Microsoft Office System Customer Solution
Case study
New Client Management Solution
Streamlines Studies for Drug
Researcher
Case save
Studyan estimated $1,500
“We’ll
per month in labor-related costs.
We’re able to reconcile our
client/revenue records faster
and with fewer people involved.
In addition, we intuitively know
we have 5 to 10 percent better
client tracking accuracy, so no
client interaction slips through
the cracks.”
Sue Brown
Vice President of Administration
National Clinical Research
A
s a drug researcher evaluating new medications for drug
companies, National Clinical Research was challenged by how
to best track study client visits and associated revenue
streams—historically a manual, labor-intensive process. The
company averages 80 or more concurrent studies that involve
hundreds of clients over trial periods lasting months or years.
Using Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 and Microsoft
Office InfoPath 2003, a new client management solution
precisely schedules and tracks all people in a study and is
projected to save the company more than $45,000 annually.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
BUSINESS SITUATION
SOLUTION
National Clinical Research
(NCR) conducts research to
evaluate new medications
before they are approved by
the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration for use by the
general public. The company is
located in Richmond, Virginia.
The company has 25
employees and conducts
clinical drug studies for
companies such as Merck and
Pfizer.
NCR faced three major
business pain points: paperbased client and revenue
tracking, gaps in interoffice
communications, and high
client recruitment costs. With
more than 80 concurrent
studies underway that required
multiple client visits over
months or years, the job of
managing and communicating
client information had become
overwhelming.
Microsoft® Office Professional
Edition 2003 and Microsoft
Office InfoPathTM 2003
information gathering program
are at the heart of NCR’s
solution. Microsoft Office
Outlook® 2003 messaging and
collaboration client is used as a
client scheduler and office
communications tool. In
addition, Microsoft Office
Access 2003 and InfoPath
2003 were used to create a
client data entry form linked to
an easily queried database.
BENEFITS
 Streamlined client tracking
generates a total of $45,000
annually in reduced labor
costs and increased revenue.
 Saves time. More-efficient
office collaboration eliminates
many meetings and facilitates
document sharing.
 Lowers recruitment costs by
30% via identifying past
clients for use in new studies.
“Capturing client information for
our database was primarily a
stand-alone, manual process
that wasn’t integrated well with
other points of contact with the
client. This meant it was labor
intensive to store and retrieve
accurate information. We see
the new client tracking solution
helping us capture better
information at least 30 percent
faster.”
James M. McKenney
President and Chief Executive Officer
National Clinical Research
National Clinical Research conducts
research to evaluate new medications for
the treatment of major medical problems.
A form of clinical research, the clinical
trial is a carefully designed study of the
effect of a new drug, medical treatment, or
medical device on a group of patients or
study participants. Most clinical trials are
funded by the manufacturer of the drug or
the device being tested. Drugs must pass
three phases of clinical trials and
demonstrate effectiveness and safety
before they can be approved by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration for use by
the general public.
NCR tries to determine:

The best dose(s) of the medicine to
produce the desired effect

The effectiveness of the medicine in
treating the medical condition—for
example, how well a medication
lowers blood pressure in patients with
high blood pressure

The side effects associated with the
medicine

The effectiveness and safety of the
drug in special populations of
people—for example, in older
individuals

The usefulness of the medicine in
treating conditions other than the one
it is intended to treat
In addition to research on new medicines
to treat medical conditions, NCR
occasionally works with other products
including nutritional therapies (for
example, food products that help lower
blood cholesterol levels) and medical
devices (home blood sugar testers).
NCR was experiencing three major pain
points: tracking revenue per client,
inefficient internal office collaboration,
and high cost of recruitment.

Manual client and revenue tracking.
One of the biggest challenges for NCR
was the daily tracking of revenue.
During any given month, NCR could
be managing 80 different clinical trials
with an average of 25 clients per trial
InfoPath 2003 was used to quickly create
easy-to-use input forms that reduced
inefficient data entry and enabled more
accurate gathering of client information.
and different revenue values per client.
Client visit data had to be exported
from Microsoft® Outlook® 2000 to
WordPad. There, it was manipulated
into a form that could be exported to
Microsoft Excel where a spreadsheet
was created, with final analysis being
done manually. “The process was both
time consuming and error prone,” says
Sue Brown, Vice President of
Administration. “At the end of each
study, it was not unusual to have a 10
to 15 percent discrepancy in revenue
between our records and the sponsors’
records. Reconciling the variances had
to be done manually and took a huge
chunk of time.”


Inefficient interoffice
communications and collaboration.
Seven coordinators and four assistants
had to share a common computer
workstation for scheduling and e-mail
communications. The result was
chronic scheduling conflicts and lack
of coordination among internal staff.
“We were losing an hour per day per
coordinator resolving scheduling
conflicts,” says Brown. “In addition,
our patient care representative still
needed to spend an additional four
hours each Friday afternoon making
sure there were no conflicts for the
following week. All of our staff
needed access to the same shared
calendar and the ability to share
communications and files.”
High recruitment costs. The average
cost of finding a research client ranges
from $250 to $1,500 per individual,
depending on the cost and the length
of recruitment advertising time period.
For specialized studies, the cost can be
significantly higher. When NCR can
find a prior participant that qualifies
for a new study, the cost savings is
dramatic.
To address these challenges, NCR was
seeking a solution that would better
manage current and future clients.
Using Microsoft Office Professional
Edition 2003 with Microsoft Office Access
2003 and Microsoft Office Excel 2003,
Internal Computer Services, National
Clinical Research’s technology partner,
was able to create a robust client
management solution that integrated the
study participant schedule in Outlook with
a client database. The solution captures
daily revenue rapidly, improves internal
communications, and reduces recruiting
costs.
NCR uses Outlook 2003 as a shared
calendar, client scheduler, and
communications tool. The shared calendar
holds all client appointments and is an
integral part of the daily routine for all staff
members. When a client checks in with the
receptionist, a Microsoft Office InfoPath
2003 generated application form is used to
gather basic information. This information
is submitted to Access 2003, providing
Access 2003 with the information
necessary to track client appointments and
tally daily revenue. The receptionist
queries on the client’s name and populates
the remaining fields of the custom InfoPath
form—for example, the study in which
they are participating, the visit number, and
a revenue figure associated with that
particular visit. That information is sent
back to the central Access 2003 database.
At this point in the data flow, only NCR
management is able to access the revenue
information as part of business operations.
As an additional control element, only an
authorized user can next launch the Excel
2003 application that serves as the user
interface.
An Excel 2003 worksheet populates, on
demand, all study clients who came to
“The benefits of Outlook 2003
were so compelling that we
decided to provide computers
for most of our staff. We
realized that we could save
significant time scheduling
participants, mailing documents
rather than copying them, and
communicating with e-mail
versus in-person meetings.”
Kristen Sale
Regulatory and Administration Manager
National Clinical Research
NCR on a specific day. Data such as the
study the client was in, the visit number,
and dollar value of the visit is automatically pulled from the Access 2003 database.
This allows total daily revenue to be
calculated.
“We immediately saw the
advantages of using InfoPath
forms and Access 2003 for
NCR’s solution. For example,
InfoPath allowed us to quickly
create easy-to-use forms that
reduced repetitious data entry
and gathered client information
more accurately. And, the
Access database had a new
manual backup capability that
gave NCR extra control.”
“The overall client management solution
was immediately usable because it had a
familiar Microsoft Office interface,” says
Kristen Sale, Regulatory and Administration Manager. “Other industry line-ofbusiness solutions we considered would
have required extensive training and a long
series of data inputs before we could get
any reports produced. We now have a
solution that is simple, affordable, and gets
the job done.”
Gray Blankenship
