B ROC H U R E Enabling Elastic Capacity for Integration and Data Harmonization through Cloud-based Services Summary Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, like others, must continually innovate in order to be successful, which often leads to technical directives that overwhelm IT organizations. With innovation being driven by cost and time to market, along with the growing need for collaboration within enterprises and with business partners, cloud-based services help companies outsource functions like integration and data harmonization while increasing speed, reducing costs and enabling elastic capacity to rightsize the services at any time. Best in Class enterprises continue to lead the way in utilizing cloud-based services for integration, data transformation, data translation, data harmonization and more. Enterprises take advantage of this in multiple business areas, letting them focus on their core areas of differentiation. Supply Chain Processes: Integration for aggregation of B2B data Clinical Trials: Data transformation and flow of clinical data Internal Application Integration: EAI Infrastructure consolidation Sales and Marketing Data Transformation: Aggregation of global data providers with transformation for analytics Background Information Technology organizations have long been under pressure to deliver complex services to facilitate the activities required to run a sustainable business. With competitive differentiation essential to success, IT is typically overwhelmed with business requirements. The Life Sciences industry is no different, with companies continually striving for innovation and to bring new drugs to market, impacting drug development to clinical trials to sales. All of this requires exchanging large volumes of data from many business partners along with the ability to transform, translate and harmonize the information so it can be useful for analysis throughout the process. Given enough time, money and resources, IT organizations could do it all except for the fact that they do have limited resources, which are required to remain profitable and competitive. Cloud-based computing can provide the ability to outsource certain IT functions while improving speed and efficiency, reducing costs and enabling elastic capacity for services while allowing IT departments to focus on their core, differentiable assets like drug trial analytics. Example Business Challenge The rush to bring winning drugs to market ahead of the competition has pushed the envelope. With the need to develop so many drugs simultaneously, many drug manufacturers outsourced much of this work to specialty companies. Also, with multiple, multi-year clinical trials on-going, pharmaceutical firms began to outsource trial management to clinical research organizations, specialists again, to manage the process.
The success of outsourced drug development has led to a backlog of drugs awaiting clinical trial. With the ability to outsource clinical trial management to clinical research organizations (CROs), IT must determine how to scale the ability to quickly connect to partners and while transforming and normalizing trial information. integration for EAI infrastructure consolidation, all require the same underlying service to connect applications, prepare and share useful information. Examples of business objectives follow: Reduce Costs: Reduce internal costs through operational efficiencies Streamline processes by efficiently using external resources Increase Scalability And Enable Elastic Capacity Of Resources: Provide a model which allows for additional scalability and high performance as needed Address growing volumes of data and connections when increasing the number of clinical trials Example Technical Challenges Integration Is Difficult: With many different partners Point-to-point connections Using different protocols and formats Homegrown and proprietary systems Multiple consumers of data with different needs / demands Manual And Time-Consuming Processes: Limited visibility of management process Siloed work processes hinder smooth data transitions Standardization Is Challenging: Varied therapeutic areas with unrelated data needs Clinical study teams tasked to search for secondary indications Attrition, mergers, and uncertainty of current business Business Objectives Seeking to meet business goals while maintaining IT s service to the organization, Best in Class enterprises have engaged in multiple initiatives around integration, data transformation and translation, and data harmonization. Increase Business Intelligence Visibility: Increase visibility into retail consumption (sales) Limit involvement from IT for Sales and Marketing to use information Increase Integration Capabilities While Reducing Time And Effort: Exchanges with large partners and small specialty research firms Speed up time to connect with little lead time Reduce the amount of time to make the data available and usable Reduce the manual effort to prepare the data for analysis Reduce Complexity And Centralize Partner Integration: Integrate with all supply chain partners globally Remove point-to-point connections linking islands of data Unify platform for interfaces and mapping to enable single place for services Enable Agility And Flexibility With Partners: Be able to adjust to partner processes and requirements Standardize approach while enabling real-time, eventdriven integration Whether part of supply chain processes related to B2B, clinical trial data flow and transformation, sales and marketing syndicated data harmonization or internal application 2
Enhance Data Quality: Improve data integrity, reliability and completeness of information in the data repository Example Business Solution Cloud-Based Integration And Data Management Services: Cloud-based services provide many benefits. A key benefit, elastic capacity, allows companies to grow with unlimited scalability while allowing the business to focus on its core areas of expertise. Whether part of supply chain processes related to B2B, clinical trial data flow and transformation, sales and marketing syndicated data intelligence or internal application integration due to EAI infrastructure consolidation, enterprises can use the same underlying services connecting applications and partners to prepare and share critical business information. Below are some of the results and value Best in Class enterprises have received: Solution: Cloud-based Integration-as-a-Service platform with Managed Services Multiple integration methods and protocols Multiple Data Formats: Any-to-Any data transformation and translation Data normalization and harmonization Multi-lingual Support Benefits Of Cloud Computing Operational vs. Capital expense Pay as you grow no or low startup costs Can store and manage large scale data Scale and agility on demand Commoditized services handled by 3rd party You focus on core areas of expertise (application/use) Results of Using Cloud-based Services Across multiple business units and functional areas, Best in Class enterprises have successfully taken advantage of cloud-based services for integration, data transformation and translation, and data harmonization helping the company meet business goals while still being responsive from an IT perspective. Results: Increased capacity to handle simultaneous clinical trials Automated collection and harmonization of information making it rapidly visible in a single data repository Enabled elastic model to link business partners and begin to quickly exchange critical business information Accelerated data flow processes, provided greater ability to change and improved problem resolution Enhance visibility through dashboard with exception alerts and notifications Business Value: Reducing costs while increasing scalability through elastic capacity Increased speed of integration, translation and transformation of data with partners Increased speed of data assimilation and harmonization for analytics while reducing complexity Enabled global reach with one connection to all data providers Provided data acquisition foundation for all business analytics Meet regulatory and corporate integration requirements Positioned to more easily assimilate new businesses 3
Example Business Solution B2B PARTNER INTEGRATION CLINICAL TRIALS DATA TRANSFORMATION 4
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