Functional Service Provider (FSP) is a service that can be used for clinical trials.
As the CRO industry continues to consolidate, how pharma and biotech seek external development expertise and labor support for their potential compounds has evolved.Many companies are rethinking their entire research strategy due to the fact that strategic preferred provider partnerships have turned out to be neither strategic nor preferred.
Insourced companies rely on employee referrals and posting positions online to keep costs down and have HR generalists handle all recruiting.When hiring needs are relatively low, this strategy may be ideal.An HR generalist may not be able to keep up with demand if there is a need to ramp-up quickly.In this case, it is possible to engage a staffing partner as an FSP.
Selecting a staffing vendor is important because the vendor's recruiters represent your brand to potential contractors and may become your FSP management.The HR generalist has an inbox full of emails from staffing firms that claim to be the most specialized and cheapest and to have the largest database of qualified candidates.It can be hard to sort the good from the bad, and this often gets passed on to operational colleagues, the same people the staffing plan is supposed to help.Asking peers at other pharmaceutical companies to refer their top two to three staffing vendors, then interviewing those vendors that are the best match, is where referrals come in handy.
Many HR generalists think that the more staffing firms they engage, the better their chances are of getting the best candidates.A large number of staffing firms can have a negative effect on a company's brand and internal workload.If the HR generalist gives a new job order to 15 staffing vendors, the top candidates for that job will likely get five to 10 phone calls in the first 24 hours for the same job.Candidates can question why so many recruiters are calling them for the same role.It can lead to more than one firm submitting the same candidate.This can be solved by working with a partner that can become your FSP.
An FSP is a vendor arrangement that provides a variable number of headcount, usually across one or a limited amount of functional areas that support the development operations for a few clinical trials or other development efforts.The RFI/RFP process is similar to the selection process for FSP providers.It can be helpful if procurement has templates in place for RFPs.Referrals are still the best way to find an FSP.
Corporate leadership and departments always ask how to balance quality, speed, and cost.Many times, the answer is some type of outsourcing, a broad concept that all too often stops there without further definition of real needs.Are we really managing our contracted relationships with good oversight and regular interaction if we go down the outsourcing path?Can we keep up with it all if we increase the volume of external support contractors?
In a master services agreement, an FSP can supplement the matrix of provided services to compensate for changes in work volume or needs based on geography.It is often impossible to have a full-time equivalent in the disciplines you need because of the global nature of clinical research.FSP and other contracted workforce management companies are built on the idea of being flexible with their staff.
The FSP is added to the cast of providers in an individual service category model.It's difficult to have multiple contractors across multiple service areas.The responsibility of managing contracted relationships will likely fall to individual departments who may be over-allocated, inexperienced, or both.Adding an FSP to take over contracts can provide an extension of internal management resources.
The hybridized outsourcing model includes the inclusion of FSPs.The model ranges from hiring individual contractors to hiring discipline focused companies to support multiple studies.The number of relationships that need to be managed can be reduced with the help of an FSP.
In a traditional model, FSPs can be helpful for both sponsors and vendors in managing changes in work volume.The domino effect of scope changes can be caused by study or program changes.It can be difficult to manage in less well-equipped environments.Even with full-service CROs, the inclusion of an FSP to help manage the various contracted scope changes can give a smaller biotech/biopharma needed bandwidth and a team member with a deeper understanding of being a vendor.
If the FSP can fit in multiple formats, why is it feared?Are the fears realistic?The commentary that FSPs are "staffing on steroids" gives some insight.In what we like to think of as the more-traditional models, an FSP is simply not easily described and falls prey to our busy schedules.It can be a death sentence for those trying to figure out what kind of external support will be contracted if they can't easily categorize FSPs.It's a common phenomenon in larger pharma to be new vendors or new methods for running the business of drug development operations.Ask enough questions the right way, and soon enough decision makers will cite another team's choice as a principle reason for the choice they made.FSPs have a steep consideration hill to climb as a service/support structure in many companies and have little visible history.