The TCS report on contract research

Tata Consultancy Services has released a report on the growing Indian contract research organisations (CROs) industry. The report captures the industry’s current position, and the status of IT implementation within the sector.

According to the report titled Accelerating Development, the turnover of the Indian IT industry presently stands at $4.8 billion, and it’s growing at the rate of 80 percent per annum. However, most players seem unaware of the potential gains from the investments in IT in the CRO value chain.

Some of the other trends in IT adoption among Indian organisations include:

• Consolidated IT spending by the players in the industry is less than 1 percent of the total industry spend.
• Most of the companies which are in the process of IT adoption have some function-specific applications in the overall value chain.
• Over 65 percent of companies implement data management applications in some shape or form.

Players acknowledge that IT outsourcing will be helpful in the long run, but are keen to see the IT industry introduce global practices in the CRO industry. However, no company seems to be looking at complete IT outsourcing.

The industry is also keen to implement knowledge management solutions in an effort to create and share institutional knowledge. However, cost and security issues and concerns about validation are impediments at present.