Se sei un lettore di CRAsecrets, molto probabilmente lavori nel settore della ricerca clinica, o aspiri ad entrarci (in questo caso ti consiglio di leggere questa pagina).
Questo vuol dire che molto probabilmente lavori o per un’Azienda Farmaceutica o per un Contract Service Provider (sia esso un laboratorio, una CRO, o altri provider di servizi).
Leggendo il report “2012 Outsourcing survey” rilasciato da ContractPharma ho trovato molto interessante la sezione del sondaggio “What is your biggest complaint about Contract Service Providers you’ve worked with in the past?” nel quale gli intervistati espongono le loro maggiori critiche nei confronti di chi ha fornito loro un servizio.
Inevitabilmente le maggiori “Area of Improvement” sono sempre le stesse, vale a dire le tempistiche, la performance, le Risorse Umane, la comunicazione ed i costi. Ho pertanto riadattato le risposte raggruppandole in base alle diverse aree.
Per la cronaca, solo un intervistato ha risposto dicendo “No complaints! I have a pretty good relationship with my CSP. They are pretty responsive to my inquiries“.
Riporto volentieri la lista di complaint in modo che ciascuno di noi possa focalizzarsi su questi spunti e cercare di fornire un servizio migliore per dare una “buona impressione” al proprio Sponsor!
Tempistiche
1. Timeliness
2. Slow final reports
3. Scheduling
4. Unable to meet timelines they have put in place.
5. Not meeting target timeline
6. Adherence to scheduling commitments
7. Cannot meet timelines
8. Not reading submitted study designs before preparing time and cost proposals.
Performance
9. The quality of their work is not always where we need it to be
10. Completeness of investigations
11. Unreliability
12. Over-committing and under-delivering
13. Lack of ability to execute consistently
14. Lack of consistency re attention to detail
15. Inconsistent service
16. Poor responsiveness when issues arise
17. Not delivering what they promise
18. Quality of services and costs
19. Bad performance
20. Losing focus and drop off of delivery/quality after the honeymoon is over. Not working hard enough to keep me as a customer. Taking me for granted.
21. Not delivering what was contracted and lack of understanding of drug early development
22. Quality of work
23. Many times, the difference in the SOPs and practices creates issues.
24. Not being able to lead a project.
25. Failure to take ownership of clinical data quality and to clean proactively, per documented sponsor expectations • Most of our outsourcing is in the training area and a lack of quality by [certain big-named training groups and associations] has led us to choose another provider as our sole source of external training, which helps us control the quality
26. Little focus / investment on Continuous Improvement / Innovation
27. Inflexibility; nickle-and-dimed to death; not being forthright on capabilities and what they have actually done in the past.
28. Reporting deviations
29. Completely reactive, rather than proactive
30. Taking responsibility when something happens that is clearly within their control.
31. We no longer work with CMOs that over-promise and under-deliver.We prefer to work with CMOs that provide us value. There are numerous smaller CMOs that have significant value with the types of molecules they handle and the experience they bring giving us a huge advantage in the drug development race vs. our competitors. Also, we dislike traders or companies that tend to represent a variety of vendors but act as a sourcing agent.
Human Resources
32. Quality of resources
33. Turnaround time
34. Too high a turnover rate of employees within CROs
35. Insufficient human resources to meet our needs in a timely manner.
36. Change in personnel
37. Turnover of CSP personnel on project team.
38. Lack of technical expertise that caused problems at the 12th hour for the use of the material in the clinic, and the lack of engagement on their part to fix the problems.
39. An honest presentation of their capabilities.
Comunicazione
40. Getting them to call me back.
41. Poor communication at times from CMOs
42. Not informing the client immediately when there is a problem; we generally lose several weeks timing because of this.
43. Timeliness of communication particularly when data or information is not positive
44. Communication
Costi
45. High price
46. Reneging on quotes or commitments
47. Over-selling their service, resulting in change orders
48. Overselling of capabilities and/or capacity
49. Contract mods increasing price
50. Cost expectations too high, slow to start projects, hard to keep projects moving along
