Enterprise Portals, Content and Document Management, User Experience.

A large pharmaceutical company wanted to establish online communication and collaboration portals for the parties involved in its clinical trials (physician offices, hospitals, clinical research organizations, etc). There were multiple interests – streamlining and accelerating communication, reducing communication costs, and fostering deeper relationships with the research community. While providing separate portals for every therapeutic area, product team, and clinical trial, it was also necessary to enforce enterprise-wide content and communication protocols. The IT group needed to find a way to do all this in the most cost-efficient manner.

We used focus groups and one-on-one interviews to identify and prioritize the interests of all stakeholders and future users. We developed the portal and content services with a point-and-click user interface for administration to facilitate the creation of individual portals without the need for programming services. This enabled teams to manage content without IT support.

The platform is being used to provide individual portals to 50+ clinical trials facilitating the communication of information within days instead of weeks. The company is looking to further expand this platform to a full-fledged Physician Portal to enhance relationships with the community.

BEA Weblogic Portal, Documentum, Backweb Offline Access Server.

Streamlining HQ-Field Communication for a 10,000-Person Sales Force

Enterprise Portals, Content and Document Management Systems, User Experience.

A large pharmaceutical company needed to control the flood of Headquarters-to-Field communication and slash related costs. The Sales Representatives were being bombarded with Email, Snail Mail, Courier, CD-ROMs and numerous web sites – they wanted relevant, prioritized information to avoid wasted time.

We started by interviewing important stakeholders in Headquarters and mapped a “day in the life” of the Sales Representative. We then created a realistic multi-year roadmap to achieve improvements using an online/offline portal as a primary channel of communication. The portal was built on a scalable platform to ensure that it could serve as a consolidation point for various existing internal websites. We ensured adoption of the portal through usability testing and promotion efforts.

The portal has become the primary HQ-Field channel and is actively used by 80% of sales force. Millions of dollars in cost-savings have been realized through the consolidation of multiple websites and the conversion of paper-to-electronic for various reports and materials. The portal has also cut down on the proliferation of new websites and helped reduce information overload in the field.

BEA Weblogic Portal, Documentum, Backweb Offline Access Server.

Content Management System, User Experience.

The legal group within a Fortune 50 company wanted to improve the communication and collaboration within the group and foster a sense of community, especially given its geographically dispersed nature. Additionally, they wanted to provide their internal clients improved access to information about their services. The IT group supporting them wanted to ensure a standards-based, scalable solution.

We conducted primary user research, both within the Legal Group and the client community, to identify functionality and content that engaged users. Then we created a personalized intranet and implmented a Documentum and Weglogic-based Content Management System to enable self-service content administration. Ensured adoption through user training and change management campaigns.

The intranet has improved communication within the group and has enabled the client community to gain a better understanding of their services. This success has led to significant expansion in the scope of the intranet, and it has become a model for others within the organization.

BEA Weblogic, Documentum.