A Pragmatic Path to Enterprise Content Management

Ken Lownie and Tim May, Glemser Technologies explain how and why pharma companies are seeking to combine and consolidate sets of applications.

After years of building document management applications, large pharmaceutical companies now seem to be more focused on consolidating the applications they have than on building new ones.

Specifically, these companies are seeking ways to combine and consolidate sets of existing, individual applications. Having built myriad systems to address specific sets of localized document management requirements, they are now wrestling with the cost of maintaining those systems and the challenge of integrating processes that span different application environments.

Although the shift from individual document management applications to an “enterprise content management” perspective and architecture has been talked about for years, the reality is that the large pharma companies, as some of the earliest adopters of document management systems, are now wrestling with a legacy consisting of disparate, individual applications, each built to the detailed requirements of an individual community of users. One saving grace is that, for the most part, these companies standardized on Documentum as their single content management platform, so the potential integration, at least at the technical level, is somewhat easier.

A recent project with one of our clients highlighted both the benefits and challenges of a typical Enterprise Content Management consolidation initiative. Driven by a desire to cut costs and reduce infrastructure complexity, this large pharmaceutical company was seeking to take more than 30 individual manufacturing SOP management systems and bring them together into a single, global, consolidated application.

Even though each system was built using EMC’s Documentum Compliance Manager (DCM) from a common application template, each was implemented as an individual, local instance and was configured to meet local requirements. As a result, the technology challenges that emerged in creating a consolidated application infrastructure and migrating to it were substantial. The fact that thousands of users at locations around the world would be directly affected by the change also brought with it significant change management issues.

The first set of challenges related to balancing the architectural goals of reducing complexity, providing adequate performance and the need to deliver a solution that could be configured for local needs. The solution put in place is based on a single instance of the application served from a central location, but with separate regions defined that share common access and configuration requirements. In addition, configuration specifications were written that define baseline, regional and local zones in which configurations can be modified.

Another challenging area that involved balancing standardization and localization revolved around the need for specific functionality beyond what is provided in the core DCM product. To address these needs without introducing the complexities of customization, the Glemser team developed and deployed a set of modular features (now marketed under the name "PowerTools") to provide features such as dynamic overlays and watermarks, anonymous user access and the ability for users to define required views of the content "on-the-fly".

A third challenging area for this consolidation project was simply managing the impact on users. Any application of this scope needs to be executed with careful attention to change management considerations – users are never excited about a forced application change. In this case, the strength of an a corporate cost cutting initiative was leveraged to create substantial motivation among the users to support the effort and accept the new application. Additional efforts to involve users and gain buy-in included the creation of a user council and the use of prototype-based workshops throughout the application design process.

Ultimately, the payback from this initiative, in terms of direct expense dollars saved, will be very large. The reduction in infrastructure alone justifies the project, with a reduction from individual, local content servers and controlled print environments to far fewer servers requiring less administration and maintenance. Perhaps more importantly, the unified application lays the foundation for substantially increased consistency across manufacturing sites, especially since it was designed to accommodate additional document types as further application consolidation initiatives are undertaken.

As a case study of a large-scale document management consolidation initiative, this project demonstrated the need for balancing the goals of reducing complexity with the need to address local requirements, and the need to have great sensitivity to the change management implications of a large application consolidation. It also demonstrated that, if these challenges are effectively addressed, the result can be substantial savings and an improved environment for supporting integrated processes.

Ultimately, as the lessons learned on this project are put into use on future initiatives, this company will be putting in place the building blocks of a true enterprise content management environment.

Ken Lownie is the Chief Operations Officer at Glemser Technologies, a leading provider of content management services and software to life sciences companies. In that role Lownie has oversight responsibilities for several consolidation projects Glemser is executing with global pharmaceutical companies. Lownie is a frequent speaker and writer on topics relating to enterprise content management, and is the author of the White Paper entitled "Patterns of ECM Consolidation in Life Sciences Companies".

Tim May is a Director in Glemser’s EMC Documentum Practice, and is Glemser’s designated Documentum Technical Subject Matter Expert. He has completed dozens of major Documentum implementations, several of which were based upon the Documentum Compliance Manager platform. In addition to his client work, May architected several components of Glemser's packaged solution for content management, xmContent, which is built on Documentum's WebTop platform.