For this issue we called on you to help us benchmark the state of the pharmaceutical outsourcing industry and the results are in! Beginning on page 38, learn what your competitors are doing, what best practices are and what critical issues are affecting the industry.

If you’re a sponsor company, are there specific problems that outsourcing companies aren’t addressing? Are they completing work on time and on budget? Are there any weaknesses in QC or documentation?

Outsourcing companies: Are sponsor companies providing sufficient information, on time? Are they communicating goals and expectations regularly and clearly? Are their expectations reasonable?

These are among some of the questions we asked and nearly 400 of you spread across a wide array of job functions took the time to chime in and we appreciate it.

Survey responses suggest that the use of pharmaceutical outsourcing is increasing all along the value chain. Of the total respondents a little more than 200 came from the service provider side of the industry and 80% percent said they are seeing an increase in demand for outsourcing with most of it coming from mid-sized diversified pharma companies while the companies that are least likely to call on service providers at this point are big biopharma.

The reasons for the growth in outsourcing remain the same as last year. Most pharmaceutical company sponsors say they are outsourcing more functions so that they can focus on their core strengths while a significant number of others say they are “virtual” companies and lack the capabilities in-house.

While sponsor companies continue to outsource analytical and testing services more than any other function, there was a huge jump in outsourcing of both API manufacturing and solid dosage manufacturing. Last year 15% of sponsor company respondents said they were focusing outsourcing efforts on API manufacturing and this jumped to 31% this year. Solid dosage outsourcing activity was equally robust, having jumped from 14% last year to 28% this year.

These are just a few highlights from this year’s survey results and we hope you find the rest to be insightful and informative in making your business decisions. If there are questions you want answers to that we haven’t asked, drop me a line and maybe we’ll include in next year’s edition. Happy Reading!





Tim Wright, Editor
[email protected]