Industries

Life Sciences

ISG advises pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and contract research organizations on the sourcing, platform and provider decisions that move trial cycle time, cost-to-serve and supply reliability.

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Life Sciences Advisory for Cost, Compliance & AI Performance

Life Science companies spent the last decade modernizing one function at a time, and the returns on that approach have been flattened. The cost and the delay now sits in the gaps between clinical, safety, regulatory, manufacturing and commercial, where data is help separately and every handoff still needs people to move it. Regulators are pushing the other way, asking for more reporting, more often and with evidence that traces back to source. AI has made those gaps more expensive, because it only scales where the data underneath it connects. Whether you research, manufacture or sell, performance now turns on two things - whether your data holds together, and whether your providers can deliver against it end-to-end.

ISG partners with pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and contract research organizations to improve performance where the money moves. R&D operations, manufacturing and supply, commercial operations, the enterprise estate and the provider relationships that carry all of it. AI returns land where the data, the validation and the operating model are ready for them. We help enterprises get them ready, price the work against the market and hold providers to what they committed to deliver.

ISG helps Life Science companies:

Decide what to keep, what to outsource and what to rebuild, with the cost case behind the answer
Select BPO, IT and Software providers on evaluated capability rather than incumbency
Negotiate contracts, service levels and pricing against current market terms
Benchmark unit cost, compliance and service performance
Apply AI and analytics to underwriting, claims triage and fraud detection
Manage provider delivery after signature rather than at renewal
Design operating models that hold through M&A spin-offs, and separations
Apply and govern AI where it moves cost and compliance
Compress time-to-contract, time-to-baseline and time-to-value on every major initiative

ISG'S LIFE SCIENCES CAPABILITIES

Support From the First Business Case to the Final Renewal

Advisory & Operating Model

We work out where each piece of work should sit and what it should cost to run there, comparing in-house delivery against a partner or a rebuild across a full five years. That includes offshore and global capability centre options wherever the scale justifies them.

Choosing the Right Provider

Negotiating the Contract

We negotiate terms, service levels, pricing and change control, written for the whole term rather than the first year of it. Where AI carries part of the delivery, pricing follows the level of autonomy the technology actually reaches, so your cost falls as the machine takes on more of the work.

Benchmarking What You Pay

We tell you what the market is currently paying for the work you're buying, measured on unit cost, cycle time and service performance. That turns a renewal from an argument about last year's invoice into a conversation about what the work is worth today.

Provider Performance After Signature

Most of the value in a contract is lost quietly after signature, through commitments nobody is tracking. We carry the agreed outcomes into supplier management and hold providers to them, and where you have no vendor management function we design and stand one up.

Platforms, Data & AI

We advise on which systems to modernize, in what order, and where AI changes the economics rather than adding a layer of cost. The data underneath usually decides the answer, so that assessment comes first.

WHERE WE WORK

Across the Life Sciences Value Chain

Research & Clinical Development
CRO portfolio strategy and selection, study start-up cycle time, decentralized and hybrid trial operations, clinical data platforms and the functional service provider model against full service outsourcing.
Pharmacovigilance & Regulatory Affairs
Case processing economics, safety operations outsourcing, submission and labelling efficiency and compliance-grade service levels that survive inspection.
Manufacturing & Supply Chain
CDMO sourcing and performance management, network and logistics optimization, serialization and traceability platforms and supply resilience planning for constrained inputs.

Commercial Operations & Patient Engagement
Omnichannel engagement models, field force enablement, commercial data and analytics platforms, patient support programs and the outsourcing decisions behind each.
Enterprise Platforms & Cloud
ERP and cloud migration strategy, application managed services, infrastructure and workplace sourcing, and software license and SaaS cost control across the estate.
M&A, Divestitures & Separations
Day-one readiness, transition services agreement design and exit, carve-out operating models, and the integration or separation of technology and services contracts.