IT Project Manager
Internal Computer Services
Streamlined Study Client Tracking
With the new client management solution,
precise records can be kept for each study
participant more easily.
“We’ll save an estimated $1,500 per month
in labor-related costs,” says Sue Brown,
Vice President of Administration at
National Clinical Research. “We’re able to
reconcile our client/revenue records faster
and with fewer people involved. In
addition, we intuitively know we have 5 to
10 percent better client tracking accuracy,
so no client interaction slips through the
cracks.”
Part of streamlining client tracking is
ensuring the database is up-to-date and
secure. NCR’s IT consultant found that
Access 2003 could give their customer
extra assurance.
“We immediately saw the advantages of
using InfoPath forms and Access 2003 for
NCR’s solution,” says Gray Blankenship,
IT Project Manager, Internal Computer
Services. “For example, InfoPath allowed
us to quickly create easy-to-use forms that
reduced repetitious data entry and gathered
client information more accurately. And,
the Access database had a new manual
backup capability that gave NCR extra
control.”
Lower Recruitment Costs
NCR has a database of more than 10,000
clients. By using improved database
structure and queries to recruit previous
clients for new studies, NCR reduces its
per-person recruitment costs. Since clients
are already familiar with NCR and clinical
testing procedures recruitment periods are
shortened.
“We have always tried to use our database
of prior clients to find qualified
participants for new studies,” says Sales.
“However, capturing client information for
our database was primarily a stand-alone,
manual process that wasn’t integrated well
with other points of contact with the client.
This meant it was labor intensive to store
and retrieve accurate information. We can
see the new client tracking solution helping
us capture better information at least 30
percent faster. For example, in a
‘competitive enrollment’–type study when
we have a short period of time to find as
many clients as possible, we are now able
to rapidly find potential clients and get the
word to them about an upcoming study.
More participants mean more revenue.”
Another benefit of keeping tabs on past
clients is that NCR is better able to
convince sponsors that it can complete
studies on time, one of the most important
criteria for clinical trial vendor selection.
“We see the new client tracking solution as
a definite competitive advantage,” says
James M. McKenney, President and CEO.
“It should help us conclude our study
obligations to the sponsor in an efficient
manner, and this should bring us new
business.”
Efficient Interoffice Collaboration,
Calendaring, and Scheduling
Most of NCR’s staff now has desktop
computer access to Outlook 2003, which
provides a common shared calendar for
client scheduling and robust interoffice email communications. New powerful sort
options (By Conversation and By
Attachments) are proving to be very
helpful with coordinators who need to
track team assignments and reports.
Sorting e-mail by attachments allows the
team coordinator to quickly assess who has
responded to an assignment with a report
document.
“The benefits of Outlook 2003 were so
compelling that we decided to provide
computers for most of our staff,” said
Kristen Sale, Regulatory and Administration Manager. “We realized that we
could save significant time scheduling
participants, mailing documents rather than
copying them, and communicating with
e-mail versus in-person meetings.”
Microsoft® Office System
 Microsoft Office
Professional Edition 2003
 Microsoft Office Word 2003
 Microsoft Office Outlook
2003
 Microsoft Office Access
2003
 Microsoft Office Excel
2003
 Microsoft Office
InfoPathTM 2003
Hardware
Compaq Proliant ML 350
Dell Optiplex GX 260
Dell Latitude D 600 Notebooks
Partner
Internal Computer Services
Microsoft Office is the business world’s chosen environment for information work that provides the
software, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact. For
more information about Microsoft Office System, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/office/
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and services, call the Microsoft Sales
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For more information about Internal Computer
Services products and services, call (804) 6721009 or visit the Web site at:
http;//www.intcomser.com
© 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.
For more information about National Clinical
Research services, call (804) 672-2995 or visit
the Web site at: http://ncrinc.net/
Microsoft, InfoPath, the Office logo, and Outlook
are either registered trademarks or trademarks
of Microsoft Corporation in the United States
and/or other countries. The names of actual
companies and products mentioned herein may
be the trademarks of their respective owners.
This case study is for informational purposes
only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.