It was a good problem to have. Expecting only about a dozen or so new clinical trials in the next few months, Ockham, a leader in the field of oncology services, suddenly saw its new contracts jump more than five-fold. Having recently acquired a contract research organization (CRO) in Scotland, and, before that, a US-based CRO, Ockham’s business was growing quickly—but not without some growing pains.
Even before the acquisitions and growth spurt, Ockham, which provides a full range of services to pharmaceutical companies— from providing top-notch research staff, to managing and conducting end-to-end cancer therapy clinical trials—Ockham faced a big challenge in finding the right software tools to manage the lifecycle of its Clinical Studies.. The company, based in Cary, North Carolina, chose Toronto-based Mindprint Inc. for a company-wide professional services automation (PSA) system that promised to make the entire company more productive and profitable.
We have completed more than 250 clinical trials for new cancer therapies, explains Jim Baker, founder and CEO of Ockham. But one of our biggest challenges was measuring the profitability of each study, simple as that may sound. We just didn’t have the right tools in place to do that consistently and accurately. Baker added that integrating the data systems of the new acquisitions was also a challenge that required a new set of tools.
which specializes in enterprise software for CROs, was nearing deployment of Ockham’s new custom system—when news of the sudden spurt in business came in. We had to move quickly to import a large number of studies into the system, explains Prasad A. Sristi, founder and CEO of Mindprint. But we were able to quickly redesign a core part of the system to allow for the importation of a large number of new projects, and make the system much more scalable. We turned a challenge into an opportunity.
For Ockham, the business challenges caused by the outdated software, quickly turned into formidable new tools for business growth and profitability. We work seamlessly across four continents now, notes Baker. ―Our staff is more effective, our clients are happier, and we are on a sound growth path.
The technology that made all this possible is an innovative platform called Axpert, developed by Bangalore, India-based Agile Labs. The patented Axpert system is based on a method of rapidly creating custom enterprise software – without expensive and time-consuming programming.
Axpert makes application development and maintenance easy, by substantially reducing the effort required, explains Prasad Sristi, founder and CEO of which developed a large library of Axpert modules specifically for CROs. Application development using Axpert requires only domain experts. No expensive coding is required.
Fully scalable solution that will allow the software system to continue to grow with the company
Core functionality comprising the following capabilities:
