The Value of CRO Reviews
September 11, 2014 in Blog by mhecht
By Marianna Hecht
Contract Research Organization (CRO) reviews are an essential part of your experience as a member of OutsourcePharma Advisory Board. CRO Reviews are submitted by our members on a continual basis. The reviews combine CRO ratings and descriptive comments from biopharmaceutical outsourcing professionals, like you, with first-hand CRO experience. Think of our CRO Reviews database as ‘Yelp’ for the CRO Industry, with a professional atmosphere.
The CRO reviews help outsourcing professionals make informed decisions about CROs for different studies and/or services that pharmaceutical companies need to bring a drug to market. The objective is to provide honest, constructive feedback that highlights both the positive AND negative aspects of the experience. The reviews rate the CROs’ performance quantitatively across fifteen different performance metrics, which can easily be compared across vendors. Our searchable database and rating system allows you to choose the best CRO for your needs. You can also read testimonials and verbatim evaluations before selecting the best partner for your next project.
6 Steps to Writing a Great CRO Review
- Focus on your current or most recent study only
The review should reflect ONLY the study/service that you will be reviewing and not a long term, general impression of the CRO.
- Provide accurate background information
Information that makes a review helpful includes background information about the study/service(s) provided by the CRO, including:
- Location(s) where the service/study was performed
- Stage(s) of the product lifecycle covered by the service/study
- Therapeutic area
- Duration of the service
- Approximate budget for the service
- Service(s)/study performed
- Spotlight the positive
Even a bad experience has some positive elements. Focus on the CRO’s strengths during the service(s)/study and where they were helpful.
- Clarify what can be improved
Constructive feedback is a good way to communicate challenges and suggest possible solutions. Think about what the CRO could have done better and how can the CRO could have made your study run faster/easier/smoother in the future.
- Share your lessons learned
Focus on what you learned, as a customer of the CRO from the experience. Highlight those “nuggets” of wisdom you gained from the experience.
- Provide complete performance ratings
Your satisfaction with the CRO within a range of key performance criteria allows fellow members to easily compare attributes across multiple CROs. Providing scores for all criteria make for a more valuable experience.
We hope this six-step process will be helpful for your next review. If you are interested in writing a review, please use the following link to take you to the submission form. It takes only 5-10 minutes to do so and you will receive a $20 amazon gift card for your insight!
