Outsourcing to exploit a key asset.

Much has been written and debated about the economic and organizational advantages of outsourcing a growing list of operations in drug discovery. In what has been described as a modular approach to drug discovery, whole sections of the process are now handled very effectively by a wide variety of specialist suppliers to the pharmaceutical industry. Here we report on a novel outsourced solution to the challenge of consolidating and managing some of the key assets residing within a major research organization - its chemical intermediates.