Untitled

[i2econsultingus]

6 Project Management Tasks and How You Can Manage Them Using Planisware

 i2e is a Planisware partner, and our teams carry the expertise in implementing Planisware Orchestra in a variety of industries.  Planisware allows project managers to plan and budget the project efficiently.If your company is struggling with project management-related issues, then implementing Planisware Orchestra can make a big difference. It is specially designed to meet the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises.

[i2econsultingus]

Version upgrades can be tricky, especially for enterprise-wide tools like Planisware. Version upgrades can be tricky, especially for enterprise-wide tools like Planisware

[i2econsultingus]

5 Pharma Resourcing Challenges and How Insights and Dashboards Can Solve Them.

Pharma resource management can be difficult owing to the long duration of projects and strict compliance requirements. One needs extensive information to not only make the right decisions but also anticipate resourcing bottlenecks beforehand.

For example, poor capacity planning and unrealistic project schedules can lead to under or over-utilization of resources. To overcome such challenges, pharma and biotechnology companies need insights and dashboards which can show them the present scenarios and project future numbers.

This blog will tell you how insights and dashboards can give answers to 5 resource management challenges.

Resource forecasting

Pharmaceutical R&D involves large uncertainties, so it is critical for companies to keep multiple drugs in the pipeline, which means the company’s resource capacity should be planned to accommodate multiple projects. With hundreds of resources spread globally, and multiple projects in the pipeline, it becomes imperative to not only know the present resource capacity, but also project numbers for the coming months.

If the manager has access to insights of the present and forecasted data, then decision-making can be accurate. These insights will also give an overall picture of the capacity Vs. Utilization and projecting them onto a dashboard gives visual representation making it easier to understand as well as present it to the top management.

2. Accessing resource risks

Many pharma and biotech companies prioritize assessing risks related to process, technology, or events; however, resourcing risks should also be considered as any unforeseen events can disrupt process, and technology. For example, if a critical resource steps down from the project at a critical stage, the resourcing manager should be prepared with a contingency plan.

Resourcing insights can help the management foresee any resourcing bottlenecks and prepare a plan to combat them. A projected dashboard can also show the extent of impact when a crucial resource might step down, making it simple for the resource manager to prioritize while allocating resources.

Skill management

Allocating the right skilled resources to the right job is of utmost importance in pharma resource planning. A project manager can allocate resources based on their skills if they can have a single source of truth for skills, patents, and compliance information for all the resources in an organization.

These insights will also help compare skill vs utilization allocation to understand which skills are required and which skills are under-allocated. This information can come in handy while making hiring decisions.

Optimal usage of resources

A resource manager should have visibility into the workload of each resource and be able to identify any under or overutilization and allocation. Having this visibility helps the resource manager make an informed decision for resource allocation.

The resource manager can also project the utilization of a key resource to plan the future utilization of that resource. What more? You can also build a resource utilization dashboard to give the top management a bird’s eye view of the resource management.  

Sometimes in a project, the allocated resources are not optimized. This could be because they are working on low-priority projects, or they are not assigned challenging resources according to their skill sets. A project manager needs to be aware of such developments during the project to take the appropriate action.  

Insights and dashboards can help the project manager spot such anomalies. For example, if the reported time and percentage of task completed is compared, then it will give any discrepancies if any.  

Consistently assigning resources

The resource manager must decide on the resource pool by analyzing incoming demands, understanding priorities, and considering the organization’s goals.  

It is also important to have a holistic view of incoming demand and available resource capacity according to matching skills and roles. Here also, insights play an important role in providing the crucial information needed to make informed decisions. A comprehensive dashboard can provide a holistic view of all the projects, their utilizations, demands, allocations, and much more. Such information can help make accurate decisions.

Almost all pharmaceutical and biotech companies have the necessary data, but the key is to make good use of this data to make informed decisions. Modern PPM solutions have the capability to capture crucial project data; however, you would need to perform data engineering and data visualization to get accurate insights and dashboards.

i2e Consulting has 13+ years of experience in helping global pharmaceutical companies to access insights and prepare dashboards according to their business needs. Keeping in mind the unique requirements of the pharma and biotech industries, i2e Optima, a resourcing solution can take care of data engineering and visualization of your data.

Interested to know more about i2e Optima? Fill in the following form to get in touch with our experts.

[i2econsultingus]

Pharma and Biotech industries can reap a lot of benefits from data management and business analytics.  

