Do any former employees care to share the pricing strategy/financial breakdown of a typical deal? Or any other CRO for that matter.
Yes! As a CRO, we offer what it will cost for a project/program with a tiny bit of profit. Sponsors come back and squeeze all profit out. CRO has limited margins and must merge with others to survive. Sponsors are mad that everyone is merging. Sponsors cut clinical employees. Clinical employees from sponsor join CRO and then complain how sponsors cut prices. Hope this helps.
The sponsor wants it done cheaper and faster and the CROs compete to see who can be cheapest and fastest. In the end, all the pressure is put on the clinical employees to do the impossible.
I was hoping to gather some more specifics about deals. All these CRO's seem to offer the same services. What distinguishes one from another?
what differs many is the depth of therapeutic experience, the team provided, and the financial considerations. Some CROs (2nd tier) are taking the burden/risk of the partnership by hiring/training before the work has started. Hopefully it works for ICON, PAREXEL, and Covance. Me thinks the big(ger) guys knew something they didn't though.
Oh, c'mon, we all know Q can't keep their studies staffed, thats one of the reasons for the CRS job description, to include up to 50% travel, may as well have everyone billable do at least the work of 2.
Very true - Quintiles is extremely short staffed. The sweatshop mentality exists. Employees hear whips cracking to hurry up and quality continues to slip. As long as the senior management team continues to line their pockets, they don't care how stressed and unhealthy the environment is that they created. Greed is #1 at Quintiles at the expense of employees.
What does it mean to say that quality slips? How are you measuring quality? Is a trial not properly completed? Does accuracy suffer in some way? Do drugs end up getting approved that shouldn't, because the quality of the trial was less than optimum?
