RealTime Webinar Recap: KPIs Every Research Site Should be Tracking (And How to Automate Them)

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Most research sites are already tracking KPIs. Almost none are tracking them in a way that’s consistent, reliable, or usable in real time. 

That was the premise behind our recent webinar, KPIs Every Research Site Should Be Tracking (And How to Automate Them), hosted by John Harvey, Director of Enterprise Sales, and Meganne Forrestall, Product Owner for RealTime-Devana. The session drew on findings from the latest edition of RealTime Reports, our recurring survey series of clinical research professionals across independent sites, multi-site networks, and large site organizations, and paired that data with a live look at how automated KPI capture actually works in practice. 

Here’s what the data showed, and what site leaders can do with it. 

Trial Oversight Data Is Fragmented By Default

When we asked survey respondents where trial oversight data lives today, the answer wasn’t a single system. It was several, each capturing part of the picture, with manual reconciliation filling the gaps in between. 

CTMS remains the backbone for most organizations, with 76% of respondents relying on CTMS reports for oversight. But CTMS alone rarely tells the whole story. Much of the actual performance picture still gets pieced together manually, across spreadsheets, emails, and site check-ins. 

That shows up clearly in how leadership captures performance metrics day to day: 71% of site networks are still capturing performance metrics manually or with only partial automation. Meanwhile, 81% of respondents said enrollment rate versus target is a top leadership metric, a KPI that matters enormously to leadership, but one that’s frequently being assembled after the fact rather than tracked as it happens. 

Why Site KPIs Are Hard to Track

The webinar identified four recurring reasons site leaders struggle to keep KPIs current:  

  1. Fragmented data spread across systems
  2. Manual spreadsheet work
  3. Email threads used as a tracking system 
  4. No single source of truth for leadership

Every one of those is a process problem. The information usually exists somewhere. It’s just not centralized, standardized, and current enough to act on quickly. 

The Four KPIs Every Site Leader Should Be Tracking

As trial complexity increases, sponsors, CROs, and internal stakeholders are asking site leaders for proof of performance. Four questions came up repeatedly in the survey data: 

  1. How quickly do you activate studies? 
  2. How responsive are you during feasibility? 
  3. How consistently do you enroll across studies and locations? 
  4. How efficiently do you convert opportunities into active trials? 

Those four questions map directly to the KPIs the session recommended every site track:  

  1. Start-up timelines 
  2. Feasibility responsiveness 
  3. Enrollment performance 
  4. Conversion rates 

Together, they function as a site’s report card, offering sponsors and CROs a clearer view into site performance when weighing future study opportunities. 

What Top-Performing Sites Do Differently

The gap between industry norm and best-in-class performance was significant across nearly every metric in the survey. What separated the two groups wasn’t a fundamentally different process. It was earlier investment in centralized visibility infrastructure that let them spot and close gaps faster than everyone else. 

That pattern showed up directly in how RealTime-Devana users performed against non-users in the survey: 

  • 3 in 4 Devana users collect feasibility responses within 1–2 days, compared to just 15% of non-users achieving the same turnaround. 
  • Devana users are more than 2x as likely to have automated metric capture and to track start-up cycle time and site responsiveness than their peers. 

The pattern across top performers was consistent: more automated metric capture, faster feasibility turnaround, and stronger metrics discipline overall. 

From Retrospective Reporting to Real-Time Visibility

The throughline of the session was that the sites winning more studies right now aren’t working harder to hit these KPIs. They’ve replaced manual reconstruction with automatic capture, so leadership is always looking at current data. 

That shift, from reconstructing performance after the fact to leveraging technology to see it as it happens, is what separates sites that can prove their performance on demand from sites still pulling scattered data together too late to act on it. 

If what you see is relevant to where your organization is right now, connect with an expert for a complete walkthrough of how Devana automates start-up milestones, feasibility tracking, and enrollment and conversion visibility in real time. 

See the platform in action. 

 

Case Study: Scaling Oncology Trial Execution Across Exigent Research’s Distributed Network with Devana Enterprise  

Executive Brief:  Why Multi-Site Research Organizations Struggle to Maintain a True System of Record  

 

FAQs

What KPIs should clinical research sites track? 

