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| 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 lifesciences industry can begin without considering the most pressing concernfacing executives today — the global economic downturn. Even in an economicboom, the life sciences industry brings delayed gratification with millions ofdollars and years of time invested prior to a product’s approval. Marketed productshave seen declines in sales due to consumer cutbacks as well as generics competitionmaking existing products less profitable. Recently, it has become commonplacetohear news of another merger and acquisition which brings new content managementand collaboration challenges to the combined business entity. These economicrealities are driving cost saving decisions everywhere across the lifesciencesenterprise — and technology investments are no exception. While the life sciencesindustry is no stranger to cost pressures and other challenges — shrinking pipelines,intense competition, regulatory concerns — the dire nature of today’s economymeans any technological investment must bring a significant and rapid returnin cost savings. We believe ECM will continue to be a priority for an industry ladenwith information and data.
The right strategy is paramount — pragmatism is back
We believe that ECM will remain a priority for most life sciences companies.Strategic consolidation of ECM programs is a way for companies to both unlockvalue from their data stores and cut costs. Each organization has unique document,content and collaboration challenges and many life sciences companies recognizethe value of a solid strategy to address ECM issues across a myriad of functionsand diverse employees. However, creating a doable strategy that truly reflectsyour company’s needs is another story. Too often companies get distracted fromtheir goals by all the noise in the market about the next best thing in technology.But what is essential in this (and any) economic climate is that buying what youneed is more valuable than buying what you want. It’s that simple. There are a lotof business trends out there, but in life sciences, companies are highly regulatedand need standardization, control and oversight — and of course, innovation. Apragmatic ECM strategy that reduces business process complexity and proveslong-term value to all stakeholders is essential.
CIO, regulatory and business concerns — we’re all in this together
CIOs and their teams have always had the challenge of aligning business andtechnology priorities. Our experience shows that the most successful IT organizationsare ones that have established a tight partnership with business units and recognizethat IT is truly part of the business strategy. And those that work closely in selectingand implementing technology products maintain that success. This partnershipbecomes even more critical as the business focus is more vertical — such as thatof regulatory and clinical ECM areas.
A pragmatic ECM strategy thatreduces business processcomplexity and proves long-term value to all stakeholdersis essential.
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Authors: Jeff Klein, Tom Beatty and Stacey Levas
LIFE SCIENCES
INSIGHTS
 
CIOs and business owners have similar ECM concerns. They need the technologyto champion business processes, minimize risk of non-compliance and — this isthe take-home — to accommodate various levels of user proficiency. The latter isoften overlooked or worse, dealt with by creating elaborate and costly trainingprograms. In any ECM strategy and implementation — one size doesn’t fit all. Aplatform that enables a utilitarian approach to the use of ECM is the most successful.With the pressure to do more with less extending across the globe, to new businessacquisitions and remote or mobile employees, collaboration technology is, andwill continue to be, a top priority in ECM.ECM is not just a platform and a technology, it’s an enterprise philosophy. Anorganization that bands together and institutionalizes ECM best practices acrossvarious business functions (even IT!) and user proficiency will attain or sustainmarket leadership and deliver great ROI to all investors.
Key ECM areas
To set ECM priorities across the life sciences enterprise, there are many points toconsider, like company size, number of products, current investments and evencompany culture. In general, the degree of success achieved in developing an ECMstrategy will be determined by addressing as many needs as possible across thebusiness. The prime strategic role of ECM is to support collaboration and effectivesharing of information assets across various related business functions. Thefollowing is a list of ECM strategic areas:1.Team collaboration2.Corporate (internal) portal3.Document and record management4.Business partner (external) portal5.Search6.Workflow7.Regulatory compliance8.Effective integration with ECM interfacing business applications
From ECM to ECCM (Enterprise Content and CollaborationManagement)
To date, ECM tools have delivered great value to life sciences firms. The commondenominator across ECM areas is the ultimate exchange of some form ofdocumentation, be it internal or external. It’s the engine for the staged assemblyof reporting and submissions packages and gives heavily-regulated units a wayto store, secure and repurpose their critical documents.While ECM systems have served the document management needs of the regulatedparts of the life sciences market well, customers have long been calling forimprovement in collaboration tools, and the ability to mine data across structuredand unstructured data stores. In highly-regulated industries like life sciences,many companies are prudently looking at options or are at the “early adopter”phase of deploying collaboration tools. Concerns are mainly around the need forsecurity and, of course, minimizing the risk of non-compliance. Other, less-regulatedindustries are predictably further down the path toward full integration andenterprise-wide deployment.For life sciences companies, collaboration is no longer an optional part of ECM.The next generation of ECM tools will bring a convergence of document managementand new collaboration tools, and offer improved ways to unlock value across datatypes using powerful and widely-available enabling technology.
True ECM capability in the collaboration space
ECCM will deliver “submission quality” document management tools withcollaboration as a primary driver — rather than as an afterthought. Because ECMcollaboration tools in the past have been suboptimal or inconvenient, users tendto prefer collaborating outside the ECM system — though still using its rich documentmanagement feature set.
| The Future of Enterprise Content Management |
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ECM is not just a platform anda technology, it’s an enterprisephilosophy.
 
Legacy ECM systems used proprietary front-end interfaces that made it challengingfor the average — or occasional — user to reach proficiency. This challenge tendsto segment ECM system users into two distinct groups: a small cadre of powerusers who handle most of the authoring, tagging and integration of documents,and a larger base of occasional users who create content but have limitedexperience with ECM tools for making content sharable.Next generation ECCM systems will promote sharable content creation andcollaboration across the entire user base in two key ways:Driving to the desk
 
top— 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 contentPor
 
tal powered collaboration— ECCM uses another tool familiar to users: browser-based portals as a path to virtual work spaces that combine robust documentmanagement capabilities, deep collaborative tools and rules-driven security.Using MS Office 2007, forms can also be authored with full XML capability andmanaged using Microsoft’s InfoPath Form Services. This capability is valuablebecause forms can contain both data and documents, and are often linked togethervia approval forms which can be queried quickly when required for regulatory orbusiness needs.Fortunately for life sciences companies, Microsoft's desktop authoring andcollaboration tools can be enabled to integrate well with Documentum products,leveraging existing and possible future investments. This takes the robust andestablished Documentum core and enhances it for a broader set of users withfamiliar and powerful authoring and collaboration tools.A word about Wikis. Wikis are great as a glossary type information repositoryand 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/documentmanagement functionality so critical to life sciences companies. A wiki makes asensible, informational add-on to an ECCM system, but on its own does not providea comprehensive collaboration or ECM solution.
Unlocking value across data types
ECM Systems have historically looked at documents as “unstructured content” ascompared to “structured content” from which organized data can be queried orreported. Though in the same system, structured and unstructured data usuallyreside 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 nextgeneration ECCM tools to create searchable links between stores of structuredand unstructured content:Regulatory/Safety Requirements— Companies need a way to rapidly query largevolumes of both structured and unstructured data to answer demands of regulatoryagencies 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 andaffects documentation of country-registered products.Business— Next Generation ECCM tools will unlock value by bringing togetherunstructured and structured content. For example, a life sciences company willbe able to find creative ways to shorten cycles which include author-review-approveand then updates that initiate the process over again. These departmental levelimprovements enabled through enterprise class ECCM tools and desktopapplications will roll up to equal business value and shorten cycle times beyondthat currently being achieved by ECM tools.
| The Future of Enterprise Content Management |
 
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Next generation ECCM systemswill promote sharable contentcreation and collaborationacross the entire user basefrom super to casual users.
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