SOURCE FOR SPONSORS
Start your clinical outsourcing journey with industry’s best sourcing toolset
Our end-to-end SOURCE platform simplifies RFP and Change Order processes, boosting efficiency and cost savings.
MARKET PROBLEM
Inefficiencies in clinical outsourcing cost the industry >$20B per year.
We are calling it “the high cost of doing nothing”.
More than 100,000 Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are initiated yearly by biopharmaceutical companies, seeking a wide range of services, from CROs, to labs and eClinical solutions. The combined cost of RFP origination, due diligence and proposal development exceeds $200,000 per RFP due to manual processes.
Lack of costing intelligence
The absence of market benchmarks and resource models creates mistrust in Service Provider budgets, driving higher outsourcing costs, inefficient resource use, unclear responsibilities, and ultimately, change orders and budget overruns.
Find out why cost benchmarking is instrumental in outsourcing due diligence 
Excel and generic procurement solutions are unfit for complex outsourcing
Struggling with complex Excel workbooks for clinical outsourcing? You’re not alone. Over 95% of biopharma sponsors face inefficiencies, tedious manual processes, and high costs in adapting unfit generic procurement systems. RFP due diligence is further complicated by unstandardized bid grids and inability to compare bids historically, or competitively.
Get more insights into why the current available procurement systems don’t work in clinical
Lack of central sourcing database further exacerbates visibility into RFP/RFI status and bidding stages
Managing sourcing events by email and trackers does not support dynamic reporting, collaboration and inter-departmental communication. Poor visibility into RFP/RFI status and bidding stages in clinical operations hampers tracking progress, delays decision-making, and reduces transparency, making it challenging to manage and evaluate proposals effectively.
Incorrect bid grid mapping
Lack of transparent mapping keys and guidance on how to aggregate distinct service activities are causing challenges in both due diligence and change order negotiations.
Read our white paper describing the challenges caused by incorrect bid grid mapping
Notorious change order reconciliations
Change orders take enormous time to reconcile and resolve primarily because the out-of-scope trackers are maintained by the CROs, not the sponsors and the activity consumption is reported infrequently.
Inefficient Collaboration with Stakeholders and Vendors
Traditional RFP process involves back and forth emails, by multiple stakeholders with little to no traceability, especially when multiple stakeholders and evaluators are involved. Keeping track of what is going on with each sourcing level creates additional manual work and…more Excel trackers.
OVERVIEW
Replace Excel-based workbooks and centralize all your R&D outsourcing needs
Designed for clinical outsourcing experts, SOURCE equips biopharma Sponsors with an end-to-end toolset to complete RFP, RFI, and Change Order projects significantly faster and more accurately. Paired with Clinical Maestro PORTFOLIO, it enhances RFP projects with Fair Market Value benchmark intelligence, ensuring confident budget due diligence. SOURCE also embeds Artificial Intelligence (AI) into bid grid mapping, due diligence, and RFP evaluations, enabling smarter, faster decisions while continuously expanding core use cases. The world’s top CROs and clinical Service Providers rely on SOURCE to streamline bidding and achieve improved outcomes.
Central sourcing database
SOURCE replaces proposal filing in document management systems, such as Sharepoint, with highly searcheable central sourcing database, allowing users to find any proposal, on any study, at a click of a button.
Negotiate against fair market value
The optimal proposal budget is not necessarily the lowest, but the budget that correctly reflects the study operational strategy and assumptions and minimizes future change orders. SOURCE provides instant comparisons of Service Provider proposal budgets and assumptions with benchmark budgets generated in PORTFOLIO.
Comprehensive Bid Grid Mapping and Vendor Management
SOURCE streamlines budgeting with automated comparisons through 2-way and 3-way bid grid mapping and mapping key development for ultimate transparency between Sponsors, Clinical Maestro and Service Providers bid structures. This includes centralizing vendor profiles and rate cards, offering a single source of truth for accurate, data-driven decisions. Compare variances in total cost, direct cost, number of units or effort to gain true insights into what is driving the budgets.
Milestone calculator
Track and predict study critical timelines to ensure the project milestones are met and model the study cash flow based on achieved milestones.
Roles and Responsibilities Management
SOURCE tracks responsibilities at granular level, from initial RFP to the last change order, providing clear insights into who is doing what on the study. This is further enhanced by having hybrid responsibilities, such as dual review, or co-authoring of documents.
Change order tracking and reconciliation
SOURCE supports full change order management, reconciliation and tracking. When combined with LEAD, the Out-of-Scope activities are automatically integrated into the change order process to expedite due diligence and unit reconciliation.
Variable and Fixed Unit RFPs
SOURCE provides multiple RFP types, such as variable cost, fixed units and expedited (fast track) RFPs, so you can source for any type of project, clinical, non-clinical, service or non-service.