AI, ML, and cloud technologies can also help tackle certain issues the pharma and biotech companies are facing.

[i2econsultingus]

PPM for project collaboration | Collaborative project Management | US,UK & India

Project management tool is effective for collaborating, sharing, and even addressing risk at the correct time. It helps to give real time update of the ongoing project.

[i2econsultingus]

Cloud offers a modern workplace for alliance

Cloud is one of the best options for all small and medium-sized business (SMBs). Cloud services for small business offer Teams, office apps, cloud storage along advanced security to satisfy all business requirements.  

Cloud makes it easy to manage the business and reduces the cost. Thus, implementing the SMB cloud helps to focus entirely on productivity and growth. i2e Consulting offers the best cloud service that is easy to implement in the current infrastructure of the business without any big investment.

Why opt for SMB Cloud?

Helps business to stay productive

Increase the mobility

Does not need continuous investment

Improves profit margin

How does i2e prove helpful?

i2e offers the best SMB cloud services that include both Azure and AWS. Today there are more than 30% of the employees are working remotely and so it is very important to protect from any vulnerable threats. Opting for SMB cloud computing helps businesses to be safe from any attacks so that employees give productive results.  

i2e works as AWS and Azure partners

i2e have certified cloud experts

Offers solutions to satisfy business requirements

Benefits

Cloud gives insights into business

It offers a flexible storage option along with security

It has 0% downtime and is cost-effective.

Protect data with reduce cost and easy management with SMB cloud solutions offered at https://www.i2econsulting.com/ . Feel free to connect us at [email protected]

[i2econsultingus]

Planisware Orchestra and its role in New Product Development (NPD), from Strategy to execution

i2e is a certified planisware partner that helps organizations integrate Planisware Enterprise with other applications in their organization to improve data integrity and uniformity. Our Planisware consultants are expert technologists who present a thorough understanding of the tool, defining an end-to-end project management solution to your business.

Connect us at  [email protected] to implement Planisware Orchestra in the organization.

[i2econsultingus]

IT Managed Services improves IT infrastructure | Outsourcing IT Services

 i2e provides IT Managed Solutions to optimize the IT infrastructure of the company. The IT Managed Services includes data security , remote support, maintenance to improve the business efficiency. 

[i2econsultingus]

Data Visualization Solution & Services

Data Visualization the art and science of representing information in a comprehensive way. Important stories live in our data and data visualization is a powerful means to discover and understand these stories.i2e Consulting provides Advance Reporting Solution (Data visualization), interactive dashboards, data in virtual environment using Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft HoloLens.

[i2econsultingus]

Microsoft Project Online| Project Server | Custom PPM Solution

 We provide the best customized Project Portfolio Management Solution (PPM) including Demand Management, Portfolio Management, Resource Management and Reporting.

[i2econsultingus]

8 ways AWS Redshift is optimizing Business Intelligence in the Healthcare and Life Science industry

With the major advancement of pharmaceutical sectors, the increasing volume of data that is being produced each day, each second needs a dynamic storage system, preferably faster and more secure. And by data here, we mean the years and years of organizational data that is stored in traditional on-premises data warehouses which require a huge investment of time, money, and maintenance. To solve this problem, Amazon has introduced redshift, a cloud-based database for data management, and analytics for large-scale data.

AWS has been a trusted technology partner for the healthcare sector globally. The innovative solutions have made businesses gain more value and maximize ROI and with Redshift data warehousing, the pharmaceutical industry is able to address their business problem in a more sophisticated way, let’s see how-    

Data analytics and BI for powerful insights – AWS Redshift suite allows healthcare professionals to get better data transparency by integrating it to interactive dashboards and making data driven decisions. With powerful decision making comes improved business processes and customer satisfaction.

Advanced query accelerator – Due to its compatibility with various database languages, redshift runs queries 10 times faster than other cloud data warehouses. The AWS processors speed up data operations by eliminating unwanted data movement and scaling out space to get capacity to store more research, lab reports, inventory data etc.

Easy migration with existing data warehouse – Redshift enables healthcare organizations move their data to cloud quickly and securely. The database migration service is highly reliable and continuously monitors source and destination database. It also supports homogeneous as well as heterogeneous database migration minimizing downtime and cost involved.

Cross account and hierarchical data sharing – It allows data sharing across different levels, both inside and outside of an organization enabling users to securely access the data such as patient details, R&D reports, supply chain data, clinical trials and utilize it as per their need. The feature also allows healthcare professionals Collaboration on a larger scale.

Better risk assessment with Redshift ML – The feature allows users to create, train and deploy Machine Learning models called Amazon SageMaker models using SQL queries and use this as a risk management and fraud detection option. Health workers can make predictions based on these trained models and make smarter decisions in drug development and patient’s health assessment.

Store data in a synchronized manner – Using high performance SQL queries the robust structured and unstructured data are turned into comprehensive and detailed reports which ease the workload of physicians and healthcare professionals. Patients get access to detailed health reports which reduces the need for repetitive tests as well as medical billings.

End to End encryption – AWS in pharmaceutical has always been recognized for ensuring integrity and security of data; and AWS redshift employs Encryption depending on the company’s needs. Redshift security features include – Sign-in credentials, Access management, Cluster security groups, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Cluster encryption, SSL encryption, Load data encryption, Protection of Data in transit, Column-level access control.

Pay as per capacity occupied– Unlike other database warehouses, AWS redshift is more affordable and offers a payment plan on hourly rate. The users can pay for the nodes and clusters that are being used and can pause the cluster to suspend on-demand billing. Redshift also comes with automated configuration, maintenance, backup, monitoring and is also equipped for disaster recovery, which negates the need for having expensive maintenance tools and set up costs.

So, we saw how AWS redshift is helping businesses store, analyze, access and monitor the data and make data-driven solutions to accelerate innovation with minimal cost. Businesses across the world are leveraging AWS technology to gain maximum ROI and customer satisfaction.  

i2e is a certified AWS partner and has the domain expertise and experience in delivering business analytics services in the pharmaceutical industry as well as other IT firms to improve productivity and efficiency.

Get in touch with us to know more about AWS Redshift infrastructure.

[i2econsultingus]

Make Supply Chains Smarter with Robotic Process Automation

More than 70% of businesses and industries are willing to invest in RPA. The current RPA market stands at 1.1 billion USD and is expected to grow at a CARG of 33.6% from 2020 to 20271. According to the London School of Economics, a 24/7 robot can increase a company’s ROI by 600% in just 3 years2.

Aren’t these fascinating facts? This clearly shows that the world is becoming smarter and adopting automated solutions to magnify the efficiency.

Robotic Process Automation or RPA can be defined as software or robot that can automate redundant and routine activities that do not depend on human judgment. According to Fortune.com close to 40% of all the jobs can be automated, and the rest can be semi-automated using RPA3. Robots can perform regular administrative jobs better than human beings. RPA brings accuracy, speed, efficiency, and cost savings together at the same time. It helps businesses to use their existing application software’s like CRM and ERM more productively.

The pharmaceutical industry has several routine activities that can be replaced by a robot. This will increase efficiency, collaboration in the supply chain, and bring down operation costs. In the modern era, customers are well-informed, and there is a massive pressure in the life sciences industry to improve their R&D and produce better life-saving drugs. Automation will not only save cost or increase efficiency but also allow human beings to focus more on research and address customer demands.

The pharmaceutical industry can benefit from RPA in multiple ways. Starting from Clinical Development and Sales Force Management to Precision Marketing and Supply Chain Management. Automation is all set to make supply chains lean and efficient. Some of the most significant issues in the supply chain are

· Inventory Management

· Integrating operations across multiple channels

· Visibility across the supply chain

This presents a perfect scope for Robotic Process Automation. RPA can perform core business functions ten times faster than human beings with complete accuracy. The analytics from RPA helps in forecasting, tracking goods, and help in making complex decisions. To understand the complete potential of RPA in the supply chain, let us look into the following use cases –

Automating Order Processing

Even today, order processing means a lot of paperwork and manual transactions. These tasks can be easily automated and made more efficient using RPA. Activities like product selection, payment processing, and order confirmation can be completely digitalized. Customers can directly place orders on a company website, a payment gateway can assist in payment, and an automated email will inform about order confirmation.

This model is currently implemented in the retail industry (think how you place and confirm orders on Amazon). Similar models can be implemented in the supply chain for pharmaceutical companies.

