The Story
The company was founded in 1999 as an integrated biopharmaceutical company with a focus on development and manufacturing as well as having expertise in preclinical and clinical development, formulation optimization, and cGMP manufacturing of biopharmaceutical products and medical devices.
From its early beginnings, the company’s growth was fueled through grants and contracts from both industry and several U.S. Government agencies. In 2013, the Department of Defense (DoD) awarded the company and its team of partners and collaborators a contract to provide the core services necessary to establish a Medical Countermeasures Advanced Development and Manufacturing facility dedicated to meeting the specific needs of the DoD. The 10-year, $400+ million contract had a base period goal for the construction of an 183,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art, BSL-3, single-use facility that the company now occupies and operates.
Over the last four years, Ology Bio experienced rapid growth as they expanded from a formulation and drug development company to a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO). As they built their sales and partnering activities, they needed a way to efficiently track discussions, meetings and paperwork throughout their sales cycle. Ology Bio chose Inova because it is tailor-made for the life sciences and fits their processes.
Designed for long sales cycles
As a CDMO, Ology Bio has a long sales cycle. They frequently meet with the same prospect many times before a real opportunity develops. As a result, there are many emails, meetings and paperwork to track. Using Inova, Ology Bio securely stores everything in the same place. The Outlook Add-in enables them to quickly attach emails and their attachments to an existing opportunity or contact, or to create a new one. The BIO Connector allows them to import their meetings from over 20 biopharma events in just a few clicks.
"Being able to link meetings to opportunities and agreements is a huge benefit for us. There’s no other software that does it. We used to keep our meeting information in manila folders. Now, it's all in Inova, which saves us a lot of time and headaches!” - Leslie Molony, Executive Director of Business Development at Ology Bioservices.
Inova also manages all of the paperwork that comes from these interactions, such as Material Transfer Agreements and Confidential Disclosure Agreements, and enables detailed access control, ensuring that only the right people have access to confidential or sensitive documents.
Leslie Molony added "The CDMO sales cycle is a very long, relationship-dependent process. You meet the same person at different events as their project moves though clinical development. Inova helps you track everything in one place, so when your lead becomes a real opportunity, you have all the information you need. Thanks to Inova, we’re more efficient and productive. It’s a powerful solution for CDMOs.”.
Expert reporting
Using Inova, Ology can accurately track and report on their pipeline and activities in real-time. This is especially important for reporting to investors on their activities and to the US Government on their expected manufacturing capacity. They are also able to track the sources of sales leads and evaluate their quality, helping them to optimize their activities and conference attendance. Reports are exportable to Excel for easy sharing.
Finding the right clients
Going forward, Ology will continue capturing and maintaining information about every opportunity and client in Inova, from the first introduction all the way through to project completion. By analyzing this information, they can determine which types of prospects are mostly likely to result in a deal. Specifically, they are looking for the types of clients that are likely to sign deals going through to Phase III and commercial. Armed with this information, they will be able to better focus on the right types of clients.