Generating Leadership Buy-In for a Clinical Research Business Intelligence Solution

As clinical trials increase in complexity, you gain more value from using each resource at your disposal wisely. Many organizations are turning to Business Intelligence (BI) systems: software tracking operations, leadership goals, and grants, to gain a deeper understanding of how to improve their organization. While you may fully recognize the benefits a clinical research BI solution can offer your organization, your leadership may be wary of introducing a new or additional system into your operations. Below are methods to help start a conversation with leadership about the benefits of using a BI system that informs strategic decision-making to support and optimize your research operations, leadership, and grant management.

Evaluate and Present ROI

Presenting the return on investment (ROI) of a BI system is easier said than done. Because organizational leadership are responsible for achieving goals on a timely basis, they often rely on immediate ROI to determine the ultimate value a system can bring to their organization. Using your current system, it may be difficult for you to calculate accurate cost savings estimates to your leadership. However, there are more ways to showcase positive ROI through lenses that leadership will find valuable.

Focus your ROI discussions by speaking to a change in processes, rather than direct financial return. Process improvements have a lasting impact on long-term operations. Maximizing ROI depends on how much value you will get out of the system. Think about which insights will be most important to your leadership team by asking these questions:

• What questions about your operations can your ideal product answer for you?
• Will it enable your leadership team to make strategic decisions?
• Can the software provide holistic summaries for leadership, and more granular trends for specific departments or management groups within your organization?
• Will the data collected arm your leadership team with reports for a high-level meeting with senior leadership or an external advisory committee? If so, how quickly can leadership run reports, view dashboards, and export data?

If you can show your proposed system can answer questions, that will be valuable to leadership for not only operations oversight, but also for improving routine leadership workflows. Your audience will also begin to recognize the value of this investment.

Involve proper stakeholders

When you evaluate any system, consider different perspectives by talking to department leaders to learn what kinds of insights the system should bring to your organization. Different departments or roles within your organization will find different insights meaningful. By indicating the proposed system is valuable to multiple teams and stakeholders, you will highlight the benefits it will bring. In addition, involve multiple stakeholders early in the evaluation process, you’ll learn what to address to make your investment worthwhile, and encourage a wide adoption of the system. For example, Advarra Insights boasts thorough and easy to use dashboards showcasing analytics tailored to the needs of multiple roles at your organization, such as disease team leaders, regulatory managers, and administrative personnel.

Promote Excellence

When you promote investment in a BI system, focus on finding answers to meaningful questions you cannot currently answer. When leadership dedicates the tools and resources to managers and directors of specific departments, the entire organization benefits. Oftentimes, you cannot anticipate what exact insights you will learn from a new system, because it may point to areas of burden or success you never knew were there. By digging deeper using a BI system, your organization can better understand how to reach its full potential.

To advance your institution even further, consider learning from other institutions. Leaders from multiple organizations across the country collaboratively developed the unique and valuable dashboards in Advarra Insights. This collaboration sparked new ways for showing data, that single institutions had never thought of before, to generate new concepts, methods, and levels of productivity.

Presenting ROI, involving stakeholders, and showing dedication to finding a solution are all tactics you can use to generate buy-in within leadership for a clinical research business intelligence system. Learn more about Advarra Insights.

Back to Resources