Clinical research sites should track KPIs that show how efficiently they move studies from opportunity to execution and how consistently they perform once a study is active. Four of the most important clinical research site KPIs are study start-up timelines, feasibility responsiveness, enrollment performance, and opportunity-to-study conversion rates. 

Together, these metrics help research sites and site networks understand operational performance, identify bottlenecks, and demonstrate their capabilities to sponsors and CROs. 

 

What are the most important clinical trial site performance metrics? 

The most useful clinical trial site performance metrics measure both speed and execution. These include: 

  • Study start-up cycle time: How long it takes to move from key start-up milestones to site activation. 
  • Feasibility responsiveness: How quickly the site completes and returns feasibility requests. 
  • Enrollment performance: How actual patient enrollment compares with enrollment targets. 
  • Conversion rate: How effectively trial opportunities progress from the business development pipeline into awarded and activated studies. 

For multi-site research organizations, these KPIs can also be compared across locations, therapeutic areas, sponsors, and studies to identify performance trends. 

 

Why are KPIs important for clinical research sites? 

Clinical research KPIs give site leaders objective data to evaluate operational performance and make better decisions. They can help organizations identify start-up delays, understand enrollment trends, evaluate business development performance, allocate resources, and demonstrate site capabilities to sponsors and CROs. 

Strong historical performance data can also help research organizations tell a more compelling story when competing for future clinical trial opportunities. 

 

How do you measure clinical trial site performance? 

Clinical trial site performance can be measured by tracking operational data across the study lifecycle, including feasibility response times, study start-up milestones, activation timelines, enrollment against target, pipeline conversion, and other performance indicators. 

The challenge is often not whether the data exists, but whether it is centralized and current. When metrics are spread across CTMS reports, spreadsheets, emails, and individual site records, leadership may have to manually reconstruct the organization’s performance before it can be analyzed. 

 

How can research sites automate KPI tracking? 

Research sites can automate KPI tracking by using clinical research technology that captures key milestones and performance data as work occurs. Instead of manually updating spreadsheets or compiling reports from multiple systems, automated KPI tracking can continuously capture data related to feasibility, study start-up, enrollment, and business development activity. 

RealTime-Devana provides centralized visibility into these metrics, helping research organizations monitor performance across studies and locations without relying on manual reporting processes. 

 

How can research sites improve feasibility response times? 

Research sites can improve feasibility response times by centralizing trial opportunities, standardizing feasibility workflows, assigning clear ownership, and tracking response deadlines in a shared system. 

Automation can further reduce the administrative work required to manage feasibility requests. In RealTime Reports survey findings, 3 in 4 Devana users reported collecting feasibility responses within one to two days, compared with 15% of non-users. 

 

How can research sites track study start-up timelines? 

Research sites can track study start-up timelines by capturing important milestones throughout the start-up process and measuring the time between them. Depending on the organization, these milestones may include CDA execution, feasibility completion, site selection, contract and budget completion, regulatory activities, and activation. 

Tracking these milestones consistently helps site leaders identify where studies are slowing down and compare start-up performance across studies, sponsors, therapeutic areas, and locations. 

 

What is clinical trial enrollment performance? 

Clinical trial enrollment performance measures how effectively a research site recruits participants compared with the enrollment expectations for a study. Common measures include actual enrollment versus target, enrollment rate over time, and performance across individual studies or locations. 

In RealTime Reports survey findings, 81% of respondents identified enrollment rate versus target as a top leadership metric, making it one of the most important KPIs for understanding site performance. 

 

Why is real-time KPI visibility important for multi-site research organizations? 

Multi-site research organizations need visibility across locations to understand where performance differs and where intervention may be needed. When each site maintains separate spreadsheets, reports, or processes, leadership can struggle to get a consistent view of the organization. 

Centralized, real-time KPI visibility allows leaders to compare start-up timelines, feasibility responsiveness, enrollment performance, and pipeline activity across their network and identify operational gaps earlier. 

 

How does RealTime-Devana help research sites track KPIs? 

RealTime-Devana is a clinical research operations intelligence platform that helps research sites and multi-site organizations centralize business development, study start-up, feasibility, enrollment, and performance data. 

By capturing operational data as work happens, Devana helps organizations reduce manual KPI reporting and gives leadership greater visibility into performance across their clinical trial portfolio. This allows research organizations to move from retrospective reporting toward continuously available performance intelligence. 

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