TrialSupply vs. Excel for clinical trial supply planning
Most clinical supply teams plan in Excel, and for good reason: it is flexible, familiar, and free. TrialSupply exists because at some point — usually a few trials in — the monthly planning process outgrows what a spreadsheet can safely do. This page lays out where each approach genuinely wins.
What Excel is (in this context)
Excel is where most clinical demand forecasts and supply plans live today: workbooks that model enrollment curves, convert patients to kits, and track depot inventory, maintained by one or two planners and emailed or shared around the team each planning cycle. It can model anything, which is exactly its strength and its risk.
What TrialSupply is
TrialSupply is clinical trial demand forecasting and supply planning software, built to support the monthly Clinical Demand & Operations Planning (CD&OP) process at pharmaceutical and biotech companies. It keeps the spreadsheet-style interface planners are used to, but puts the forecast logic, supply calculations, and planning history in structured, shared software instead of a workbook.
Where Excel wins
- One small, simple trial with a single planner — a well-built workbook may be all you need.
- Zero incremental cost and no procurement process.
- Total modeling freedom: any bespoke calculation, any layout, no waiting on a vendor.
- Everyone already knows how to use it.
Where TrialSupply wins
- Forecast logic is structured, not formulas: enrollment, treatment arms, and dosing schedules are first-class inputs, and the demand forecast recalculates automatically when they change — no broken cell references, no stale tabs.
- One shared source of truth: clinical and supply teams work in the same live plan instead of emailing workbook versions.
- Forecast accuracy is measurable: every forecast is snapshotted, so you can compare forecast vs. actual enrollment over time — something almost no workbook process preserves.
- Supply planning is connected to the forecast: depot-level demand aggregation, buffer stock, and months-of-supply calculations update from the same numbers, in planning books rather than parallel spreadsheets.
- Multi-trial portfolios: each new trial in Excel is another workbook to maintain; in TrialSupply it is another protocol in the same system with centralized reporting.
Side-by-side
| Dimension | Excel | TrialSupply |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Effectively free | Paid software |
| Setup | None — start typing | Structured setup of protocols, arms, and supply network |
| Forecast recalculation | Manual; depends on formula hygiene | Automatic when inputs change |
| Version control | File copies and email threads | One live plan with forecast snapshots |
| Forecast accuracy tracking | Rarely preserved | Built in (forecast vs. actual enrollment) |
| Depot-level demand | Hand-built aggregation formulas | Aggregated automatically from the supply network |
| Multi-trial visibility | One workbook per trial | Portfolio in one system |
| Key-person risk | High — the workbook author | Lower — logic lives in the product |
| Modeling flexibility | Unlimited | Structured around the CD&OP process |
The bottom line
If you are running one small trial with one planner, keep the workbook. If you are running several trials, re-forecasting monthly, and making production and depot decisions from numbers that live in emailed spreadsheets, the workbook is the risk — and that is the process TrialSupply was purpose-built to replace.
FAQ
Do we have to abandon our existing Excel models to use TrialSupply?
No. Teams typically bring the assumptions from their existing workbooks — enrollment curves, dosing schedules, buffer policies — into TrialSupply as structured inputs. The spreadsheet-style interface is designed to feel familiar to planners moving from Excel.
Is TrialSupply an IRT?
No. IRT/RTSM systems randomize patients and execute site-level resupply during a trial. TrialSupply covers the planning layer — demand forecasting and supply planning on a monthly CD&OP cadence — and works alongside your IRT.
What does the spreadsheet-style interface mean in practice?
Forecasts and planning books are laid out as monthly grids that planners can read and edit the way they would a workbook — but the calculations behind the cells are structured product logic, so a changed assumption flows through the whole plan automatically.