Beyond Campus: Making Your Core Services Accessible to Biotech Partners

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Academic core facilities have traditionally focused on supporting internal research groups, but that model is starting to shift. As funding becomes more competitive and internal demand fluctuates, many cores are exploring how to extend their services beyond campus in order to keep operations sustainable and instruments running at capacity. 

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Biotech companies represent a promising opportunity for this kind of growth. These groups often need the same high-quality services that cores already offer, but they work on faster timelines and expect a more streamlined experience from submission to payment. Meeting those expectations doesn’t require a full marketing strategy. In many cases, it simply involves making your services easier to find, easier to understand, and easier to access. Despite this potential, recent survey data suggests that external corporate partners account for less than 5% of revenue at many academic cores (Core Facility Market Analysis, 2019).

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In this post, we’ll walk through a few practical steps that can help academic cores connect with biotech clients more effectively, with a focus on improving visibility, reducing friction in the ordering process, and making small adjustments that can have a big impact. 

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Understand What External Clients Prioritize

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Academic cores are built to support discovery and collaboration, but biotech companies often approach services with a different mindset. Their work is typically tied to product development timelines, investor milestones, or customer deliverables. This means expectations around speed, clarity, and reliability are often higher and less flexible.

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To make your core more accessible to biotech users, it helps to focus on three areas:

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Clear turnaround times. Even if your lab can't promise next-day results, setting accurate expectations builds trust. Publishing a typical processing window or response time can help biotech teams plan around your availability.

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Frictionless ordering. For new users, the biggest hurdles are often administrative: unclear forms, missing instructions, or confusing payment processes. These can be dealbreakers if someone is trying to move quickly.

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Consistent, high-quality results. Biotech clients may only work with your core once, or may be evaluating multiple vendors in parallel. Delivering clean, well-documented results the first time is key to earning repeat business.

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Remove Friction from Submission and Payment

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For many biotech clients, the biggest barrier to working with an academic core isn’t scientific capability. It’s everything around the service. If the ordering process feels manual, confusing, or slow, it’s easier to walk away than to wait for clarification.

Start by reviewing the ordering process from an external user’s perspective. Are submission forms easy to find? Are sample requirements clearly explained? Can users pay with a credit card or upload a PO without needing to email a separate contact?

Improving just one of these steps can have an outsized impact on whether someone new decides to place an order.

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📎 Cores using GRAVL can configure clear intake forms and enable Stripe payments for external users, making the process more approachable for biotech clients who are unfamiliar withuniversity systems.

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Make Your Services Easier to Find and Access

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Even when a core is fully capable of supporting industry work, that value can go unnoticed if people outside the institution don’t know it exists. Visibility is often the missing piece, especially when many cores still rely on word of mouth or internal directories to share updates.

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Start with your local network. If your region has a biohub, life science incubator, or university-affiliated startup program, consider adding your services to their shared resource lists. These directories are often the first place early-stage companies look when they need technical support or outsourced assays.

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It’s also important to support remote users. Offering clear shipping instructions and being upfront about what is or isn’t accepted from external clients helps reduce hesitation. Biotech teams don’t always need to be nearby, but they do need to feel confident that the logistics won’t slow them down.

📎 GRAVL allows cores to configure shipping instructions directly in the service setup, so non-local users know exactly how to send samples or materials.

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✅ Tip
Ask your existing external clients how they found you, and what nearly stopped them from moving forward. Their answers can help shape your next update or outreach effort.

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Final Thoughts

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Biotech clients often need the same types of services that academic cores already offer, but they approach those services with different expectations. Their timelines tend to be tighter, their processes more streamlined, and their comfort with academic bureaucracy much lower. For cores that are looking to expand their reach, meeting those expectations does not require a complete shift in focus, it just requires a few thoughtful changes.

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Improving visibility through local directories, offering clear submission guidance, and providing flexible payment options are small adjustments that can make a core feel much more approachable to external users. These improvements don’t just help with industry outreach; they also tend to benefit internal users by reducing confusion, delays, and administrative overhead.

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At a time when many cores are navigating tighter research budgets and shifting demand, expanding your user base beyond campus can be a practical and sustainable way to stay busy and relevant. By making it easier for biotech teams to find you, work with you, and come back again, you open the door to new external collaborations without needing to invest in a large marketing effort.