Alyssa Biller is a Senior Solutions Consultant at Cytel and currently plays a primary role in onboarding customers for Cytel’s patent-pending, collaborative, decision-support platform, SolaraTM that offers innovative opportunities to shorten trial duration, increase power and reduce cost.
In this interview, we talk to Alyssa about starting her career as a statistician and then joining Cytel where she took on the important responsibility of training and supporting the software clients.
Can you give us some background about your career and how you became associated with Cytel?
I joined Cytel in October of 2019. Prior to joining Cytel, I worked at Takeda in the health economics outcomes research group. Up until I joined Cytel, my role was more of a traditional statistician working in late phase research for a few different pharmaceutical companies. It was after joining Cytel that for the first time I chose a career that applied traditional statistics skills that I had developed in the past to software and involved conducting trainings for our clients. It was an exciting opportunity for me to be a part of Cytel and to be able to apply my skills to something unique and challenging.
What is your role at Cytel?
I am a Senior Solutions Consultant and a part of the newly created Customer Success Team at Cytel. We are a part of the software division, and I play the role of a subject matter expert on our software offerings. I have spent much of my time at Cytel working on East®, and currently I am focused on Solara, our brand-new software platform.
My job is to provide training and support to our clients. As a Customer Success Manager, I support our new clients who are being onboarded to Solara.
What functions do you collaborate closely with?
I work closely with the software developers and others in the product development team. As a subject matter expert, I work with our training manager to develop materials for client trainings and support the Sales and Marketing team with technical questions. I also collaborate with the Strategic Consulting team at Cytel and seek their advice on more complex statistical questions.
You have been playing a crucial role in the launch of Cytel’s new software Solara. Can you share your experience of working on this project? What benefits do you see Solara bringing to our clients?
It has been a very exciting experience to be a part of the development and launch of our revolutionary new software product. I got to work very closely with the product manager and developers for Solara. The process of learning about Solara, so I can be prepared and informed to give in-depth trainings to our new and prospective clients, has been very enriching.
One of the primary benefits of Solara is that it provides a collaboration tool for our clients. It is the only software I know that allows a statistician to still be the driver when it comes to clinical trial design, and eases communication with other functions that are part of the same clinical study team. I think that is of huge value to our clients. Solara can expedite the clinical trial design process and provides opportunities to shorten trial duration and save cost. It is an incredibly powerful tool that can rapidly generate millions of combinations of design options and clinical scenarios from the relevant space identified by the development team.
What most inspires you about working within this field?
My clients. I love interacting with our clients and my best days are the ones when I meet with a client who has a lot of questions on our products or needs my help to tackle any challenge they are facing. Working with the clients to show them how our software can help them is very rewarding and it is what I look forward to the most.
What are your main interests outside of work?
I spend a lot of time with my dog, Tillie. She just turned two and I love taking her on walks. When the weather is nicer out, we go on runs together and honestly, it is one of my favorite things to do. It is so much fun to go outside and get some fresh air and some nice exercise with her. And then we both come home, totally exhausted!
Thank you for taking the time to talk to us and sharing your journey.
Click the button to learn about Cytel’s Solara.
About the interviewer:
Mansha Sachdev specializes in content creation and knowledge management. She holds an MBA degree and has over 11 years of experience in handling various facets of marketing, across industries. At Cytel, Mansha is a Content Marketing Manager and is responsible for producing informative content that is related to the pharmaceutical and medical devices industries.
