When a Vendor Is the Problem

Part of Clinical Project Management (PM) Training: Vendor and CRO Oversight.

About 1 minutes. Free, in your language, no account needed.

The awkward position

A vendor failing is harder to manage than a site failing, because the relationship is commercial and because replacing a vendor mid-trial is often impossible. That difficulty is exactly why the problem tends to be tolerated too long.

Recognize it early

Slipping service levels, rising unexplained queries on their data, staff turnover on your account, or answers that become vaguer as the questions become more specific.

A vendor who stops giving you numbers has usually stopped meeting them.

Escalate inside their organization, not only to your contact

Your day-to-day contact may be doing their best with what they have. A documented escalation to their management, with the service levels and the evidence, changes what resources they can obtain internally. It also creates the record you will need if the relationship ends.

Contingency is planned before it is needed

For each critical vendor, know what you would do if they failed tomorrow. For a laboratory, where the samples would go. For an IRT system, whether randomization could run manually and under whose authority. For a courier, the alternative.

The plan does not have to be good. It has to exist before the day you need it.

Tell the sponsor

A vendor problem that affects data or timelines is a sponsor matter, and it is one project managers are slow to raise because it can look like a failure of their own vendor selection. It looks far worse discovered later, and the sponsor may have leverage or alternatives that you do not.