Inventory Management

Monitoring inventory levels, placing orders, and tracking products across the supply chain makes inventory management a very complex activity. RPA can automate inventory management, eliminate human labor, and increase productivity. Automations can monitor product levels and place an order when the inventory goes below a threshold level. RPA helps in tracking the product right from the order placement until it is shipped to the customer.

Further, it can use historical data and deduce patterns that can help in demand forecasting and order placement. With RPA, employees become free and can focus on areas that require judgment and complex decision making.

Planning Supply and Demand

The success of supply chain management demands on how accurately the demand conditions are forecasted. This involves a lot of complex data, order histories, industry and market conditions, and many unforeseen factors. This leads to a time-consuming and error-prone process.

RPA, coupled with AI and ML, can automate these tasks and predict demand conditions accurately. It also takes into account demand spikes and other insights that misses the human eye. RPA can analyze volumes of data in no time, prepare reports, and help you plan most effectively.

Vendor Management

Vendor selection involves a lot of manual processes that can be easily digitized. Creating an RFQ (request for quotation), vendor communication, evaluating quotes, and finally selecting the vendors comprises vendor management.

With RPA implementation, human effort and interaction can be completely minimized. It is only needed for face-to-face meetings and a final selection step. The rest of the processes can be automated using RPA, coupled with AI and IoT. It can efficiently process Requisition Forms, Order Quotations, and Vendor Proposals and help in making the best choice in vendor selection.

Invoice Management

Invoice management is directly connected with payment processing. No one would like errors and mistakes in invoice management. It involves a lot of tedious tasks like invoice preparation, entering details from invoice, match invoice against the purchase order, and reconcile payments with the invoice.

Automating these activities will speed up the entire process and eliminate human errors. RPA can extract data from purchase orders and automatically create an invoice. Invoice Management can be

coupled with Inventory Management and Demand Planning for ensuring efficiency across the entire supply chain.

Refund and Returns

This part of the supply chain involves a lot of risks and high-value. Allowing human intervention gives room for errors and overwhelming workflows. Right since the return request is placed till the time the product reaches the warehouse and the refund is processed, the activities are highly complicated.

This presents a perfect opportunity for RPA to step in. The entire chain of activities can be automated. Implementing rule-based automation, the refund processing system can reduce human efforts and make the activities error-free.

To gain the maximum benefit from RPA in the life sciences sector, businesses must understand the limitations of RPA as well. It can automate routine activities but cannot replace a human being in making complex decisions. Pharmaceutical companies need to plan the roadmap, identify the processes that can be automated, and continuously upgrade their systems. The last thing to be taken care of is the regulatory mandates and rules. All these automation and digitization should be appropriately checked and monitored. Remember, RPA is there to assist human beings not to replace them!

Speak to us at i2e Consulting to understand how we can help you with Robotic Process Automation and other innovative technologies to transform your supply chain

Reference Link :

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

[i2econsultingus]

Power BI vs. Tableau Business Intelligence battleground

If you are looking for a Business Intelligence or data visualization solution, chances are you have come across Power BI and Tableau.  

Founded in 2003, Tableau is often regarded as the gold-standard in data visualization and has been so for a long time. With intuitive data exploration capabilities, Tableau makes a strong case of data visualization. Power BI, on the other hand, debuted in 2013, it is Microsoft’s BI option. It’s strong integrations with the Microsoft ecosystem enable performance and support productivity.

Through this blog, I intend to provide a concise yet comprehensive guide to help you decide which should suit your requirements better.  

From the research undertaken for writing this article (which I can say is substantial), we can assure you that ultimately it all comes down to business requirements. What problem are you looking to solve and how much are you willing to pay for it. We will discuss these two products one-on-one on three parameters: Functionality, Deployment Options and Cost. Next, we will briefly touch upon Gartner’s magic quadrant report, 2019 and what it means, and finally we will wrap up.

Functionality

Tableau is a sophisticated product built to explore data visually. It provides a wide range of data representation, dashboard design, and user functionalities. It works very well with users with large data sets from multiple data sources. You can ask a question about your data and get insights almost immediately. Tableau is available for both cloud and on-premise. Its no-code powerful drag and drop analytics makes it very popular among the users. It has a large community and quality customer service.

Power BI with its common foundation as Excel provides a familiar experience to Excel users. One of the biggest selling points of Power BI is integration with the Microsoft environment. Power BI integrates natively with Azure data services. Power BI also offers unique experiences for business users like Natural Language Query and custom visualizations. The Power BI community is not as strong as Tableau and customer service is just okay. Power Bi comes in two different variants, Power BI Basic and Power BI Premium, the basic version does not address on-premise analytics.  

