PROCESS DEVELOPMENT
Discovery and development: the new paradigm in outsourcing
In the second half of our two-part feature article, AMRI chairman, CEO and president Thomas D’Ambra explains the company’s strategy to meet new pharmaceutical industry needs in process development and API synthesis, including the introduction of a new service offering to provide informed decision-making, enhanced efficiency and more successful outcomes at all stages of the drug discovery and development pipeline.
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here has been a belief by some that outsourcing contract manufacturing and research services requires pharmaceutical and biotech companies to compromise – on quality, price or speed – and the old axiom was that even in the best of cases you could pick only two. By integrating AMRI’s capabilities, services and performance expectations around the globe, AMRI SMARTSOURCING™ provides the right vehicle to customise an offering that can be the best fit against all three for any particular need.
The changes in how pharma is considering outsourcing are key reasons the company rolled out its new offering, which is designed to provide customers the ability to customise AMRI’s resources, technologies, geographic footprint and record of accountability and
accomplishment in order to create an ideal offering to meet the needs of their research programmes, without the need to compromise on quality, productivity or timeliness. AMRI SMARTSOURCING™ also means that AMRI has instituted a number of internal initiatives for improving its performance and customer service, and has also invested in consolidating resources to meet customer preferences.
Besides being a re-branding of what AMRI has built over the 21 years of its existence, the company has used the development and rollout of AMRI SMARTSOURCING™ internally to raise performance and customer focus. For example, it is not enough to have multiple locations and technologies if each are operating as independent silos without the degree of cross-communication and
teamwork that can make them equal more than just the sum of the parts. In addition, this re-branding was a vehicle for us to focus on the customer experience, taking into consideration the clients’ perspectives. What were AMRI’s strengths? What areas could be improved? What did the company need to do differently? So many parts of the organisation touch the customer. Therefore it is important to realise that the customer experience goes far beyond sending compounds or test results, and includes verbal and written communications; responsiveness to questions; organisational attitude; the appearance of the facilities, work environment and products shipped; as well as a number of other factors that are just as important. As part of AMRI SMARTSOURCING™, AMRI has turned some of its attention internally and implemented a continuous process of self- examination and improvement of the customer experience.
Making smart choices
AMRI scientists using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) equipment. 16 sp2 Inter-Active September/October 2012
Customers’ smart choices are as valid for small, short-term projects as they are for partnerships and long-term collaborations. A good example was provided by a director at one of AMRI’s customers, who performed an independent study to justify the transition of their lead optimisation biology support from another CRO they had worked with for three years to AMRI. The case was made to a very sceptical board over a period of several weeks and meetings. The board could not believe the higher per FTE cost at AMRI could be more than compensated for by the higher skill level provided. This particular director, however, had established a modest pilot project with AMRI to test its capabilities and was able to compare AMRI’s performance in that programme to what the customer had received from the low-cost CRO to make the
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