eRoom for collaboration

A pharmaceutical company's pipeline is linked to its collaborative partners. But in this important area the tools used to support these interactions usually lack depth and sophistication, says Dr Michael Artinger

At any given time, hundreds of thousands of potential pharmaceutical products are working their way through the design and delivery process, supported by multi-disciplinary teams of scientists, administrators, managers and lab personnel. By leveraging the capabilities of a digital workplace, individuals can use the internet to work closely with people across the enterprise and collaborate with key members of their external network in this demanding work environment.

For German-based global pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), the increasing focus on leveraging key partnerships to support new product discovery and development efforts represented both a challenge and an opportunity. BI was using various tools (e.g. e-mail, fax, express shipments and phone) to share information and knowledge between internal teams and external partners, but this led to a decentralised storage of information, making it difficult for teams to work effectively.

BI envisioned a much higher level of interaction and collaboration between its internal research teams and external partner sites, supported by a more centralised and co-ordinated process to facilitate the exchange of information and provide an environment to share knowledge and expertise.

digital solutions

Armed with this vision, BI began looking for an easy-to-use collaborative solution that would enable it to embrace fully a wide variety of partners in ongoing product discovery and development initiatives - and found the answer in the eRoom digital workplace solution. The ease with which eRoom is configured and administered played a large role in the ability of the IT project team to deploy this solution within BI, while its intuitive nature greatly facilitated end-user acceptance and simplified training requirements. Since there is virtually no client software to install, there was minimal impact on the end-user's PC. Most importantly, software distribution was not a factor, which is particularly valuable when bringing external partners online.

breaking down barriers

'While the tool itself is very intuitive,' said Eric Miner, manager, knowledge management at BI, 'the manner in which it is implemented into an organisation can be powerful. During template development, processes can be captured, gaps identified and improvements made, enabling an organisation to co-ordinate, streamline and innovate current processes and procedures.

'Decision-making can be automated through the use of multi-approval databases and alerting functions. Folders and files can be incorporated to bring members of different locations and/or business units together into one shared working environment. Thus eRoom can be used to break down both functional and geographic barriers as well as to link business process directly together with business objectives.'

By enabling its research teams quickly to add new partners to group activities and discussions, the eRoom solution significantly reduced partner ramp-up times and time-to-productivity. Partners gain access to all the information they require in an easy-to-use and intuitive format, allowing them to begin participating immediately in fast-cycle project initiatives.

At the same time, the eRoom solution helps to reduce proposal-to-manufacturing cycle times by improving the flow of information throughout a project's lifecycle. At any given time, team members can turn to eRoom for everything from status information to the thinking behind a decision or change in research direction. Teams can quickly take advantage of the ability to learn from each other, from past project experiences and from external partner sites, resulting in a consensus-building approach to the development of best practice methods.

The eRoom solution provides a high level of security. Selected team members can add new participants to project initiatives; decide whom has access to information and at what level; secure individual files or workplaces; as well as assign read, write or modify rights to individual project participants.

Today, Boehringer Ingelheim is using eRoom to facilitate all phases of its product discovery and research efforts. The eRoom solution brings together the scientists, partners, administrators and managers required to evaluate a new project opportunity.

better informed

Within the workplaces, technical information is evaluated alongside human resource projections, financial requirements and corporate strategic goals, to gain a comprehensive picture of new research opportunities and challenges. The result is better, more informed and productive exchanges of information and ideas, enabling both BI and its partners to focus more time on the value-added aspects of their joint development work.

And while the initial focus at BI has been in r&d, interest is rapidly spreading throughout the organisation. Professor Peter Mueller, senior vp research and development, said: 'The eRoom solution enables us to match research excellence with state-of-the art collaboration tools, to fully embrace our partners in the pursuit of better, more effective and innovative pharmaceutical products and services.'