By Bhavish Lekh, Co-founder & CEO
A global CRO measured their country-ranking workflow step by step, before and after Geo Matrix™. The same work now takes less than half the time — with more criteria, higher confidence, and a better deliverable at the end. Just as importantly, they measured it the way time savings should be measured: end to end.
For ten years, I built country rankings for a living.
Across 400+ studies, the routine barely changed. A new project would land — a proposal to respond to, a programme to plan, a strategy request from a sponsor or an internal team — and the clock would start. Clinical development timelines don't leave room for reflection: somewhere inside a compressed window, someone has to produce a defensible answer to one of the most consequential questions in any study — which countries?
That pressure isn't unique to CROs. Feasibility and strategy teams inside pharma and biotech live the same reality — different requesters, same fragmented sources, same spreadsheets, same deadline arithmetic.
So when a global CRO recently sat down with us and measured, step by step, exactly where that time goes — and what changed when they moved the same work onto Geo Matrix™ — I didn't just see a benchmark. I saw a decade of my own working life, itemised.
The headline: a country ranking that took 8 hours 45 minutes end to end now takes 4 hours 10 minutes. Less than half the time — and, notably, not the same output done faster. More scoring criteria, higher confidence, and a richer final deliverable. I'll come back to that.
What does "time saved" actually measure?
First, a point I've been wanting to make for a while.
I see a lot of platforms claiming to save 70%, 80% of your time. I understand the temptation — I obviously have a perspective here — but my first question is always: measured against what? Too often the answer is a single step, in isolation. How fast the database returns a query. How quickly a chart renders. That tells you something about the software. It tells you almost nothing about your working day.
Because querying a platform's database is not the job. The job is everything around it: gathering and entering the data, setting up the scoring, checking the numbers, aligning the team, and turning the analysis into something you can put in front of a decision-maker.
So when we ran this benchmark, we measured the end-to-end workflow — from the first data pull to the finished deliverable and everything in between — across five phases: data gathering and entry, scoring and weighting set-up, verification and QC, collaboration and fine-tuning, and deliverable production. Each phase was captured as a minimum, maximum and average, so the results span low-complexity through high-complexity projects rather than one flattering scenario. Across that full range, the saving held at 52–55%.
That's the difference between a claim and a measurement. Less than half the time, wherever your project sits on the complexity curve — with nothing conveniently left out of the stopwatch.
Geo Matrix
Geo Matrix
The saving, phase by phase
Every phase of the workflow got faster — and because each was measured as a minimum, maximum and average, the ranges below show what that looks like from a simple opportunity to a complex one.
- Data gathering and entry — 60% faster. From 2 h 30 min down to 1 h on average, with 1 hour to 2 hours 15 minutes saved depending on complexity. Direct integration with the platform's databases, plus ACE — which combines your files into a single dataset by simply dragging and dropping them in — means the data chase becomes a data check.
- Scoring and weighting set-up — 50% faster. From 1 h 30 min down to 45 min on average, with 40 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes saved. EKO™, our customisable ranking algorithm, carries the calculation mechanics while the team's judgement decides what to weight and why. Tellingly, the team went from roughly 6 scoring drivers per ranking to 10–15 — a capability they didn't have before.
- Verification and QC — 40% faster. From 1 h 15 min down to 45 min on average, with around 30 to 35 minutes saved per ranking. A structured, auditable calculation layer means checking the numbers stops being archaeology.
- Collaboration and fine-tuning — 33% faster. From 1 h 30 min down to 1 h on average, with up to 45 minutes saved on complex opportunities. The ranking lives on a shared platform rather than in one expert's spreadsheet, so the conversation moves to what to change, not which version is current.
- Deliverable production — around 70% faster. From 2 h down to 40 min on average, with 35 minutes to 2 hours 15 minutes saved — the largest saving of all. Presentation-ready visuals in the customer's own brand colours, and the output the team describes as richer than before, not thinner.
End to end, that's 8 hours 45 minutes down to 4 hours 10 minutes on average — with 3 hours 35 minutes to 6 hours 30 minutes saved per ranking across the complexity range.
"The platform's calculation of the country scoring is a significant time save… a smarter way of working on country ranking analysis."— Feasibility team, a global CRO
The underlying numbers — open to audit the figures
| Step | Manual (avg) | Geo Matrix (avg) | Saved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data gathering & entry | 2 h 30 min | 1 h | 1 h 30 min |
| Scoring & weighting set-up | 1 h 30 min | 45 min | 45 min |
| Verification / QC | 1 h 15 min | 45 min | 30 min |
| Collaboration & fine-tuning | 1 h 30 min | 1 h | 30 min |
| Deliverable production | 2 h | 40 min | 1 h 25 min |
| Total (end-to-end) | 8 h 45 min | 4 h 10 min | 4 h 40 min |
Each phase was measured independently as a minimum, maximum and average, so per-phase averages need not sum exactly to the end-to-end average.
Better, not just faster
If Geo Matrix simply made the old process quicker, that would be worth something. But the number I keep returning to is this: the team's confidence in their output rose from 3 out of 5 to 4 out of 5 — while scoring against roughly twice as many criteria, and producing deliverables they describe as richer than before, not thinner.
A country ranking isn't a document; it's a position you defend. In front of sponsors, leadership, governance boards — and months later, when someone asks why one country made the shortlist and another didn't. I have sat in those rooms reconstructing rationale from memory. An auditable ranking, traceable to every weighting and input behind it, changes what it feels like to answer.
What it adds up to
This team builds 10 to 20 rankings a month. At an average of 4 hours 40 minutes saved per ranking, that's comfortably more than a full working week returned to the team, every month — capacity that goes back into thinking, strategy, and the decisions themselves.
Country selection was never meant to be a data-entry exercise. It's a strategic judgement that got buried under one. What this study shows, in the plainest terms a stopwatch allows, is what happens when you take the burden away and leave the judgement where it belongs — with the team.
If your feasibility or study strategy team is still building rankings the way I used to — whether you sit in a CRO, a pharma company, or a biotech — I'd love to show you the difference side by side.
See your own country-ranking workflow side by side.
Book a demo now →Bhavish Lekh is the Co-founder and CEO of Aurora Analytica. Figures are drawn from a structured time-and-motion study completed by a global CRO, comparing their previous manual, spreadsheet-based workflow with Geo Matrix™ across five phases, from low- to high-complexity projects. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or reach out at bhav@aurora-analytica.com.