Case Study

ZS’s growth strategy required expansion beyond commercial pharma. Clinical trials — spanning drug discovery to patient retention, representing the majority of a drug’s 17-year path to market — represented a significant opportunity. ZS’s data engineering and analytics expertise opened doors with longstanding clients. The first project, a patient registry built by a traditional consulting team working with an outside vendor, was generating rework, cost overruns, and frustration. The Custom Development capability was the answer.

Company & Position

ZS Associates, Partner (2017–2024)

Details

The patient registry engagement was taken over with a small senior team able to teach the business and SME team what software development requires. That combination — domain expertise on the business side, delivery rigor on the UX and engineering side — became the winning model for both technical execution and client sales.

Building credibly in clinical trials required building domain knowledge deliberately. Senior UX team members were aligned to the R&D practice to learn the space from the inside — eventually enabling credible participation in proposal conversations. Over time, foundational knowledge of key personas and task flows enabled faster ramp-up on every new engagement.

Actions

• Took over a struggling patient registry engagement; introduced agile delivery discipline and UX-led process to a project that had stalled.
• Built a model for domain expertise development — aligning senior UX people to emerging practice areas to acquire knowledge over time.
• Delivered 8+ solutions and assets spanning the clinical trial lifecycle: Patient Registry, Patient Cohort Builder, Site Selector, Site Operations, Clinical Trial Protocol Design, and others.
• Assigned a dedicated team to Trials.ai — an acquired early-stage software company — for more than a year, maturing the product through research, design, and engineering handoff.
• Supported $250K–$20M proposal efforts with persona-based demos and research that demonstrated domain fluency.

Outcome & Impact

• R&D Practice Area grew to represent more than 30% of ZS’s business — a significant contributor to the firm’s expansion from commercial pharma.
• Repeatable delivery model established built on agile fluency, structured requirements, and accumulated user knowledge.
• Senior UX team members became recognized contributors to the R&D go-to-market capability — credible voices in client-facing selling conversations, not only delivery resources.