Pharma R&D now runs on external partners, yet most suppliers are chosen before procurement joins the process.
In our LinkedIn poll, half of respondents said scientists and budget owners select R&D suppliers, while only 28% said procurement and stakeholders work jointly from the start. As spending on CROs and CDMOs grows, that gap turns outsourced R&D into a governance, capacity, and supply risk.
In Episode 11 of Behind Procurement, APSentra CEO Natalie Eksi talks with Alan Salter, Founder and Principal of Caravel International Partners and former Procurement Lead for Takeda’s US Business Unit, and Mauricio Dezen, VP of Professional Services & Customer Success at APSentra. They examine how pharma companies bring structure to external spend without slowing the science.
What you’ll learn:
- Why R&D and procurement drift apart and why the fix is a defined handoff rather than blame
- How the shift to CROs and CDMOs turns R&D spend into a procurement responsibility
- How large pharma governs CRO relationships worth $100M or more per program
- Why external spend escapes control when R&D moves from internal to outsourced models
- When to bring procurement into R&D to secure scarce supplier capacity and manufacturing slots
- Why stakeholder adoption and process design decide whether systems and AI deliver control
- How a pharmaceutical distributor brought its full procurement cycle under one controlled structure
Who it’s for:
CPOs, CFOs, and R&D operations leaders at pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, plus the clinical, finance, and procurement teams accountable for external spend.
