Legacy CTMS Works. That’s the Problem.
Legacy and similar homegrown CTMS platforms do exactly what they were designed to do:
- Track studies
- Support compliance
- Store data
But modern research operations don’t break at the point of documentation. They break in the spaces between systems, teams, and workflows where no CTMS was ever designed to look.
This creates an operational blind spot that most AMCs feel daily, even if they don’t have a name for it.
What’s Changed
Research Operations Outgrew the System
Research organizations today are managing:
- More studies per site
- More systems per workflow
- More compliance pressure
- More turnover across staff roles
Yet most AMC, hospitals, and health system infrastructures still rely on:
- Static reporting
- Manual reconciliation
- Institutional knowledge living in PDFs and people
The result is operations work. Until they don’t.
If This Feels Familiar, You’re Not Alone
Most AMCs, hospitals, and health systems experience at least some of the following:
- Internal guides explaining “how things really work”
- Multiple versions of the same data across systems
- Power users who quietly hold everything together
- Leadership visibility that arrives weeks too late
These aren’t training problems. They’re signals that the operating model itself hasn’t evolved.
A Paradigm Shift – From CTMS-Led to Operations-Led
Today, modern, leading clinical research organizations are now asking: “Can we actually see and run our research operation in real time?” That shift moves the focus from:
- Documentation → Execution
- Systems → Workflows
- Retrospective reporting → Live operational visibility
This is where the concept of a Site Operations Management System (SOMS) emerges.
What SOMS Enables – Your eClinical Command Center
When research operations are designed as a cohesive system:
- Data is entered once and flows forward
- Teams spend less time reconciling and more time executing
- Institutional knowledge lives in templates, not people
- Leaders see bottlenecks as they form, not after
This isn’t about speed for speed’s sake. It’s about sustainability at scale.
A Different Kind of Conversation
If your organization is already questioning:
- How much duplicate work is acceptable
- How visible research operations really are
- How dependent success is on workarounds
You’re not behind. You’re right on time.
Talk with an expert to compare how your research operations are running today with where the industry is heading.