Accenture bets big on pharma offshoring with end-to-end services

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Hyderabad, Aug 15: Betting on the model of co-sourcing, outsourcing and offshoring of non-core activities, Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, is looking at expanding the scope and scale of its life science centre of excellence in India. With a change from a mere functional outsourcing to a transformational outsourcing, it is creating integrated capabilities from clinical trials to submission with a host of new services to help the pharma R&D industry.

According to Arjun Bedi, Global Lead of Accenture’s Health & Life Sciences R&D practice, there have been production challenges and increasing R&D costs. “However, there is a new wave in the outsourcing of the R&D model from in-house innovation engine to a virtual innovation network,’’ he said. “A new dichotomy is being identified in the research process with virtual transformation in the front end and a development factory at the back end,’’ he added. More so, an alternative delivery model is taking shape where pharma companies can save costs by co-sourcing, outsourcing and off-shoring non-core R&D activities to IT and BPO companies. Despite apprehensions about job shifts to India, it is here that India is gaining ground with significant advantage through the availability of talent in scientific R&D in pharma sector, he said.

With global pharma companies waking up to technology, outsourcing services act as a tool to reduce the time to market their R&D harvest. The fact that pharmaceutical growth is threatened by flattening budgets and rising costs, companies are struggling to meet market expectations for growth and more so is that the clinical trials become more complex and regulatory pressures continue to increase whilst output remains relatively flat or even stagnating. Perhaps the solution to mitigate the risks is alternative delivery models, Bedi opined.

Incidentally, Accenture’s life science R&D centre in Bangalore is its largest in the world with employees comprising domain experts such as clinicians, nurses, scientists and bio-statisticians, apart from technology professionals. Its other centers include Chennai, Manila, Spain and Delaware in US.