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Pressures on SAS Programming Roles and their Evolution in the Competitive Global Environment

Pharmaceutical and clinical research organizations (CRO) are facing tough economic conditions and pressures on their ability to reduce the costs to conduct and report clinical data. This industry is exploring ways to reduce the layers of operational groups to streamline the development process as well as reduce the time and cost to bring out a viable compound. These efforts need introspection of operation group’s structure and resource allocation. When faced with similar dilemma during IT industry bubble, software industry reacted quickly to reduce their costs by concentrating on their core competency and outsourcing the standard coding & maintenance work to low cost regions in North America as well as in emerging markets. This opened up doors for other industries also including the Pharmaceutical industry. Most organizations feel that clinical programming roles can be effectively outsourced without compromising the quality of the output. PREFACE: The constant changes within the Pharmaceutical as well as CRO industries with mergers, restructuring and outsourcing of work put most of the programming teams and its members in an uneasy situation. Unable to predict, prepare and adapt to the changing business environment can make many members and departments vulnerable and unproductive. This results in further loss of valuable time and delay in delivering the much needed results for the organizations. In these financial times, organizations cannot afford such uncertainty and unproductiveness. So it is in the interest of every organization and programming leadership to prepare their members for the future changes and changes in their roles. Programming teams need to be prepared for the new responsibilities and opportunities that lay ahead of them in this competitive global market. This paper describes the evolution of the programming roles due to market pressures and expected future roles for the programmers as well as ways to prepare for the future challenges.