Sponsor Perspectives on Outsourced Clinical Trial Logistics

ISR consistently seeks to demystify the mystical, and there’s plenty of mystery regarding clinical trial logistics. How do sponsors select a provider? Which activities do they outsource the most? Where are these questions heading? To none other than ISR’s latest Clinical Logistics Benchmarking report, which offers performance data for five different types of companies: integrated clinical trial service providers, specialty couriers focused on the life sciences industry, transportation/package delivery companies with a healthcare offering, freight forwarders/integrators with experience across multiple industries, and airline cargo services.

100 respondents from North America, Europe, and Asia completed a 20-minute, web-based quantitative survey in Q1 of 2022. These verified decision makers were screened prior to participation to meet the following requirements: must work at a biopharmaceutical or pharmaceutical company, have significant influence over outsourced clinical logistics, been involved in outsourced clinical logistics within the past 18 months, and must play a role in gathering information about service providers, selecting service providers and/or managing service provider activities.

Clinical logistics service providers need to understand their company’s competitive position and where to leverage their advantages over other providers. Readers of these reports can glean how familiar sponsors are with the included companies, what their level of use is, and how they rate the performance of each based on their first-hand experiences as a customer. Marketers and business development professionals alike can utilize this information to build their brand’s reputation for these offerings and position their company as the ideal provider for clinical trial logistics.

The data in this report can also aid biopharmaceutical companies in establishing long-term, strategic partnerships for outsourced clinical trial logistics. These recent customer experiences can offer some direction to sponsors that are researching vendors. Knowing who the industry leaders are and how each provider has performed relative to their customers’ expectations is critical information for outsourcers, enabling them to confidently determine the best partner to meet their unique needs. Respondents support their performance ratings with verbatim responses as well, offering further valuable insight to readers of this report.

Outsourcers understand the need for reliable information, especially in an industry where experiential data from their peers in similar roles is hard to come by. It’s equally important for providers to access such information because they can also benefit from understanding how drug developers view the market for these services. Whether you are seeking comparitve performance data to inform your clinical logistics provider selection or assessing your marketing strategy to capture the attention of potential customers, ISR’s Clinical Logistics Benchmarking report is a convenient and valuable tool to aid you in achieving your goals.