Chris Schorre/Vice President of Global Marketing/EMERGO
Has this happened to you lately?
• You spent countless hours online trying to research a specific process, but still don’t have a solid understanding of how it works.
• You are under pressure to get a project done, but don’t have the internal resources to complete it by the deadline.
It’s okay to admit that you need help
The most successful people don’t pretend they know how to do everything. They recognize early on that learning how to do something would not be a good investment of their time. At some point you may be faced with the same decision and you need to ask yourself these questions:
- If I tackle this myself and it goes badly or takes way more time than expected, how will it affect the company?
- What kind of stress will I be under if #1 happens?
- Will I ever need to do this type of project again? Is there a long-term benefit to me investing considerable time to learn it?
Believe it or not, the Internet is not always right
In the byzantine realm of global regulatory compliance, fallacies abound online. The biggest mistake we see made is that clients do their own research but find outdated or incomplete information and take it as fact. Most people do not use the ‘Search Tools” button in Google that allows filtering results by date posted. That results in assuming old information is up-to-date. Good consultants stay abreast of recent changes, and can steer you clear of potentially expensive mistakes.
Companies, like Emergo, work in the field of international regulatory compliance for medical device companies. Needless to say, it’s a complex field. Without a doubt the best clients we have are the ones who “know what they don’t know.”
People remember the outcome, not the cost
Yes, hiring a consultant costs money and it is appealing (sometimes necessary) to try to figure out how to achieve your goals using internal resources, but remember, your time is not free either! A mid-level regulatory specialist might easily cost a company $100,000 in salary and benefits. That’s $50 per hour. If it takes that person three times longer to figure out how to do something than hiring an expert, that’s $150 per hour. But here’s where the real costs add up:
We serve 2,800 medical device and IVD clients worldwide, so I can tell you that we often get calls from flustered companies that have submitted a 510(k) to the FDA after struggling to prepare it internally for six months. The FDA then rejects the company’s submission because they did not realize they needed a specific testing report. Now, the company must to go back and get the testing done, delaying market introduction and sales by another two months.
These situations are entirely preventable and, in most cases, the cost of recovering from them far exceeds the initial investment of hiring someone who knows what they are doing. As Red Adair, a legendary American oil well firefighter, once said, “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”
