How do companies choose CMO?

The global market for contract processing outsourcing is growing, with more and more scientific institutions, pharmaceutical companies and biopharmaceutical companies choosing to outsource production to CMOs and drug development and manufacturing outsourcing services (CDMOs).

Cellin Technologies, a European stem cell contract processing organization, conducted two brief surveys to determine what encouraged
potential customers to choose one CDMO service over another.

Since both surveys involved only a limited number of respondents (corresponding to 21 and 33 respondents), this result should not be considered strong scientific data
.
However, these data results can still indicate the tendency of potential customers to choose drug contract processing outsourcing (CMO) and drug development and manufacturing outsourcing services (CDMO
).

The first survey included the question: "What are the most important factors influencing your choice when choosing a drug development manufacturing outsourcing service (CDMO)?" “

The survey results are shown in the
image below.

As we can see, the vast majority of people chose the option "Technical team strength"
.
This option was popular among different types of respondents, including employees from top pharmaceutical companies in different parts of the world, employees of the world's top CDMO companies, employees of medium-sized pharmaceutical companies, and employees of
small R&D facilities.

Some respondents chose the option
"Price".
This option is more chosen by employees from universities and drug development and manufacturing outsourcing service companies
.
University research teams typically receive less research funding than big pharma, which is why
the price of CDMO services is more important to them.
When a CDMO company needs to bring in another CDMO company as a project subcontractor, it must reserve some price space for the customer, which is why
the price factor is more important for CDMO companies.
Finally, employees of pharmaceutical companies from low-cost regions also choose the "price" option
.
Because in such a situation, it makes sense
to choose the cheapest contractor to maintain market prices in a competitive environment.

The vast majority of respondents would choose "technical team strength" as the criteria for
choosing a CDMO.
The second question from the survey: "When you choose a CDMO service, what makes you confident that the CDMO team is technically strong enough to meet the requirements?" ”

The results of the survey are shown in the table below
.

Based on these surveys, we can distinguish trends
in pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, and research institutions when selecting CDMO teams.
Potential consumers are primarily focused on the technical skills
of this CDMO team.
In this regard, they determined that the technical strength of the CDMO team was sufficient
based on interviews with the CDMO team and feedback from other customers served by the CDMO team.

As a result, CDMO companies will benefit from
frequent self-improvement and frequent customer feedback.

In addition, CDMO teams should seek to set prices as low and competitive as possible and publish relevant research literature, as some potential customers will focus on these aspects
first.
Importantly, in both surveys, the options "reputation of CDMO companies" and "brand power of CDMO companies" were not popular
compared to other factors.
The fact that these two options are not popular in themselves suggests that small, unknown CDMO companies can compete
with well-known CDMO companies if they can prove their technical prowess by providing interviews to potential customers and using feedback from other customers.