N.C. Data Analysis Firm to Open West Coast Office

Atlantic Search Group Inc., a North Carolina-based data analysis consulting firm, is set to open an office in Thousand Oaks on Thursday in an effort to build its customer base within the Southern California biotech community.

ASG, founded in 1986, specializes in data analysis and management for pharmaceutical firms in 18 states. It has offices in Connecticut and Illinois in addition to its headquarters in Cary, N.C. The Thousand Oaks office is the first in California for the privately held company.

“We wanted a West Coast presence and we wanted to be in the southern section of the state,” said Jim Baker, owner and president of ASG. “Based on the other companies we can [potentially] work with in the L.A. area . . . we could service those companies better from Ventura County than from our Chicago or North Carolina offices. With anything that we do, if we have a local presence, it’s going to help.”

ASG hires consultants and contracts them out to its clients. Baker said pharmaceutical companies usually contact ASG during patient trial phases of clinical studies on biomedical products.

“We’ll get case reports with everything in paper form,” he said. “We enter it into the system, clean it, validate it and sometimes analyze if for them.”

Mike Enright, chief financial officer for ASG, said the company has been working with Amgen, the Thousand Oaks biotech company, for about 1 1/2 years. He said the decision to open an office in eastern Ventura County was based largely upon the firm’s working relationship with Amgen.

“Right now our West Coast revenue base is Amgen,” he said. “It wasn’t as specific as going out just for Amgen, but if they weren’t here or said not to bother, we probably wouldn’t have come out here.”

Amgen officials confirmed that the company does work with ASG consultants but declined further comment.