The Evolution of Electronic Document Management Systems in Life Sciences – Part 2

The evolution document management has lead to an enterprise-wide strategy which encompasses the entire content life cycle from creation and approval through to retention and disposition.

Employing an enterprise strategy is something that many organizations desire, but few have achieved. As the concept evolves over the next 3-5 years, organizations will need to consider the following:

· How can they unify and integrate the organization’s critical business content so that they can support multiple geographies and functions? Organizations will want to include information from both structured and unstructured information systems in a seamless way so that the content can be searched, retrieved, and shared.

· What can be done to eliminate information silos? Rapid evolution of technology and a response to increasing regulatory requirements has resulted in environments that contain point solutions and information silos. Some processes can be transitioned into an ECM environment, and supported through robust workflows and detailed reporting; other processes will need to be supported through integrated point solutions.

· Will the content management platform grow with the organization? There are a number of points to consider when it comes to the growth of an ECM system. Organizations need a system that can scale from a technical perspective to support more users and more applications over time, and should consider satellite offices and low-bandwidth connectivity in this analysis. Also, flexibility -- if applications can be readily configured and deployed, the organization can do more with the content management platform in a shorter time. Organizations should look for a system that can meet their needs through configuration, rather than customization.

· How much will it cost? Organizations need to do a full analysis up-front taking into account their enterprise strategy for content over the next several years and ensure they understand the scope of everything that needs to be accomplished with their enterprise content management system. It is not just about buying the software. Organizations who make investments in the implementation, training and the configuration of applications in the beginning, end-up spending less over the long run. The ideal system should provide the organization with the ability to create and modify applications without significant training and implementation costs.

Pharmaceutical companies are taking steps to ensure they’re on the right path to an enterprise architecture by leveraging existing technology solutions and content repositories, and coupling them with a next-generation enterprise content management framework. Powerful enterprise search functions, security controls to ensure appropriate access, metadata capture, secure information retrieval with process automation tools, and intuitive retrieval capabilities are all required to ensure content is available to appropriate users when they need it and in the context of how they are working with that content.

The emerging industry need for an enterprise content management strategy in life sciences will force Pharmaceutical organizations to more effectively leverage content and metadata investments across applications and the organization, and provide a unified view of structured and unstructured business content for significant productivity gains and better decision-making.