Recovering A Clinical Trial That Has Been Derailed

For emerging or developing biopharma companies, the choice between investing in their own infrastructure — people, technology, and equipment — or enlisting the services of a third party with established standard operating procedures (SOPs), expertise, and technology usually is not a difficult one. Investing in a partner offsets risk and reduces the need to hire staff or purchase technology while providing access to specialized expertise and services.

However, these partnerships sometimes do not work out as intended. The sponsor may be displeased with the quality of the vendor’s deliverables, timelines are not being met, or numerous change orders and staff turnover are sowing chaos. In some cases, the vendor recovers and delivers on most of its contractual promises, often by assigning more resources at additional cost to the sponsor. Or, the vendor provides value on a subsequent contract to make up for the current performance shortcomings.