EY Pakistan CRO Assessment: Primary Research in a Registry-Restricted Market

Saket worked on an EY engagement where a UK-based pharmaceutical client needed to identify and assess clinical research organizations in Pakistan to support a product launch. The standard secondary research approach hit an immediate wall: Pakistani registries were largely inaccessible, with restrictions on public data and limited online presence for the target entities.

The client provided points of contact at several CRO firms. Saket and the team used these to conduct direct outreach calls, identifying themselves as EY risk analysts and explaining the purpose of the engagement. The calls were structured around a questionnaire covering the firm's business model, operational history, product testing range, typical timelines for clinical trials, and customer base.

The information gathered through these calls was then integrated into the standard EY due diligence report template, with a dedicated section for vendor call verification that captured the Q&A in a structured format. Where secondary sources were available to corroborate or contrast what was said on the calls, those were layered in alongside the primary findings.

The output gave the client a usable picture of the CRO landscape in a market where secondary research alone would have produced a near-empty report.