“Traditionally, clients looking to purchase research models would review a static digital catalog, and follow-up with a phone call or email to our ordering team,” said Colin Dunn, Ph.D., Corporate Senior Vice President, Global Research Models & Services, Charles River. “Our real-time digital experience reimagines this dynamic and enables clients direct access to availability, pricing, and immediate order confirmations–empowering them to make more efficient decisions.”

By reimagining an interactive digital catalog and connecting it to dynamic inventory and pricing systems, clients are now provided with real-time purchasing information based on their delivery schedule. The intuitive digital experience enables collaboration between researchers and procurement teams to search inventory by name, species, strain code or therapeutic area, and configure their request based on research model specifications matching their study requirements and schedule.

“Implementing this real-time experience in our Research Models & Services business is the latest in a series of innovations that are fundamental to our digital journey,” said Mark Mintz, Corporate Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer at Charles River. “We built this platform with client needs in mind, using design-led thinking to create value in their research process, ultimately working to increase efficiency in the development of new therapeutics.”

As part of Charles River’s commitment to the humane care and well-being of research animal models, trained staff qualify all requests for account access, ensuring that only authorized individuals have the ability to place orders for research models. Researchers have full access to Charles River’s research model portfolio, including account-specific pricing for effortless sharing with their procurement team to streamline purchases. As more users are onboarded onto the innovative platform, the online ordering system ensures seamless collaboration for researchers, regardless of procurement platform. The real-time ordering experience is live and currently available in North America. Charles River is continuously expanding the scope and taking into account the voice of the customer, and anticipates new features being regularly introduced.

“[It is] more convenient and easier to find the research models requested from my researchers,” said Michelle, a purchasing administrator at Case Western Reserve University. “I really like the fact that all my account and shipping information is already in the system for me to choose from. I like that I can see the price of the research models we are requesting when placing an order. We also get the confirmations back very quickly.”