How Everest Clinical Research Uses ZenQMS for Smoother Client Audits and Stronger Training Compliance

Everest Clinical Research, a leading provider of clinical research services, faced a critical challenge as the company grew from 75 to over 700 employees over a 10-year period: maintaining consistent training compliance and audit readiness. As the organization expanded and acquired new companies, managing the increasing complexity of its quality management system became a key priority – particularly in proactively supporting training oversight.

To mitigate this risk, Everest implemented ZenQMS and utilized the training management module, transforming their training process.

The Challenge: Managing Training Compliance Across a Quickly Growing Organization

For years, Everest relied on a basic, manual training database that could only track data entry, but could not assign training or monitor compliance. This approach made it difficult to ensure training compliance. As the company continued to grow, the employee count increased, and so did the scope of services provided by Everest. It became increasingly difficult to oversee and maintain training compliance.

“We had a training database mainly for data entry. It was not able to manage the training or distribute it to employees.” – Sandra Dinescu, B.Sc., CCRP, CQA, Senior Director, Quality Assurance and Compliance

Without a scalable quality management system (QMS), Everest recognized the potential for gaps in training oversight—especially during client audits where robust documentation and visibility were essential.

Selecting ZenQMS: Training Management for Growing CROs

Everest evaluated multiple vendors to help manage training, documents, and audits, but ZenQMS stood out above the rest, most notably for its configurability, allowing Everest to tailor workflows and maintain existing processes without major disruption. Configurability is often the most important feature for life sciences contractors, and Everest found it critical to selecting the right system. The team also appreciated the validation support and responsiveness from ZenQMS during implementation.

“ZenQMS helped a lot because the requirements were mostly pre-established. We could just go through the list and ask, ‘Will it do this? Will it do that?” 

This simplified the validation process, helping Everest move quickly through implementation. The team took a phased approach, beginning with the training module, which allowed them to transition smoothly from their manual database. ZenQMS’s intuitive interface made it easy for staff to complete required training, while administrators and management gained real-time visibility into training compliance rates.

A Clear Impact: Improved Compliance and Greater Audit Confidence

The results were immediate. With ZenQMS in place, Everest significantly strengthened its training oversight and audit preparedness. Real-time visibility into training compliance empowered employees and managers alike to track progress and ensure that compliance was consistently achieved and maintained.

“ZenQMS gave us the tools to stay ahead of training requirements and approach audits with much greater confidence.”

ZenQMS also simplified the process of integrating new employees from acquired companies. The ability to import historical documents and previously completed training information allowed employees to complete new training assignments and gain efficiencies by leveraging historical training events. Even as the company grew rapidly over a short timeframe, Everest was able to maintain strong compliance, due to ZenQMS application scalability.

“It has been an easy system to learn and use. Compliance rates are good, and our staff easily adapted to it.”

Lessons for Other Contract Research Organizations

For other CROs, Everest’s journey offers a clear takeaway: scalable, user-friendly training management is a foundation for audit readiness. By choosing ZenQMS, Everest was able to turn a compliance challenge into a success story.

“I’m very happy to present how we use ZenQMS during client audits – it has given our clients greater confidence in our quality management infrastructure. It has been the right decision for us.”

ZenQMS not only helped maintain compliance, but it also empowered Everest to continue growing without compromising on quality.