The Future of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) in Life Sciences

8/14/2019 The Future of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) in Life Sciences

1/4| The Future of Enterprise Content Management |

The Future of Enterprise Content Management

(ECM) in Life Sciences

Current business environment

No macro assessment of the future of enterprise content management in the lif

sciences industry can begin without considering the most pressing concer

facing executives today the global economic downturn. Even in an econom

boom, the life sciences industry brings delayed gratification with millions

dollars and years of time invested prior to a products approval. Marketed produc

have seen declines in sales due to consumer cutbacks as well as generics competitio

making existing products less profitable. Recently, it has become commonplace

hear news of another merger and acquisition which brings new content managemen

and collaboration challenges to the combined business entity. These econom

realities are driving cost saving decisions everywhere across the life scienc

enterprise and technology investments are no exception. While the life science

industry is no stranger to cost pressures and other challenges shrinking pipeline

intense competition, regulatory concerns the dire nature of todays econom

means any technological investment must bring a significant and rapid retur

in cost savings. We believe ECM will continue to be a priority for an industry lade

with information and data.

The right strategy is paramount pragmatism is backWe believe that ECM will remain a priority for most life sciences companie

Strategic consolidation of ECM programs is a way for companies to both unloc

value from their data stores and cut costs. Each organization has unique document

content and collaboration challenges and many life sciences companies recogniz

the value of a solid strategy to address ECM issues across a myriad of functions

and diverse employees. However, creating a doable strategy that truly reflect

your companys needs is another story. Too often companies get distracted from

their goals by all the noise in the market about the next best thing in technolog

But what is essential in this (and any) economic climate is that buying what yo

need is more valuable than buying what you want. Its that simple. There are a l

of business trends out there, but in life sciences, companies are highly regulate

and need standardization, control and oversight and of course, innovation. A

pragmatic ECM strategy that reduces business process complexity and proves

long-term value to all stakeholders is essential.

CIO, regulatory and business concerns were all in this togetheCIOs and their teams have always had the challenge of aligning business an

technology priorities. Our experience shows that the most successful IT organization

are ones that have established a tight partnership with business units and recogniz

that IT is truly part of the business strategy. And those that work closely in selectin

and implementing technology products maintain that success. This partnersh

becomes even more critical as the business focus is more vertical such as tha

of regulatory and clinical ECM areas.

A pragmatic ECM strategy that

reduces business process

complexity and proves long-

term value to all stakeholders

is essential.

Authors: Jeff Klein, Tom Beatty and Stacey Levas

LIFE SCIENCES

INSIGHTS


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CIOs and business owners have similar ECM concerns. They need the technolog

to champion business processes, minimize risk of non-compliance and this

the take-home to accommodate various levels of user proficiency. The latter

often overlooked or worse, dealt with by creating elaborate and costly trainin

programs. In any ECM strategy and implementation one size doesnt fit all.

platform that enables a utilitarian approach to the use of ECM is the most successf

With the pressure to do more with less extending across the globe, to new busine

acquisitions and remote or mobile employees, collaboration technology is, an

will continue to be, a top priority in ECM.

ECM is not just a platform and a technology, its an enterprise philosophy. A

organization that bands together and institutionalizes ECM best practices acros

various business functions (even IT!) and user proficiency will attain or sustain

market leadership and deliver great ROI to all investors.

Key ECM areasTo set ECM priorities across the life sciences enterprise, there are many points t

consider, like company size, number of products, current investments and eve

company culture. In general, the degree of success achieved in developing an ECM

strategy will be determined by addressing as many needs as possible across the

business. The prime strategic role of ECM is to support collaboration and effectiv

sharing of information assets across various related business functions. The

following is a list of ECM strategic areas:

1. Team collaboration2. Corporate (internal) portal

3. Document and record management

4. Business partner (external) portal

5. Search

6. Workflow

7. Regulatory compliance

8. Effective integration with ECM interfacing business applications

From ECM to ECCM (Enterprise Content and Collaboration

Management)

To date, ECM tools have delivered great value to life sciences firms. The commodenominator across ECM areas is the ultimate exchange of some form of

documentation, be it internal or external. Its the engine for the staged assembl

of reporting and submissions packages and gives heavily-regulated units a w

to store, secure and repurpose their critical documents.

While ECM systems have served the document management needs of the regulate

parts of the life sciences market well, customers have long been calling fo

improvement in collaboration tools, and the ability to mine data across structure

and unstructured data stores. In highly-regulated industries like life sciences

many companies are prudently looking at options or are at the early adopte

phase of deploying collaboration tools. Concerns are mainly around the need fo

security and, of course, minimizing the risk of non-compliance. Other, less-regulate

industries are predictably further down the path toward full integration an

enterprise-wide deployment.

For life sciences companies, collaboration is no longer an optional part of EC

The next generation of ECM tools will bring a convergence of document manageme

and new collaboration tools, and offer improved ways to unlock value across dat

types using powerful and widely-available enabling technology.

True ECM capability in the collaboration spaceECCM will deliver submission quality document management tools with

collaboration as a primary driver rather than as an afterthought. Because EC

collaboration tools in the past have been suboptimal or inconvenient, users tend

to prefer collaborating outside the ECM system though still using its rich documen

management feature set.

| The Future of Enterprise Content Management |2

ECM is not just a platform and

a technology, its an enterprise

philosophy.


