Helping clients realize the full potential of their critical R&D projects starts with a trusted partnership. From research models to specialized services, our team at Envigo–an Inotiv company, continually supports each partnership, playing a critical role in supporting clients’ discovery and development objectives.
To better understand the support provided in each unique partnership, we recently spoke with an Inotiv employee about their work managing client experiences. From initial contact to project completion, they shared some of the team’s key interactions with pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, government, academia, and other life science organizations.
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“Our first core value is delivering excellent client experiences,” they explained. “We want to know our clients’ needs and determine if we are continually meeting expectations. A partnership with us isn’t viewed as a single transaction but rather a journey of growing and nurturing a relationship.”
To recognize how clients interact with us, our team created a client journey map, starting with insight gained from dozens of client interviews. They asked about each touchpoint, from negotiating a contract and creating orders to deliveries and generating reports.
“We wanted to learn more about our perceived strengths and weaknesses — identifying what we do well and where we can be better — to help clients achieve their goals,” they said. “In some cases, we have preconceived notions and it really helps to get the client’s point of view.”
Developing company-wide best practices
Based on the feedback collected and integrated into the client journey map, the team can help prioritize improvements that make the biggest difference for clients.
“Like a pack of sled dogs, we need to pull in the same direction to be effective as one united company,” they said. “We use company-wide software to manage and plan our work, identifying the processes to improve based on best practices. This helps us reach our goal to be our clients’ first choice as their drug development partner.”
Providing a consultative approach
The Inotiv team provided a few examples where they have worked to make a difference for a client by offering a consultative approach and solving unique challenges.
Urgently preparing a model for a critical vaccine study
A drug development company needed a surgically-altered model to test its COVID-19 vaccine per FDA requirements. Without this model, the drug development sponsor could not proceed to the clinic. Working with an extremely tight timeline, we were able to prepare and ship the models to our client, going above and beyond to ensure the sponsor could get the data they urgently needed to advance the vaccine.
Developing quality models to study heart disease
A pharmaceutical company needed a reliable model for myocardial infarction (MI). Our team went to the client site so we could collaborate on the model, then they received cohorts of animals from our surgery team to test their therapies. This ensured quality outputs and allowed the sponsor to reliably test their potentially life-saving treatment.
Changing processes to meet individual needs
Even minor improvements can make a difference, as demonstrated in one unique case. A client reported that they couldn’t fit their order of Teklad diet into their elevator based on the way it was packaged and stacked on a pallet. Understanding that this was a continual issue for the client, we developed a few prototypes to test out different ways to stack the diet so it could easily fit in the client’s elevator.
“Some of our process improvements may be minor, but we pride ourselves on personalized service. We want to get it right at every level,” they shared. “We also recognize the incredible changes we can make as part of helping our clients make a difference for their patients. From cancer to diabetes to Alzheimer’s disease, we know our work is helping deliver a better quality of life.”
To learn more about our consultative approach, click here.
