Wilmington, N.C. — When Paragon Global CRS began developing a custom database application it was initially to solve an internal business problem. “We’re truly global,” said Vice President and Director Drew Massey. “We support clinical trials all over the world; there’s not a continent that we don’t do business on, and that means that we have employees processing financial transactions 24/7. What we quickly learned is that we need a cloud-based solution.” So Paragon turned to the nimble, cloud-based leader Caspio that every day helps companies build low-code databases.
“We had a business problem: How do we get complete and real-time data to our finance team headquartered in Wilmington, N.C. to ensure liquidity,” recounted Dave A. Rock, III, President and CEO of Paragon Global CRS. “We also knew that whatever solution we chose, it needed to support our current and future growth; so, we decided to hire a business development specialist. She lead us to Caspio.”
Enter: Danielle Baxter. “There was never any doubt in my mind that Caspio was the right solution for Paragon. If you look at practices, our companies are perfectly suited for each other. We’re global yet nimble groups of highly specialized support personnel. Both Paragon and Caspio expertly manage what otherwise is unfathomable for first-timers, and we do it behind the scenes, without a lot of fuss.”
Danielle Baxter, Paragon’s Director of Business Development is referring to is Caspio’s business promise to turn virtually anyone into an application developer. In traditional software terms, it’s impossible to build a database without knowing structured query language, or SQL as it’s known to most coders. Caspio’s visual application developer allows you write SQL code by choosing from a veritable sandbox of process functions, building your application in the language of business needs as opposed to SQL code.
Say you need to register a participant in a clinical trial in Germany, for instance. With Caspio, you can build an online form in minutes that captures that information which is then transmitted securely and stored in an encrypted database. To access that information, you’d need to build a search form that requests that information from the database. “It may seem overwhelming when you break it down step-by-step, but we were able to finish our initial application build in a little more than 5 months and we don’t employ a single coder,” Baxter said, referring to the software industry’s term for someone who builds databases using SQL.
“From a managerial perspective, it’s exciting,” Massey exclaimed. “Our team is now more connected. Instead of using spreadsheets and email chains, we work from a single data source that coordinates our global services. We enroll participants, schedule airfare, book hotel rooms,” Massey explained. And, yes, they even managed to solve the financial reporting problem that led them down the road to building their own, custom software.
“There’s nothing our software can’t do,” proclaimed Baxter. “What we’ve been able to do with Caspio is turn a business problem into an opportunity for growth. What higher complement is there than that?” For her part, at least, Baxter can’t seem to find one.
“At the beginning of this process, we were stuck with people who offered us off-the-shelf software that sort of addressed one of our needs but wasn’t built for our unique workflow,” Rock recalled. “Less than a year later, we now have a custom solution that has been a font of inspiration for us all. I don’t know what you’d call it, but it’s more than I could have hoped for when I asked Danielle to help us think outside the box.”
Connect with us on Linkedin to stay up to date on our latest projects and services.
We are happy to provide a list of references or schedule a time to discuss our experience in a variety of therapeutic classes, including rare disease and pediatric studies. Send a message to info@paragonglobalcrs.com for more information.