Turning Site-Centric From Slogan To Reality
By Dan Schell, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader
I went into the SCRS Global Site Solutions Summit in Orlando this past September with a bit of professional humility. I’ve been writing about clinical trials for two years now, and while I’ve gotten more comfortable speaking with sponsors, CROs, and site leaders, I’m still very aware there are areas where my understanding needs more depth. One of those areas is how professional organizations like SCRS actually influence operational behavior across the industry. So I sat down with Brian Egan, who helps coordinate the organization’s Collaborate Forward initiative, to understand where that work stands today, and whether it’s producing anything that looks like progress.
Collaborate Forward is SCRS’s effort to identify real, repeatable examples of effective collaboration between sponsors, CROs, and clinical research sites. The initiative aims to not just celebrate the companies that sites say are easiest to work with, but to uncover why those companies are succeeding, and how others can replicate the same practices.
If you’ve worked in clinical research for more than ten minutes, you’ve heard some version of: We’re committed to being more site-centric! The phrase has become so common that it’s starting to lose meaning. And yet, when SCRS analyzed years of input from sites through its Eagle Awards — the awards where sites vote on which sponsors and CROs are easiest to work with — one thing was missing: the reasoning.
The industry knew who performed well. No one could clearly articulate how they were doing it, or what others should do differently if they wanted to get better. As Brian put it, “Saying a sponsor is easy to work with only gets us so far. We wanted to understand what actually makes that true.”
To get there, SCRS began interviewing sponsors, CROs, and technology providers to uncover concrete actions that improved collaboration and outcomes for sites. Those conversations have now expanded into a structured effort to gather models, metrics, and process changes — not just slogans.
Where Collaboration Breaks Down Most
Before diving into solutions, SCRS wanted to understand where collaboration is most strained. A landscape survey of its Global Impact Partners confirmed three consistent pain points, and I doubt anyone reading this will be surprised: budget and contract negotiation, feasibility, and patient recruitment.
These are the pressure points where decisions happen slowly, communication gets messy, and operational friction becomes real. They are also the points where collaboration, when done well, can have the biggest impact.
From there, SCRS began documenting stories from organizations that have made meaningful improvements. To date, the initiative has spoken with 12 sponsors, CROs, and solution providers that have implemented specific collaboration practices and seen results they can measure.
Examples Of Collaboration That Produced Actual Change
One company SCRS highlighted was Sanofi, which developed a site-centric internal structure designed to ensure that site feedback doesn’t just get collected and logged, but it reaches the individuals and teams who can act on it. Their approach is cross-functional, meaning feedback doesn’t get trapped inside a single operational silo. When a protocol lands poorly with sites, Sanofi doesn’t wait for complaints; they treat silence itself as a data point worth acting on.
Another example came from GSK, which simplified the single sign-on onboarding process for sites. Instead of months of access delays, the company reduced onboarding to just a few days. That operational shift didn’t require a breakthrough strategy session. It required recognizing that access friction was harming study timelines — and committing to fix it.
These are practical improvements, not shiny initiatives. They don’t rely on slogans. They rely on choosing to remove friction where sites feel it most.
The 4 Patterns That Keep Showing Up
Across the organizations SCRS has spoken with so far, four themes keep surfacing:
Leadership must signal support from the top.
If site-centricity is positioned as a ClinOps priority alone, it dies. Companies that sustain it have senior leaders who visibly reinforce it.
Feedback loops must close.
Sites repeatedly say the same thing: We are tired of providing feedback that goes nowhere. The companies showing progress are transparent about what they can change — and what they can’t.
Processes must evolve, not just communication.
Language is easy. Reducing onboarding from four months to three days is harder — and more meaningful.
Progress must be measurable.
If collaboration work can’t be tied to time saved, fewer support calls, improved enrollment pace, or less back-and-forth on feasibility, it won’t survive annual budget reviews.
Brian was candid on this point: “I’ve been part of too many projects where everyone agrees something is the right thing to do, but when it comes time to sign the check, nobody will move forward without measurable justification.”
The CRO Question That Won’t Go Away
None of this is complete without addressing CROs. Even if sponsors want to be more site-centric, much of the day-to-day interaction sites experience is brokered through CROs. That means change has to happen there as well — where business incentives are not always aligned with “flexibility.”
There are early examples of progress. One smaller CRO SCRS spoke with developed real-time site performance scorecards and uses that data to recommend site selections back to sponsors. When sponsors listen, collaboration strengthens. When they don’t, the old dynamics return.
It’s a long road, but not an impossible one.
What Happens Next
Collaborate Forward is still in the “collecting and validating” phase. The first challenge was getting organizations willing to tell their stories. The next challenge, which is underway now, is quantifying the operational impact behind those stories.
SCRS’s end goal is a playbook — not a white paper, not a panel discussion, but a set of practical steps organizations can use to improve collaboration in ways that sites actually feel. The industry doesn’t need more claims of being “site-centric.” It needs proof that those claims lead to better protocol execution, smoother study operations, and fewer barriers for the people doing the work on the ground.
That’s the gap Collaborate Forward is trying to fill. And if they succeed, the phrase “site-centric” might finally mean something again.