Leading the Cut: 4 Organizations Take on Site Training Reduction
A comprehensive industry assessment of over 500 clinical research professionals found that site staff spend between 2 and 10 hours per person, per study on mandatory training alone, with 65% of that content considered redundant. Additionally, less than a quarter of industry partners regularly accept previously completed training, and 60% of sites are asked to provide training evidence to multiple departments. When sites are spending an average of 17.5 hours per study per month on training activities, the problem isn’t a minor inefficiency, but rather a structural barrier to innovation, speed, and site engagement.
The SCRS Cut >25 initiative is the industry’s formal response: a community-wide commitment to a minimum 25% reduction in redundant or inefficient training requirements all without compromising protocol-critical content or safety. The target is the repetitive, low-value training requirements that accumulate study after study: the same system onboarding, the same EDC basics, and more.
Hear from four organizations that found their own path to measurable progress to reducing site training with stories that offer a practical blueprint for what meaningful change looks like.
Novo Nordisk
Risk-Based, Role-Targeted Training Across a Global Enterprise
THE CHALLENGE
Novo Nordisk operates at scale. Any meaningful change to site training would need to hold up across tens of thousands of staff, multiple ongoing and incoming trials, and a complex web of internal stakeholders. For years, sites and CRAs had flagged training as a persistent pain point — not a minor inconvenience, but a structural problem requiring structural solutions.
THE APPROACH
The trigger for action was One Clinical Study Start-Up 2026, a cross-collaborative initiative aimed at compressing start-up timelines. A site training track was identified as a key lever, and from there, Novo Nordisk’s newly established Site Learning Unit got to work rebuilding the training model from first principles.
The shift was fundamental: away from one-size-fits-all, front-loaded training, and toward a targeted, risk-based approach. Training is now assigned by both role and task, with a clear mapping between what a site staff member is expected to do and what they are required to learn. A site-facing training plan publishes expected training and total hours per role: a transparency measure that also serves as a resource planning tool.
Non-trial-specific training content was centralized and streamlined to be fit-for-purpose rather than exhaustive. The underlying philosophy, as the team describes it, is that training exists to teach a skill, not to document that training has occurred.
THE RESULTS
- 60% reduction in PI training burden for non-trial-specific trainings
- 40% reduction in training burden for other roles
- 90% site satisfaction score on updated training content (from over 1,000 feedback responses in the first two months of 2026)
- Expected to affect all 2026 incoming studies and more than 50,000 site staff
“Instead of just a check-the-box exercise, we want to instill in our organization that we provide training to teach a skill, not just to documents that training has been conducted.”
KEY LESSONS
The biggest ongoing barrier, the team acknowledges, is mindset change — not just implementing new processes but communicating the “why” clearly enough that stakeholders are motivated to invest time in thoughtful training planning. They also stress the importance of having a clear organizational mandate: site training is inherently cross-silo, and without defined ownership, progress stalls.
Their advice to others: “Don’t be afraid to take brave decisions, backed by logic and good clinical practice. Involve your stakeholders early, get feedback to iterate on decisions, and then make the change to work towards change to a centralized ownership of site training with the authority to make decisions.”
Sanofi
Five Years of Sustained Optimization — and Exceeding the 25% Goal
THE CHALLENGE
Sanofi started this work before Cut >25 launched. Beginning in November 2020, the organization undertook a multi-year effort to right-size site training — not through a single dramatic intervention, but through systematic, evidence-based refinement over time.
THE APPROACH
Sanofi’s strategy centered on five interconnected elements: streamlining content to eliminate redundancy, offering test-out options for experienced staff, reducing the proportion of mandatory training modules, optimizing role-based assignments, and collaborating with vendors to harmonize training materials across the ecosystem.
The effort required sustained cross-functional alignment, including governance oversight for new training requirements, vendor workshops, pilot programs, and regular communication with study teams to build trust in the process. Global coordination across regions and therapeutic areas added complexity, as did internal resistance to reducing mandatory content among stakeholders with risk sensitivity.
THE RESULTS
By February 2025, the numbers told a clear story:
- Mandatory training modules reduced from 50% to 31% of total training content — a 38% reduction in mandatory proportion
- Training time for mandatory modules cut from 116 minutes to 55 minutes — a 48% reduction
- Total training time reduced from 224 minutes to 201 minutes — a 11% overall reduction
Mandatory training is the real burden on site staff, the content they must complete regardless of experience or role. By cutting that by nearly half, Sanofi has delivered tangible relief to investigators and their teams. Total training time has also decreased, with further progress expected as reciprocity frameworks and vendor harmonization mature.
“Continuous optimization is essential. Regular review and adaptation of training content ensures relevance and efficiency while vendor collaboration is critical to reducing redundancy at scale.”
KEY LESSONS
Sanofi’s experience underscores that meaningful reduction is achievable without compromising compliance, and that a role-based approach, aligned to actual job responsibilities, consistently outperforms volume-based training. Their roadmap continues, with training reciprocity agreements, expanded vendor harmonization, and structured site feedback mechanisms all in development.