Bottom line: Tableau is the best tool when it comes to Data Visualization (seeing and exploring data) whereas Power BI focuses more on predictive modeling and reporting. For processing large data sets from multiple sources, you can go for either Tableau or Power BI premium, the basic version does not address on-premise analytics.

Deployment

Power BI’s deployment option are limited. It is available as a SaaS (software as a service) model and on-premise; on-premise is only supported by Power BI Premium licensing flexibility. Tableau, on the other hand, is much more flexible in its deployment and is available both on-premises and cloud.

Bottom line: Tableau is flexible offers both on-premise and cloud service. If the SAAS model works for you then you can have Power BI basic for free with Microsoft 365. Also, if you are invested in Microsoft technology, then Power Bi may still be profitable from a deployment perspective.

Cost

Both the products offer a subscription-based licensing model. While both these products offer comparable services, Power BI is way cheaper to Tableau. Power BI premium does increase the cost considerably. If you have a small budget (less than $30 per user) Power BI is your product you will settle for.  It is easy to use and does not require a power user. However, if you are looking for a data visualization option for your analysts looking to leverage data, Tableau totally justifies its price.To have a better picture here is a pricing break down for both:  

Tableau publicly available pricing here. Power BI publicly available pricing here.

Bottom line: On of the biggest advantage Power BI has over Tableau is its rock bottom price. It’s a cost-effective BI product. Tableau, on the other hand, is a sophisticated product and justifies its bigger price tag.

Gartner’s Magic quadrant 2019 In 2018,

Power BI tied with Tableau in terms of functionality but strongly outplaced it in “completeness of vision” because it is embedded with the Microsoft stack. This year, however, Microsoft has left Tableau marginally behind, thereby improving on the ‘ability to execute’ axis. No surprise there considering the value for money and ease of use. That being said, Tableau is still placed comfortably among the leaders and is still popular among its users with strong customer ratings.  As the saying goes, the most challenging part of buying a BI solution is figuring out which one meets your needs. I hope it will help you decide on a BI solution. If you are a Microsoft 365 user, I would suggest you go for Power BI and if you are not satisfied you could always upgrade to Tableau.  

[i2econsultingus]

Data Visualization solutions: Exploration and Presentation

Digitization led to big data which by 2020 will have 44 trillion gigabytes of data. We are in a position where we have access to masses of data, but our ability to effectively use this data for competitive advantage is a constraint. The reason being most of this data is unstructured and scattered across multiple sources. Did you know that only 1% of the data we have access to is analyzed? This is a massive underutilization of data which is not free. Data is helmed as the new age gold and if you are planning to become data rich you should invest in Data Visualization. Data visualization has been around for centuries and evolving constantly. From primitive maps to visualizing data in mixed reality visual representation of data has come a long way. Visualization makes it easier to process and comprehend data. As they say,

“A picture tells a story better than 1000 words could”

Data visualization can be used at different levels across an organization and there are several used cases. One thing to consider while going for visualization is to have a clear objective whether you want it for exploring the data or mere presentation of data.

Data Exploration is used by a data analyst who is trying to match patterns, get insights, make a forecast, etc. These usually require dashboards, multi-layer graphs, etc. Data exploration is used by many businesses to get actionable business insights into their data and plan the next steps.

On the other hand, data presentation is to represent the findings of data exploration in a very basic form, usually some form of storytelling. You would not want your investors or higher management to spend time understanding the graphs and charts or worse not understanding them at all.

We at i2e consulting offer data visualization to help get actional business insights and PPM solutions. Here we list a few of our many customized data visualization solutions that hugely benefit organizations.

Data Exploration in R&D: We created dashboards for a pharmaceutical giant who wanted to get insights on the research and development happening around their organization. They wanted these dashboards to drug lifecycle management. Our dashboards helped R&D productivity to newer heights through complete data integration and cross-departmental data utilization.

Interactive mixed-reality PPM dashboards: One of our clients came with a unique requirement wherein they wanted their board meetings to be interesting. They wanted the entire top management to be involved, focused and attentive. We suggested and eventually created data visualization with Microsoft HoloLens. AR/VR is highly engaging, informative and unique (well for now it is) which makes it ideal for presenting the information. The holographic imaging enabled them to interact and play around with their data. This newly found perspective not only made the meeting interesting but also enabled better insights for better forecasting.

