3 Insourcing Models for Pharma Labs

Often, pharmaceutical companies have reached outside their organization to contract service providers for help with discovery, development, and manufacturing. Others tap into their own in-house resources for support. Which is the better process? The short answer is there’s no right way, just your way.

Insourcing

The benefit of insourcing is that you’re consistently dealing with a trusted service partner embedded within your facility. Your work is kept in house, communications are face-to-face and happen in real time. Not to mention all work is performed within your IT infrastructure using all your equipment and resources.

Advantages include:

• Full control over the process
• Immediate access to results
• Reduced time managing third parties
• Optimized lab space
• Timely communication of project deliverables

Outsourcing

Some labs benefit from the flexibility, expertise, and technology that comes with outsourcing approaches. Of course, hidden costs are always associated with third parties – it’s less costly to manage a partner embedded in your organization than one located across the globe.

Outsourcing a contract research organization (CRO) or contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMO) is best when you’re working with:

• Routine established workflows
• Noncomplex samples
• Less time-sensitive results

3 Types of Insourcing Models

If you decide to insource, there are several models to choose from, including staffing agencies, managed services, and lab as a service (LaaS).

Staffing agencies

This option provides qualified personnel for short-term needs to augment your staff for a specific project or find talent with a specific skill or area of expertise.

Managed services

In this model, the service partner brings its own people to provide services to achieve a guaranteed outcome – number of samples or experiments per day, for example.

Lab as a Service

LaaS brings everything required to deliver on the service-level agreement – from people and processes to consumables and instruments.

Whether you decide to insource or outsource, having a single vendor who understands your organization – from the management of assets to the oversight of IT to the harmonization of standards – is the key to success. A single-vendor solution simplifies processes when it comes to creating a single point of contact to manage oversight and communication.

READ MORE about pharma lab insourcing and outsourcing here.