The next-gen software strategy essential to life sciences transformation

PoV Paper

2

Life sciences companies face a battery of obstacles, with today’s increasingly complex and stringent regulatory environment perhaps leading the list. Organizations must contend with changing business models, endless demands for new products and a need to get products to market faster. Constrained costs and pricing, market consolidation, and increased calls for collaboration, both within and beyond the organization, add to the struggle.

To succeed, life sciences companies must embrace next-generation software that sets the stage for transformation and digitizes the full value chain. That software strategy should be organized around six critical themes:

• Collaboration

• Mobility

• Interoperability

• Intelligent automation

• Analytics

• Value as a service

This approach must envelop the enterprise, covering all facets of operations, from R&D, clinical, manufacturing, sales and marketing to post-market surveillance. And, it must be rooted in meeting the needs of end users, partners and customers, all of whom are now tech savvy and accustomed to easy-to-use, personalized formats that are available anytime, anywhere.

Collaboration

Collaboration has become a cornerstone of business in the life sciences industry. This is especially true among pharmaceutical companies that increasingly work together on drug discovery, R&D and even clinical trials. By sharing resources and expertise through partnerships and cloud-enabled exchanges, including academia and third-party research organizations, companies can move products to market faster.

To enable collaboration, life sciences companies need platforms that are secure but not excessively restrictive. Employees across the enterprise, contractors, partners and other outside parties often need access to the same data and applications — and technology should support this shared access.

Collaboration can also be used to support and streamline global compliance initiatives. FirstDoc®, for example, part of a DXC Technology suite of next-gen software, manages documents and processes in a way that promotes collaboration, efficiency and productivity.

There isn’t a single industry unaffected by the digital revolution, life sciences included. The challenge now is turning disruption into opportunity.

PoV Paper

3

PoV Paper

Mobility

Mobile technology might just be the pièce de résistance of the digital revolution. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, mobile apps and online portals enable more immediate communication, which in turn can improve and streamline processes.

In a CIOReview blog post, AmerisourceBergen’s Mike Baca, director of digital transformation and mobility, writes about how mobility can eliminate friction in business processes by enabling smart, connected enterprises. In life sciences, documentation can be reviewed, approved and shared more quickly via secure mobile platforms, speeding up critical regulatory qualification processes.

Mobility isn’t just about what’s in the hands of life sciences employees, partners and the research community. Mobile apps enable pharma companies to communicate with customers. Biosensors and tracking devices are now being embedded in implants to monitor vital signs, collect data and act on issues in real time. Potential applications of this nature, driven by mobility, will expand exponentially with the internet of things.

Interoperability

Mobile communications and collaboration won’t happen if systems are based on proprietary, closed technologies. Regulatory documentation and approval processes, for example, need to touch multiple systems, so interoperability is crucial. Next-generation software flourishes when combined with open gateways and application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable best-of-breed IT operations.

Intelligent automation

In the digital economy, automation is essential to efficiency. When the right processes and actions take place without employee initiation, enterprises can operate more efficiently and even drive more value from data. Workers, meanwhile, can sidestep time-consuming manual processes and focus on higher-value activities to grow the business. Intelligent automation can be as complex as robots programmed with artificial intelligence or as ubiquitous as the voice-enabled search functions many of us use in our consumer lives.

Analytics

Today, many life sciences organizations have data housed in a variety of systems and in a variety of formats. To use that data to make business decisions, companies must first aggregate and normalize it, and then analyze it holistically. This advanced analytics approach helps life sciences companies derive more value from their growing stores of data and even improve operations. For example, if a company discovers problems with a specific ingredient, it can evaluate the risk posed to the entire product pipeline.

PoV Paper

Value as a service

Life sciences companies are beginning to migrate to the cloud, which can help accelerate innovation, improve operational and cost efficiencies, and empower collaboration. Cloud can also deliver the high performance, scalability and agility that life sciences companies need to navigate the ever-changing, increasingly restrictive regulatory environment.

Using a cloud that is fully owned and maintained by a service provider alleviates much of the operational burden. But choosing the right software-as-a-service provider is critical. Providers should fully understand cloud technology (including private and public clouds), be well versed in life sciences and demonstrate their long game. That’s the best guarantee for success.

In summary, to take advantage of the digital transformation, life sciences companies need a comprehensive strategy that leverages next-generation software. The strategy should include easy-to-use collaboration tools that put users at the center of the experience; mobility for anytime, anywhere access; interoperability; intelligent automation; analytics; and cloud-driven value as a service.

Only then can organizations drive value beyond compliance to boost productivity, shorten time to market and truly excel.

Author: Sharad Khusal is global head of life sciences pre-sales software and solutions at DXC.

www.dxc.technology

About DXC Technology

DXC Technology (DXC: NYSE) is the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, helping clients harness the power of innovation to thrive on change. Created by the merger of CSC and the Enterprise Services business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, DXC Technology serves nearly 6,000 private and public sector clients across 70 countries. The company’s technology independence, global talent and extensive partner network combine to deliver powerful next-generation IT services and solutions. DXC Technology is recognized among the best corporate citizens globally. For more information, visit www.dxc.technology.

© 2017 DXC Technology Company. All rights reserved. MD_6385b-18. July 2017

Learn more at www.dxc.technology/life_sciences