Resourcing Dashboards: Resource planning is one of the key concerns for many organizations because of the nature of the information involved. When one of our clients, requested a dashboard to optimize scheduling and resources precisely. We offered a dashboard solution to minimized resource planning challenges. The dashboard showed resource availability based on skillset, level of expertise that helped with resource availability forecast. Besides, it also showed FTE scores of resources and made the company audit-ready.

Wrapping it up, in the age of big data analytics data visualization is the only way to harness information. If you are planning to invest in it, do have a clear objective because these tools do not come cheap. If you are looking for any data visualization solution, we at i2e consulting are ready to answer your queries. Just fill in the below form.

[i2econsultingus]

Must-haves in Document Management System for Pharmaceutical companies

There is never a one size fits all solution and the same goes for document management system or DMS, especially for the Pharma domain. Document management is a bit tricky in Pharmaceuticals as the industry needs to adhere to strict compliance and regulatory standards. At one side you need collaborative efforts for fast to market release; on the other, the security should be top-notch. If you are planning to upgrade your existing DMS or investing in a new one. It is only wise if you make a note of the following features: Many pharmaceutical companies still have their reservations about cloud document management systems.

Cloud-based: Look for a document management system which is cloud-based. Workplaces have evolved through the years and today we are in the era which is all about social collaboration, agile processes, real-time updates, and rising tech trends. It is imperative our systems comply with changing times. History speaks volumes about companies which failed to innovate and where they are now. Cloud is the future and very few companies have the capacity to make an upfront infrastructure investment. I know you may have your reservations, but cloud security today offers cloud offers stability, reliability and multiple layers of security, and it’s getting better.

Tamperproof: This is one of the most essential features to look in document management system for pharmaceuticals. With the introduction of blockchain in DMS, you can check for authenticity of electronically signed documents. In blockchain-based DMS, even the slightest change like adding an extra space does not go unnoticed. This also gives an audit trail along with making your documents tamper-proof. Validation is important and what better way then blockchain. Pre-defined templates: There are certain fixed regulatory standards when it comes to submission. While they may not come as an out of the box feature with your document management system, make sure you invest to get all the necessary templates. Mistakes with ANDA submissions are more common than you think. Approved document templates and proper document review workflow will ensure documents are created, reviewed, and approved on the first cut. Automated workflows: This is a basic yet very important feature so I thought I will include it in the list. Accelerate time to market with automated document approval workflows. You can either go for out of the box workflows or create custom ones depending on your requirements. No more waiting for internal document approvals. Every time a document is created it is automatically going into the workflow and will notify the concerned person or group of people. Hassle-free and faster approvals.

Cross-functional team collaboration: The document management system should offer convenient collaboration for teams to work on documents seamlessly. Cloud technology today offers such functionality through which you can give secure access to external stakeholders without compromising security. Just imagine how much benefit will real-time collaboration be. As organization globally are pushing towards a one-team approach such systems will help break silos and help develop better products faster.

Integration: Lastly,you should be able to use your document management system seamlessly with common everyday tools like emails, word documents or drive. E-mails within the system should be automatically captured and linked to the relevant document library. There should also be the option to easily drag-and-drop documents without you exiting the current application. Flabby document management continues to be one of the top concerns of pharma manufacturing slowdown. These are among the few things that will mitigate mistakes and help manage documents better.

We at i2e Consulting has been providing document management solution to pharmaceuticals for more than a decade now. Our SharePoint document management system is available both on-premise and cloud. It may be customized to fit into your organizational workflow.  Let us know if you need upgrading. We are happy to help.

[i2econsultingus]

SharePoint versus Documentum: Comparing the two heavyweights of Document Management

There are several Document Management options in the market. While the services offered are comparable; some products serve the purpose of your organization’s requirements better than the others. Through this blog we intend to create a comparative study of two of the commonly used platforms for document management- Microsoft SharePoint and Opentext Documentum.

A brief about each of them.

The EMC Documentum platform provides essential capabilities for managing enterprise content and is the foundation for our enterprise content management and intelligent case management offerings.  

Primarily a document management and storage system, SharePoint has come a long way from its initial release. It comes integrated with Microsoft Office and is highly configurable.

Both these platforms offer the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard, meaning you can use them use them in to get content from different content management systems. Let’s explore few key features one-on-one.