ProofPilot
Rebuilding the Training Stack Around What Sites Actually Need
THE CHALLENGE
NICUs are not typical clinical research environments. They operate with high volumes of rotating nursing staff, unconventional workflows, and a compliance burden that quickly becomes unmanageable under traditional training models. When one sponsor recognized that keeping 25 NICU nurses per site current on training and documentation would require a fundamentally different approach, they turned to a technology partner already aligned with the Cut>25 framework.
THE APPROACH
The solution started with a deliberate rejection of conventional assumptions. Rather than anchoring training in a traditional LMS and treating it as a completion event, the team prioritized the right resource at the right moment: contextual guidance and on-demand materials deployed at the point of need, rather than in advance.
The new resource was built to support platform-level training reciprocity across studies for a given sponsor, acceptance of third-party training, eTMF integration for training documentation, competency-based pathways, attestation of prior or live training, micro-learning formats, and workflow-embedded contextual guidance that bypasses the LMS entirely for routine tasks.
A key enabler was a well-documented open API that made eTMF integration for large, rotating site populations — initially a daunting prospect — both straightforward and reliable. The CRO’s initial resistance to departing from incumbent tools (a basic LMS and a complex Excel spreadsheet) was ultimately overcome by the sponsor asserting appropriate accountability for quality conduct.
THE RESULTS
- Approximately 2-week reduction in study startup time
- 50% reduction in redundancy reports (down from 100%)
- Average research site satisfaction rating of 4.7 out of 5
- Elimination of sponsor labor previously spent reconciling training records with the eTMF
Sites specifically appreciated role-based training tied to their actual responsibilities, delivered in bite-sized formats. Additionally, they equally valued on-demand resources to guide them through a specific visit in the moment, without requiring a return to a large document or LMS system.
“Less and different is more. Forget the notion of what training typically looks like, watching slides and signing off, Cut>25 allowed us to focus on how best to support sites to run the trials as intended.”
KEY LESSONS
The Proof Pilot team notes that adoption resistance — the familiar “just another portal” reaction — was real, but short-lived. Once sites experienced the more streamlined approach, feedback shifted decisively positive. Their advice to sponsors: don’t accept “no” from a CRO when the evidence supports a better approach. Sponsors carry the accountability for quality conduct, and that accountability should come with the authority to act on it.
Scout
Designing a Portal Where Training Becomes Optional by Default
THE CHALLENGE
Scout’s contribution to Cut >25 starts from a different premise than most: rather than reducing the training burden, they asked whether mandatory training needed to exist at all — at least for experienced site staff navigating routine portal tasks.
THE APPROACH
Beginning in Q3 2025, the Scout Portal was designed and deployed with an intentional reduction in required training as a core operating principle, not an afterthought. The philosophy is simple: if a portal is intuitive enough, experienced staff should be able to complete tasks without formal instruction. If training is available, it should be available on demand, tied to specific actions, and accessible at the moment it becomes relevant.
In practice, this means content is broken into short, topic-specific resources: brief videos and written guidance linked to concrete tasks like submitting a request, approving a document, or checking payment status. There are no completion-gated training requirements and no time-based prerequisites. Welcome emails, action-triggered notifications, and in-portal messaging replace the need for memorization or advance preparation by the site. Where acknowledgment is required, users complete simple in-portal attestations connected directly to the relevant task. Live support remains available around the clock, but the system is designed so that most users never need it for routine work.
THE RESULTS
Site feedback following implementation has consistently indicated that users can figure out the portal without formal training, completing tasks successfully with minimal guidance. Internally, Scout teams no longer spend time tracking training completion or following up with sites to meet training requirements. Administrative overhead has decreased on both sides.
Critically, this has occurred without any compromise to compliance expectations. The attestation model ensures accountability is maintained; it simply does not require a separate training course to accomplish it.
“Experienced site staff should not be slowed down by unnecessary instruction. Our system is built so that knowing how to use it is not a prerequisite for using it.”
KEY LESSONS
Scout’s experience reinforces a point that appears across all four case studies: the purpose of training is to enable effective performance, not to create a paper trail. When systems are built with that principle in mind from the start, the training burden often diminishes naturally. The question worth asking is not “how do we reduce our training?” but “why are we requiring it in the first place?”
Across four very different organizations — a global pharmaceutical company, a large sponsor, a clinical technology platform, and a specialized service provider — the Cut >25 framework has surfaced the same underlying truths:
- Role-based, task-aligned training consistently outperforms volume-based, front-loaded training
- On-demand, contextual resources are more useful at the point of task execution than advance instruction
- Reducing mandatory content does not reduce compliance — it often improves engagement with what remains
- Mindset change is the hardest barrier, and communication of the “why” is as important as the implementation
- Clear ownership and mandate are prerequisites for cross-functional progress
Together, these organizations have demonstrated that the 25% reduction target set by SCRS is not aspirational — it is achievable, and in several cases already exceeded.
Cut >25 is an open invitation. If your organization has reduced site training burden through role-based assignments, reciprocity frameworks, platform innovation, content streamlining, or any other approach, SCRS wants to hear from you.
Your story matters, both as evidence that change is possible and as practical guidance for the organizations still figuring out where to start.
Learn more on how your organization can reduce site training and more about Cut25 here.
