The CDMO Chase Has Gone Digital. Is It Safe?
By Louis Garguilo, Chief Editor, Outsourced Pharma
I travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
-- Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This); Eurythmics
Indeed, we are.
Biotechs chasing down CDMOs. CDMOs chasing up new clients.
But both sides, at times, passing by each other, or inadvertently chasing each other away.
The problem lies mostly in how we look … and communicate.
For CDMOs, it appears mostly a challenge of separating qualified leads from the myriad of correspondences they may receive.
One side can’t seem to get anybody on the line, and the other’s phone may be ringing off the hook.
This is not a new assessment of the outsourcing milieu, but this status quo reemerged during a recent conversation with Ammar Badwy, founder and CEO of Pharmaoffer.com.
As we learned in part one, Badwy created a digital marketplace for drug sponsors and CDMOs to come together – and more effectively communicate.
This isn’t the first digital attempt of its kind; it won’t be the last.
But we can utilize this latest entree for another look at exactly what it is we need to solve for.
Data Does Good
Let’s begin with our collective data dread.
I’d be surprised if when reading part one, you weren’t wondering about intellectual-property and data security as communications (or negotiations) progress on a “digital marketplace.”
“Oh no,” responds Badwy. “None of the data we collect regarding the behavior on our platform is associated to a company name or a person.”
I challenge Badwy, he of a generation that grew up in a digital world, and who has embraced it as a positive for business efficiency and productivity, and experientially understands the serious security risks.
My questions:
Should a prospective biotech client feel secure striking up a correspondence with a CDMO utilizing the chat functionality on Pharmoffer.com? How is that content mined, and protected?
“We don’t share any data related to a company name or a person. Our platform is a confidential environment for users. Data is well stored, and our data protection processes are validated by external IT experts,” he replies.
“We also use the behavioral information we have access to as a way to monitor the safety of the platform, and to see where we can make improvements from a technical point of view.”
He adds:
“We are not part of any pharmaceutical-related organization. We are a completely independent party to any communications or transactions. We are not a party in the supply chain. We put people together."
This is (as we learned earlier), exactly what he set out to do when he founded PharmaOffer.com.
It’s what our drug development and manufacturing outsourcing industry has been trying to do better for decades – get buyer and seller communicating effectively.
Over time, we have improved.
But as an industry populated with scientists, engineers, project managers, entrepreneurs and the like, and reliant on intellectual property – we instinctually know data is a key to success.
The conundrum is in how to get it to each other.
Bawdry thinks he’s founded a platform to do that. “As we discussed earlier,” he says, “our revenues are from the sellers – CDMOs – those that we agree to subscribe to the site as members.”
There is, in other words, a vetting process. And once subscribed, CDMOs are tracked for alacrity of response to prospective buyers, etc.
To those who make it onto the site, says Bawdry, “We provide valuable market analytics, such as trends on demand, and what type of companies are searching for what type of products and services, but again, never with specific company references, to subscribing CDMO.”
“I actually recommend to any users on either side with concerns, once they meet on our platform, continue communications outside of us if you are not comfortable. That’s fine.”
Tracking Is Positive, Too
A slogan of the American Revolution was, “Don’t tread on me.” For the Digital Revolution, it might be, “Don’t track on me.” (Well, it kind of works.)
Yet we also recognize the positives of “tracking” online behavior. It is in fact a main component of the revolution.
Tracking, in a word, is informative.
If better tracked, will you be better pursued? Readers over the past decade have said getting and keeping the attention of CDMOs is a struggle.
Badwy queried CDMOs to discover why this might be the case. What were their marketplace challenges?
The biggest one, he was told, was finding the right set of clients.
CDMOs can get inundated with requests. Sales teams admit to full inboxes. Contact Us sections on websites, and other marketing vehicles, appear to end up with too much unwanted communications –spam, price-fishing, unserious or unrelated requests.
Badwy says the tracking his digital marketplace performs is helpful to CDMOs in understanding the behavior and patterns in the market.
Overall, providing CDMOs with information while you investigate which partner is right for you would, without that fear of data theft, be the holy grail of marketing.
Furthermore, it would benefit the outsourcing model more generally.
Think capacity.
A CDMO specializing in (or considering adding to) gene and cell therapy services wants to understand how many organizations are actively searching for these CDMO services. Where do they come from? What type of companies are they? How is the demand compared with a year ago – or two months ago?
“Those kind of insights,” says Bawdy, “we can offer, because we can track.”
Benevolently, that is.
Accept Or Reject?
Registration for those searching for CDMOs is free. As we learned earlier, CDMOs pay via subscriptions.
Registration only requires basic information: type of company, number of employees, country, website, url.
However, once a registration is received, Pharmaoffer “performs a thorough verification process on the potential user.”
“About half of registrations get declined; they are unable to use our platform to contact suppliers,” explains Badwy.
“Fifty percent may be a lot, but I'm proud of that. Those are the people that are also spamming these organizations, or not understanding what they do.”
It isn’t a capricious process, he says, but thorough.
And it can only benefit those who have been independently vetted as legitimate.
I have high confidence OutsourcedPharma.com readers would make the cut.
Will Pharmaoffer.com make the grade?
It’s early yet, but we should hope so.
Everybody’s looking for something. Let’s see if we can find whatever that is more efficiently.
-------------
Part one is here