Security: Both SharePoint and Documentum offer secure repositories with multiple encryptions. The documents can have different level of access controls. However, Documentum offers better access controls as you can refine security on individual level. While OpenText Documentum offers fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing; it does not offer security once the information is shared with a third-party. SharePoint on the other hand offers options for online security in the form of controlled access. SharePoint online offers encryption of data in transit, automatic virus detection, control access based on network location, and manage external sharing with some in-built settings.  

Storage and Scalability: Documentum follows an optimized storage management however, it is does not offer cloud storage. If you plan to implement OpenText Documentum who must invest in storage infrastructure upfront. However, with Office 365 you pay as per your requirement and can easily scale up in the future.

User-Experience: Customer Feedback across major IT sites have suggested that SharePoint is relatively easier use compared to OpenText Documentum.

Pricing: The market share of users for both these two products is highly lopsided towards SharePoint because of the pricing. The high pricing and lack of cloud support makes OpenText Documentum suitable for medium to large scale industries, who can afford to maintain a different cloud storage.

Support: Both these products offer premium technical support.  

To wrap up, SharePoint offers decent document management, cloud storage and great collaboration. Documentum on the other hand, offers great functionalities; however, it comes with a bigger price tag. This together with the absence of a cloud storage is what makes it a less popular choice between the two.

[i2econsultingus]

Why Pharmaceutical Industry is Tapping in Cloud Technology Now More Than Ever?

Pharmaceutical companies deal with a vast amount of sensitive and intellectual data daily, this together with compliance and regulatory guidelines holds them from adopting cloud technology. While their reservations could not be nullified a few years back but today cloud technology has evolved and provides improved privacy, security, and compliance. This is evident as the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society analytics survey reports that over 83% of pharmaceutical companies are already using cloud technology.  This makes us wonder what has changed in recent years that has led to pharmaceuticals embracing the cloud.

Cloud is Not Just Storage Solutions

Cloud today addresses significant privacy, security, and compliance challenges that the pharmaceutical industry faces. They have certifications that show cloud complies with health security and privacy regulations of the countries where organizations do business, which has helped develop trust among pharma companies. No leading cloud service provider is limited to storage; cloud is beyond infrastructure. In addition to a storage solution, cloud offers many functionalities that help collaborate better, access published research more quickly, and minimize human error.  

Cloud Computing is Transforming the Way Pharmaceutical Industry Works  

If you are a Drug Discovery Company, you can avail cloud-based high-performance computing (HPC). This will help researchers on-demand access to virtually unlimited storage and computing resources that can help organize resources and guide initial surveys thereby saving valuable time during early R&D stages. There are number of organizations who have tapped in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning of cloud analytics to speed up commercial results. Who better than Drug Development Company to understand the importance of clinical trials? Cloud today offers social listening tools that help understand volunteer experience in clinical trials. This increases security, reduces trial dropouts, and speeds up drug developments. In addition, the cloud also helps researchers aggregate clinical data and analyze them at the granular level. Pharmaceuticals often collaborate to discover and develop are not uncommon. Cloud can help companies come together to share a common platform while keeping independent data secured.

Why Cloud?

Trust: Security and privacy are paramount in the pharma industry; cloud data centers take every care to ensure your organization meets the compliance requirements of regulators. Periodic updates and automatic security patches ensure data safety. Scalability: Cloud provides storage for processing massive amount of data. Depending on your need you can scale up or scale down instantly. Economics: Few organizations have the resources to set up and manage largescale data centers. Cloud service enables you to free up resources and you can easily scale up as and when required. Choice: Choose public, private or hybrid cloud for your organization depending on your requirement.

Choose the right cloud service with these checklists:

Does it provide certificates, that it complies health, regulation and security regulations of the country you do business in?

Does it offer more than infrastructures, such as platforms that support core functions for productivity, communications, and analytics?

Does it work on-premise?

Does it work across multiple devices and technologies from multiple clouds?

The cloud computing in pharmaceutical industry market is projected to experience record growth as regulatory issues are expected to resolve amid settling security fears. Pharmaceutical companies increasingly look to cloud services to focus on bringing safe, effective drugs to market as quickly as possible. We at i2e, provide Azure cloud service, migration and consulting to help pharmaceuticals harness the power of cloud. Please feel free to contact us for any queries.