on Investment - Contract Management
Outsourcing with CFS is pay as you go and does not require any capital outlays; however, here are some of the benefits of Outsourcing to consider within Operations, Financial Planning and Analysis, and Legal Departments: Tangible Cost avoidance - A sponsor’s portfolio of clinical trials varies over time. Outsourcing Investigator Contracts eliminates staffing or workforce reduction issues as the clinical trial portfolio changes. Severance, relocation, hiring, training, and retention issues along with their related costs go away. Avoiding these costs can be significant to your organization. In addition, building the infrastructure to support a ‘best in class’ platform for investigator contract development, negotiation, and execution requires a significant capital investment. By outsourcing this process, these costs are shared across CFS’s client base allowing you to enjoy the benefits of this platform at only a fraction of the cost. Cost Reduction - By leveraging innovative internet technologies, combined with a lower cost structure and an operations staff that is exclusively focused in this area, our Contract Management Service delivers higher productivity and superior negotiation experience which translates to lower costs for our clients. Risk Reduction - CFS maintains a robust, comprehensive, enterprise-wide contract clause library of previously agreed upon language and budget items. By leveraging this wealth of information, CFS can help sponsors can not only break through but also prevent contract impasses with lower risk options. Cycle Time Reduction - Meeting timelines throughout the research and development lifecycle of a compound is critical to maximize product exclusivity before patent expiration. CFS’s Contract Management Service plays a critical role in reducing the cycle time needed to activate a site and get them enrolling patients in your trial. What separates our service from the work performed by in-house resources or even traditional CROs is the management of an enterprise database providing historical investigator site data that is searchable and reportable. A wealth of operational metrics is maintained for each investigator site, allowing us to identify process efficiencies and bottlenecks, leverage previously approved negotiated language or budget items, and capture negotiated cost savings for each agreement. CFS works with our clients to proactively leverage this information within a variety of variables such as therapeutic area or phase, providing invaluable business intelligence during the crucial site selection process. Compliance Reporting - CFS’s enterprise data architecture provides the visibility our clients need to comply with evolving ‘Sunshine’ law requirements for payments to investigators with respect to exception approvals for items over fair market value. Virtual Audit - Detailed support for all investigator contractual documents, contract language and budget approvals, and processes is available on-line saving the cost and expense of an on-site audit. Other Tangible Benefits include: • Paper trails are replaced with electronic trails… CFS uses green technology! • Error rate reductions – Information is entered directly by the sites and uploaded into CFS’s systems. After this information passes our rigorous QC process, it is used throughout the contract lifecycle and accessible to the Grant Payment Services organization.
Intangible Better Site Relationships - Throughout the drug development life cycle, the same, proven sites will be sought after to participate in studies. An efficient, streamlined contracting process allows sites to maximize their investment in a study through longer enrollment periods, generates goodwill, and encourages a preferred sponsor status, keeping your study at the front of their queue. Process Improvements - Providing investigator contract and grant payment management services is all we do at CFS, so our clients benefit from our best practices, domain experts, and innovative technology. When faced with the challenges that come with trying to improve upon existing internal processes, sometimes a better option is to outsource this work as it will deliver a more substantial ROI in a much shorter period of time. Reporting You Need - CFS provides near time reporting via the Internet. Sponsors have 24 x7 access to detailed information by investigator, institution or protocol. In addition, our systems enable accurate reporting by Investigator and/or Institution for compliance reporting. Focus on Core Business - No need for your clinical teams to be bogged down with developing and negotiating clinical trial agreements and conducting all of the site and/or legal follow up that is necessary when doing this work. Utilize the time saved on other high value activities that are core competencies of your clinical teams. Other Intangibles Benefits include: • Quicker access to better information • Transparency • Strong internal controls • Speed and Flexibility These are some of the benefits that can yield significant return on investment, improve you investigator relationships and provide your organization with a competitive advantage over other sponsors. Contact CFS today to learn more about our Contract Management Services. |