Outsourcing in the Pharmaceutical Industry, Morgan Lewis on Life Sciences
January/February 2005

Most if not all major pharmaceutical companies have outsourced, or are evaluating the benefits of outsourcing, one or more of their non-core business functions to a third-party service provider. Over the last five years, pharmaceutical companies have primarily been outsourcing all or part of their back-office information technology (IT) infrastructure, such as the mainframe, midrange, desktop or application maintenance functions. Recently, however, pharmaceutical companies have become more and more innovative in the types of business functions that they consider ripe for outsourcing. Functions that are being considered include human resources (operations or payroll), financial transaction processing (particularly accounts payable), procurement, distribution and logistics, and clinical data management.

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