Following years of providing contract monitors to clients when needed, contract research organization (CRO) ResearchPoint is making its temporary clinical trial staffing business official through the creation of a spin-off company, ResourcingPoint.

The new business, which will provide contract clinical research associates (CRAs) to drug sponsors, will operate as a distinct company under ResearchPoint’s corporate umbrella.  ResearchPoint has always provided contract CRAs to clients on as-needed basis, but customer and market demand have increased the need for this type of service.

“What we try to do is pay attention to what’s happening with our clients, and when we consistently see different needs, we try to address those needs. If it means we need a change in our service offering, or in this case, a new entity under the same parent company, then that really justifies the need,” said ResearchPoint’s vice president of clinical operations, Becky Causey. “The other thing that was the impetus for this organization at this point in time was recognizing that our network of professionals was growing to the point that we thought we should do something to sort of collect them and help them and then at the same time helping ourselves and helping our clients.”

Rather than just expand the resource management services within ResearchPoint, the CRO decided to give ResourcingPoint its own name and brand to avoid diluting ResearchPoint’s reputation as a CRO.

“We didn’t want to confuse our clients and our internal resources. It’s not necessarily a means for us to use our internal resources or have a different avenue to keep them busy. It’s something completely separate, so we decided the right approach would be to keep it separate,” Causey said.

Headquartered alongside ResearchPoint in Austin, Texas, ResourcingPoint will share its corporate infrastructure with the parent CRO but will have three dedicated full-time employees as well as a staff of contract employees. As a separate company within ResearchPoint, the staffing business will be expected to carry its own load by developing its own reputation and bringing new business to its parent company.

“We don’t have any impression that we’re going to have margins equal to the ResearchPoint margins, but we’d like it to sustain itself. We’d like it to have the resources that it needs to manage whatever size it’s at and obviously turn a profit.  We believe that the model is profitable,” Causey said.

The CRO business will remain ResearchPoint’s primary focus area, but the company hopes to see its market share and reputation grow as a result of the new resource management company.

“From a three-year perspective, we’d really like to build our database of resources. We’ve already got a huge number of people who are interested, and our challenge is to get them through the qualification process. We’d like to be at a place in three years where there isn’t a need out there that we couldn’t fulfill,” Causey said. “This is probably not as much a money-making endeavor as it is a meet-a-service-need within the industry and, from that, further the reputation of ResearchPoint and ResourcingPoint.”