Every Touchpoint Matters: Building a Better Sponsor Experience in Drug Development | By Lisa Pivetta
When you select a drug development partner, scientific expertise, quality, therapeutic experience, timelines, and technology all matter. They are essential to moving your program forward. But there’s another factor that can be just as important to the success of the relationship: what it feels like to work together.
That experience of working together can be shaped by your priorities, expectations, and previous partnerships. With every conversation, email, update, and decision, you form an impression of the team and the partnership. Two sponsors may receive the same data on the same timeline and still leave with very different impressions.
The difference usually depends on how clearly teams communicate, how consistently they follow through, how effectively they adapt to your preferred way of working, and how well you feel supported throughout the process. No single moment defines the experience; together, these touchpoints shape your confidence and trust.
Every Touchpoint Shapes Your Experience
Think about the last time you went out for dinner. The food mattered, but so did the welcome, the wait, the atmosphere, and how the waiter responded when you needed something. Each moment contributed to how you felt about the meal, and whether you would return.
Your drug development experience works the same way. It begins well before a study starts. Perhaps it begins at a conference, during a request for proposal, or in an early planning discussion, and continues through every interaction that follows: status updates, questions, decisions, and challenges. Each interaction can either strengthen your confidence or create friction.
Delayed responses, unclear communication, inconsistencies, and unanswered questions can each undermine your confidence in a CRO. When these issues accumulate, their impact becomes even greater. Scientific quality is essential, but so are clear communication, reliable follow-through, and a team that adapts thoughtfully when circumstances change.
Strong Partnerships Begin With Understanding
At Altasciences, partnership begins with understanding each program and what matters most to our clients. They might prefer frequent discussions or brief updates, a fast-paced timeline or extra time to delve into a complex scientific issue. Our role is to understand those specific needs and tailor the work together accordingly. That understanding starts with good communication: asking thoughtful questions, listening carefully, and clarifying what success looks like for them. It also means paying attention to what may not be said and making sure everyone leaves each conversation aligned on priorities, expectations, and next steps.
All this information is fed into our proprietary customer database, Ask Albert. In addition to client preferences and measures of success, we also capture study requirements, molecule information, and study results. The database is readily available to all internal stakeholders, so that whenever one of our team members needs certain project details, they can check Ask Albert. We don’t have to go back and ask again, because like any good provider we remember those things that matter most. This is the backbone of our Tell Us Once™ commitment.
The Importance of Strong Project and Program Management
Flexibility matters just as much. To the sponsor, the molecule is the result of years of research, significant investment, critical value inflection points, and hope for patients awaiting new treatment options.
Understanding what is at stake, our project and program managers adapt our approach as needs evolve, working collaboratively to align study timelines, resources, and priorities with key development milestones. This can mean adjusting plans as new data becomes available, bringing the right experts together to address an unexpected challenge, or preparing for the next stage of development while current activities are underway; all while keeping critical value inflection points in focus.
Our program and project managers help coordinate these moving parts by anticipating potential bottlenecks and reducing unnecessary delays between activities. For our clients, that means more visibility in their programs, fewer gaps between milestones, and more time to focus on the decisions that matter most for their molecule, while safely accelerating drug development.
Drug development is complex, and unexpected scientific findings can create challenges that affect program timelines. I was part of a project team supporting a client when unforeseen scientific findings arose that put a key milestone at risk. Rather than simply communicating the issue by email, we picked up the phone to discuss the situation openly, explore potential solutions, and agree on a path forward. By working collaboratively and responding proactively, we were able to minimize the impact on the program’s timeline. The client later shared how much they valued our transparency, responsiveness, and commitment to finding solutions together so that delays were minimal and overall key milestones were met.
It may not be reasonable to expect perfection in drug development, but honesty, openness, and a responsive partner committed to finding solutions are my idea of perfection. I believe in making every program personal and treating clients the way I would want to be treated if I were in their position. Understanding the pressures they face, from internal deadlines to leadership and investor expectations, allows us to approach every challenge with empathy, accountability, and a level of commitment that goes beyond scientific expertise.
The Value of Feedback
Creating a great client experience begins with listening to the sponsor and being ready to take action. We use what sponsors tell us to identify opportunities and address challenges, continuously improving our processes, communication, and ways of working. The goal is simple: to build lasting partnerships that give our clients the confidence, support, and flexibility they need to navigate complex development challenges, achieve critical milestones, and bring promising therapies closer to the patients who need them.
At Altasciences, we recognize that exceptional client experiences start with our people, which is why our dedicated Experience Management department focuses on continuously improving both the client and employee experience. When employees feel supported and empowered to do their best work, clients benefit. To understand where we excel and where we can improve, we gather insights through client surveys, meetings, audits, governance discussions, relationship assessments, and ongoing feedback. We also measure client satisfaction through several indicators, including how likely clients are to recommend us.
By looking at individual comments alongside broader trends, we can better understand where there's room for improvement and then make an active effort to identify solutions. We also share positive feedback with our teams, because recognizing what is working is just as important.
Over the years, client feedback has helped shape meaningful changes at Altasciences, including streamlining financial reconciliation processes, expanding access to clinical source data through ClinSpark, optimizing sample manifest workflows, and further enhancing Ask Albert.
I often say that feedback is good, especially when it’s constructive. It helps us identify opportunities for improvement that we might otherwise overlook and make meaningful changes, so sponsors can spend less time navigating challenges and more time advancing their drug development programs.
Great Experience Sets Us Apart
Sponsors experience our commitment through everyday actions: a prompt response, a clear update, anticipating a question before it is asked, or having an open and honest conversation when the unexpected occurs. These interactions reflect our dedication to listening, learning, and continuously improving. By making sponsors feel heard and turning their feedback into meaningful action, we strengthen their confidence in our teams, support the success of their studies, and build lasting partnerships.
Get in touch to discuss your next project and discover how an integrated, client-focused approach can help move your program forward.
About the Author
Lisa Pivetta is Director of Client and Employee Experience at Altasciences. 
She leads initiatives that strengthen client relationships, elevate employee experience, and turn feedback into meaningful improvement. With more than two decades in drug development, Lisa has held roles in laboratory analysis, technical writing, project management, account management, client services, and strategic partnership leadership.
Her experience across sponsor-facing and operational roles helps teams build collaborative relationships and continuously improve what it is like to work with Altasciences.