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Legacy ECM systems used proprietary front-end interfaces that made it challenging

for the average or occasional user to reach proficiency. This challenge tends

to segment ECM system users into two distinct groups: a small cadre of power

users who handle most of the authoring, tagging and integration of documents,

and a larger base of occasional users who create content but have limited

experience with ECM tools for making content sharable.

Next generation ECCM systems will promote sharable content creation and

collaboration across the entire user base in two key ways:

Driving to the desktop ECCM employs familiar tools such as MS Office (2007),

rather than a proprietary front end as in the past. This will simplify the end userexperience, minimize training and allow all users to create collaboration-ready content

Portal powered collaboration ECCM uses another tool familiar to users: browser-

based portals as a path to virtual work spaces that combine robust document

management capabilities, deep collaborative tools and rules-driven security.

Using MS Office 2007, forms can also be authored with full XML capability and

managed using Microsofts InfoPath Form Services. This capability is valuable

because forms can contain both data and documents, and are often linked together

via approval forms which can be queried quickly when required for regulatory or

business needs.

Fortunately for life sciences companies, Microsoft's desktop authoring and

collaboration tools can be enabled to integrate well with Documentum products,

leveraging existing and possible future investments. This takes the robust and

established Documentum core and enhances it for a broader set of users with

familiar and powerful authoring and collaboration tools.

A word about Wikis. Wikis are great as a glossary type information repository

and as a way to post helpful guidance documents for a specific user community.

They are excellent tactical tools, but are not designed with the asset/document

management functionality so critical to life sciences companies. A wiki makes a

sensible, informational add-on to an ECCM system, but on its own does not provide

a comprehensive collaboration or ECM solution.

Unlocking value across data typesECM Systems have historically looked at documents as unstructured content as

compared to structured content from which organized data can be queried orreported. Though in the same system, structured and unstructured data usually

reside in segregated silos and are accessed using separate business processes.

Value that may exist in mining connections between these two types of data has,

to date, remained largely inaccessible.

For life sciences companies, there are two compelling reasons to use next

generation ECCM tools to create searchable links between stores of structured

and unstructured content:

Regulatory/Safety Requirements Companies need a way to rapidly query large

volumes of both structured and unstructured data to answer demands of regulatory

agencies and to understand the interrelated impact of changes to data and content.

For example, the challenges of safety data analysis that links to label updates and

affects documentation of country-registered products.

Business Next Generation ECCM tools will unlock value by bringing together

unstructured and structured content. For example, a life sciences company will

be able to find creative ways to shorten cycles which include author-review-approve

and then updates that initiate the process over again. These departmental level

improvements enabled through enterprise class ECCM tools and desktop

applications will roll up to equal business value and shorten cycle times beyond

that currently being achieved by ECM tools.

| The Future of Enterprise Content Management |

Next generation ECCM system

will promote sharable conten

creation and collaboration

across the entire user base

from super to casual users.


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ECCM to link structured and unstructured dataAt present, text search, recognition and mining tools are used to analyze unstructured

data, while business intelligence tools are used to analyze structured content

Because different tools are used for each, linking structured data and unstructure

content requires a strategy to address the unique nature of each:

Content Management Embraces Structured Data Business users understand

the intuitive relationships between their data and documents. These relationship

can be exposed through a common user experience which combines XML-enable

intelligent content and links to structured data sources. In addition, offering th

ability to mine deeper value of the metadata and its relationship to the documen

content itself.

Value from Metadata Documents are typically indexed and this metadata

used to assist in the management of the document. However, this metadata ca

now be made available within the document content itself. This opens up significan

opportunities for improvement in the business value of content managemen

solutions, including in regulated areas such as clinical and quality documents

but also in non-regulated areas such as pricing and contracts.

XML will be a key enabling technology for collaboration in life sciences companies

because of the frequent need to break content into discreet pieces for re-us

and translation for many different markets and localities where a product is sold

and the need to propagate changes quickly across documents. While outputs t

XML standards are expected by regulatory bodies and are currently being deliverethe real business value of XML will come from placing these tools in the hands

the end users who will use them to effectively and rapidly use information in ne

and innovative ways.

Convergence the path forward to ECCMIn summary, ECCM systems will bring the life sciences industry convergence of robu

regulated content management, true collaborative tools, and framework to more

rapidly unlock value by mining and connecting structured and unstructured content

Across the enterprise, ECCM systems with appropriate security rules w

open new channels for broader collaboration and will include non-regulated

functional areas, which have historically avoided full ECM systems as well a

external partners.

ECCM convergence offers global life sciences organizations:

Portals that provide a personalized user experience

Rich collaboration capabilities that users have rapidly embraced

The use of Office 2007 and its familiar interface and XML authoring

capabilities

Access to the benefits of proven enterprise content management tools

All delivered to and from end users desktops

To learn more about how your business can plan, develop and implement an

industry leading ECCM vision please contact us at 866.287.3792 or email

[email protected]

About the AuthorsJeff Klein is a Partner with CSC and serves as the Global Head of Product Marketin

Sales and Development in CSCs Healthcare Sector. Tom Beatty is a Principa

with the Emerging Practices group at CSC, and focuses on Life Sciences. Stacey

Levas is a Marketing Manager with CSCs Life Sciences group.

| The Future of Enterprise Content Management |4

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