Pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations have a lot to handle.  Unfortunately, many organisations lack an efficient process to manage myriad contracts, clinical trials, promotions, supplies/goods, regulations and compliance.  Consequently, they may leave themselves unprotected from increased risk, delays, compliance violations, wasted time and squandered revenue.  Here’s how to improve life sciences and pharmaceutical contract management with accelerated contracting.

Accelerate contracting and cut cycle times

Advanced pharma and life sciences contract management software can empower organisations with improved management of a high volume of contracts, greater control over contract lifecycle management and reduced cycle times with a more efficient process.

With a one-stop solution, organisations can manage contract complexity and many different contract types, including legal agreements, confidentiality agreements, MSA, SOW, research collaboration contracts, clinical trial contracts, consulting agreements, real estate transactions and IT agreements.  This way, contracts pertaining to many different facets of the industry are managed in one secure contract repository.

The pharma and life sciences contract lifecycle can be streamlined with contract management automation for intelligent workflow.  Automation helps reduce contract lifecycle bottlenecks by engaging the right people at the right time with nearly unlimited automated alerts, notifications and task reminders.  Organisations can establish a process for data extraction and data mapping, user-defined fields, audit trails, contract process management, advanced reporting and contract analytics.

Pharmaceutical and life sciences teams can manage contract writing, negotiation, collaboration and electronic approvals with an intelligent workflow process that aids in tracking all stages of the lifecycle.  Automated alerts and notifications help teams keep up with key dates and milestones – up to and including renewal opportunities.  Audit trail history offers an easy-to-access, up-to-date record of contract changes.  Reports provide relevant stakeholders and parties with transparency and visibility into essential contract data and performance metrics at a glance. 

Effectively manage programmes, supply chains and trials

Pharma and life sciences organisations can use a comprehensive source-to-contract management solution for essential opportunities in their industry. Drug trial processes, for example, are made up of a lot of moving parts.  Leading contract management software can help pharma organisations manage highly-regulated pharmaceutical programmes with a time-efficient, accurate and revenue-saving process, which supports the management of marketing budget and spend, key dates and subsequent resulting contracts.

With an integrated contract management software and eSourcing suite, organisations can effectively handle complex global supply chains.  A full management process allows for the creation, management, tracking and monitoring of supply chain bids.  Intelligent workflow automation can be established for the control and management of supply chain lifecycles.  Stakeholders can attach virtually unlimited documents, files and images that are relevant to a bid in one centralised location.

Once easy bid advertising is undertaken, pharma and life sciences organisations can quickly analyse vendors.  With supplier response ratings and scorecards, organisations can work towards finding suppliers to meet their needs. Once a supplier is selected, organisations can easily award that supplier, inform participants of the award and commence a standard contract lifecycle.

With the tools to effectually manage trials, promotions and supply chain, pharma and life sciences organisations can capitalise on various beneficial opportunities for growth and revenue gains. They can leverage comprehensive spend management afforded by contract management software.  Contract pricing and budget tools allow the tracking and monitoring of practitioner-related, HCP and instructional costs as well as line items (such as research funding, travel, lodging, meals and medical devices/products).  From there, they can quickly run detailed reports, track commitments and receive advanced budget alerts to stay on top of key dates relating to payment.  Executive graphical dashboards provide a visually engaging overview of financial data changes, key dates and milestones.

Enhance compliance management

Advanced compliance auditing tools provide visibility across practitioner activity, hospitals, instructional institutions and other entities.  Relevant regulatory compliance standards can be easily maintained and adhered to, thanks to robust, scalable and user-friendly reporting metrics, key dates and renewals.

Contract Insight from Four

Four recommend Contract Insight – a software solution that accelerates contracting, decreases risk, reduces delays, helps with compliance and saves time and money. 

Contract Insight is a cloud-hosted (SaaS) or deployed (on-premise) contract management solution.  The acclaimed platform is trusted by thousands of professionals for their contract management, legal document managementprocurement and sourcing needs.  Used by many Fortune 500 companies, Contract Insight gives you real time visibility into your contracts. It doesn’t just shore up your security; it will help you meet contract compliance regulations, centralise your contract management and improve your overall contract administration process.

For more information, contact John O’Brien, CEO at Four Business Solutions, global business consultants and software integrators providing business processes improvements in Finance, Supply Chain and Operations, across a broad range of industries.