Automatic contract generation
SOURCE provides the ability to automatically generate Statements of Work and Change Orders based on your contracting templates, avoiding the need to “cut and paste” information from the proposal into Word documents.
Integration to corporate procurement systems
SOURCE can be integrated with internal sourcing and procure-to-pay systems for seamless visibility into company-wide procurement activities.
BENEFITS
Simplify and streamline your outsourcing journey
Achieve speed
SOURCE increases staff efficiency by reducing manual, repetitive and non-value steps such as document management and laborious budget comparisons. Your teams can scale rapidly from our user cases. On average SOURCE saves more than 20% per RFP using Fair Market Value data and reduces sourcing cycle time by more than 50%.
Transparent Collaboration Loved by both Sponsors and CROs
SOURCE invites vendors to Sponsor’s space, assigns roles, and manages team workloads. SOURCE communicates dynamically during bidding to share assumptions, receive status notifications, score proposals, and accesses sourcing events anytime, anywhere.
Deploy a complete sourcing solution rapidly
SOURCE streamlines sourcing with automated document management and budgeting, reducing cycle times by 50% and RFP costs by 20%. Achieve seamless implementation in two weeks with full support from discovery to adoption.
Negotiate better with data intelligence
You wouldn’t buy a car or a house without comparable pricing, then how would the industry buy >$60B in clinical services per year without benchmark data? SOURCE is the only procurement solution that seamlessly integrates proposal and market benchmark comparisons for ultimate negotiation power.
Generate Statements of Work in Seconds, not Hours
SOURCE streamlines all sourcing activities, from RFP creation to RFP revision, multiple rounds of bidding, award and statement of work generation.
Mapping Freedom Using AI
Powerful bid grid mapping allows the CROs to store their native bid grids in Clinical Maestro and for the Sponsors to create unique bid grid structures, while still mapping to Clinical Maestro standard templates to maintain benchmarking power.
WHY CHOOSE US
Leading Biopharmaceutical sponsors trust SOURCE for R&D procurementl
Unlike stand-alone solutions, Clinical Maestro SOURCE is part of an end-to-end platform that comprehensively addresses all the core aspects of clinical business operations. Upstream, PORTFOLIO supports study planning and budgeting. Operational models created in SOURCE flow seamlessly to generate the RFP templates and fuel the sourcing engine. Downstream, SOURCE integrates with LEAD for out-of-scope tracking, which in turn supports change order reconciliations. No other solution in the market addresses clinical outsourcing challenges in such complete manner, which is why SOURCE is simply the solution of choice in the industry.
Streamlined Processes
Automates and centralizes RFP, RFI, and Change Order management to reduce inefficiencies and speed up sourcing
Data-Driven Decisions
Integrates Fair Market Value data and analytics to provide objective, informed decision-making and budget management and out-of-scope activities into change order processing.
Advanced features unique in the industry
No other sourcing platform is equipped with bid grid mapping, SOW generation, milestone-based RFP cashflow simulator, or the ability to source with strategic partner agreements, such as fixed cost templates.
Investing in Artificial Intelligence
We don’t just talk about AI, we are building it in the very fiber of Clinical Maestro to provide users with ultimate usability and reporting.
Comprehensive Support
Provides end-to-end support from discovery through to delivery and ongoing adoption, including gap analysis and change management.
SOURCE (RFP/RFI/Change Order) brings automation, efficiency, and collaboration to R&D Procurement
At Clinical Maestro we analyzed every core aspect of the clinical outsourcing process to give a superior sourcing experience, unparalleled in the industry and unmatched by any other generic software solution. We understand the complexity of clinical trials and the need to have transparency in study assumptions, such as patient enrollment, site activation and study milestones. We focus on delivering an RFP and Change Order experience that has clear roles and responsibilities, so both Sponsors and Clinical Service Providers understand exactly who is doing what and collaboratively share responsibilities.
RESOURCES
Explore Expert Insights and Resources for Clinical Excellence
Webinars
Technology for Fast, Accurate Planning and Budgeting
Leading biopharmaceutical sponsors trust PORTFOLIO for pipeline planning and budgeting with superior results and reported more than 10x Return on Investment.
Read more
Blogs
Driving Customer Success Through Governance: Transforming Pharma Vendor Management with AI Innovation
Effective vendor governance is essential to ensure operational success, cost efficiency, and regulatory compliance.
Read more
Case Studies
Streamlining Vendor Management: How a Leading Biopharma Company Found Success
Read more
DEMO
Request a demo
Discover how Strategikon’s advanced solutions can streamline your clinical trial operations. Request a personalized demo to explore how our tools transform budgeting, vendor management, and outsourcing efficiency for pharma and biotech.
