CytomX Therapeutics is a clinical-stage, oncology focused biopharmaceutical company with a vision of transforming lives with safer, more effective therapies. It is developing a novel class of investigational conditionally activated therapeutics, based on its Probody® technology platform, for the treatment of cancer.
Matt Paulson is the Development Chief of Staff for the company, responsible for executive support. At the time Matt came onboard CytomX, the company’s four internal executive assistants were supporting 20 executives, which was becoming unsustainable.
"Our internal executive assistants were overwhelmed. Things were slipping through the cracks. We engaged Prialto to take on scheduling, travel, and expense management.”
The CytomX executive team was growing faster than the admin team could keep up. Recruiting, hiring, training, and managing new admins, with one admin assigned to three to five executives, was time consuming and would require additional HR and management resources.
The company was drawn to Prialto’s managed service model, where Prialto hires, trains and manages virtual assistants—CytomX executives just tells Prialto’s Engagement Managers what they need, and Prialto Productivity Assistants (PAs) get it done.
“The managed service is seamless,” Matt said. “The Prialto assistants, their managers and backup assistants work together in the background to get things done. I don’t have to worry about who is doing it, I just know they will handle it.”
Prialto supports 11 CytomX executives, scheduling meetings and managing tasks like travel and expenses, and giving CytomX execs and admins more than 600 hours per month they can use for more strategic work.
“Personally, I love the service,” Matt said. “Any tasks I ask for are done by the end of the day.”
“Prialto is a no brainer,” he said. “You get a super responsive service you can trust, without any added personnel."
“It was taking too long to schedule investor meetings,” Matt said. “These meetings are critical when you’re sharing our message or raising funds. Getting multiple stakeholders together was slowing us down. Our Prialto Productivity Assistants just took it on and ran with it.”
“Travel and expense reports was eating up a lot of CytomX executive’s time. “Now, all our executives have to do is say, ‘I need this,’ and it happens,” Matt said. “Even though the PAs are remote, they feel present.”
Before getting started, Prialto and CytomX had to work through some thorny IT issues. “For a biotechnology company to allow outsiders to access systems is complicated,” Matt said. “There are a lot of security and compliance issues and Prialto worked through them with us and we worked together to take care of everything."
"Prialto’s service has been a game changer,” Matt said. The PAs have alleviated the workload of our internal executive assistants and accelerated operations. “Our CFO was so happy he wanted all of the executives in his group to have a Prialto assistant."