Cabeus

BACKGROUND

Can you please give me a brief description of your company?

We are a major international pharmaceutical corporation with divisions in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics.

What is your position and responsibilities?

I was global head of infrastructure integration, I was overseeing from an IT infrastructure perspective the merger of our company and a major acquired company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals for that project?

We needed to come up with a document management strategy for the joint enterprise.

Did you use Documentum or this was SharePoint?

The acquiring company was using Documentum for regulated documents and then SharePoint for the non-regulated environment. The company we were acquiring used Google Docs and to some extent SharePoint for all documentation.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Cabeus to work with?

My company issued a brief RSP and Cabeus was known to us because Bala[owner of Cabeus] used to work at our company. Bala [owner of Cabeus] was a known entity. We had three respondents from the RFP that we considered to be serious players in the space. We had each in for an interview to determine how they would do the project. Based on methods and knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry and our specific environment here, we ultimately selected Cabeus.

Can you tell me about the scope of the project and specifically what parts Cabeus was involved with?

The scope of the project was to analyze the document management environments both at our company and the acquired company. We needed to analyze what the regulatory environment was for those documents and classify them. We subsequently chose a solution proposal, which would meet the needs of the joint company for secure document storage in a regulated environment plus a highly useable and friendly solution for the non-regulated environment.

Were any other technologies used besides EMC Documentum, Microsoft Sharepoint, and Google Docs?

There was a plethora of other things. There was some OpenText Hummingbird for the law department. There were also some customized programs that we use internally.

Can you give us a sense of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours?

We spent somewhere around $200,000. It involved two people for the first two months and then one person from Cabeus worked with us for the last four months. So in terms of months, it’s about eight months of full-time work.

When was the project completed?

June, 2010.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have stats or metrics to track improvement?

Nothing quantitative because the result was a presentation made to Global senior IT executive management on behalf of my team. It was more of a directional study to determine our IT direction post-merger. So the issue was how to consolidate multiple environments into a cogent direction as opposed to driving efficiencies or driving cost.

Actually, the employee feedback has been quite good. Employees were frustrated by the amount of different document management products we were using. Our solution basically called for two-pronged approached. One approach was for the regulated space and the other approach was for the non-regulated space. Employees are happy with how the system is running and they like that we have a defined approach with less overall platforms to learn.

How did Cabeus perform?

I thought they did a great job. I knew that this space was politically sensitive. We were merging with another company. So you have factions on that side, factions on this side. Also, the technology space is not that straightforward.

Bala’s [owner of Cabeus] and Nischal’s [Associate at Cabeus] knowledge of the pharmaceutical field is tremendous as is their knowledge in the document management space. Cabeus bridged those two worlds and their approach was very logical, it was very inclusive and they took things forward in a practical way to a logical conclusion.

I was very happy with their performance and they actually wound up gaining a lot of credibility from this project. Their conclusion was well-accepted and respected.

When working with Cabeus, was there anything unique or special about them compared to other companies?

Cabeus became one of us. They really immersed themselves into our environment. Cabeus’ in-depth knowledge of both the industry and document management and collaboration space in general is unique.

It was never them versus us like it can be with other consultants. They were part of our team, which is also unique.

Looking back on the project is there any area that you think they could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

It was a highly successful initiative and I can't say that there’s anything that I would differently. The cost of $200,000 in retrospect is small for a collaboration/document management strategy that our company is going to live by for years. I would say it was a bargain. There’s really nothing that I would say could be improved upon.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide background information about your company?

We’re a medium-sized pharmaceutical company. We’re based out of New York primarily focused on the domestic market although we are staffed internationally now. We have about 6,000 employees. We have two data centers in the US. We have approximately 6 to 7 billion dollars in market capitalization.

What is your role and responsibilities?

My title was Enterprise Content Architect at the time. I was the IT liaison of a records and information program, which was part of a broader initiative to improve our litigation document management process.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals?

There were primary, secondary, and tertiary business goals involved. My agenda was to embed a lightweight records management capacity within our SharePoint environment. The business goal for the broader organization was to improve the operational state of the SharePoint environment so that it could be truly leveraged on an enterprise level because it was really being used primarily by one set.

Why did your team choose SharePoint?

There were three business objectives that were put forward for SharePoint. One was to establish an enterprise collaboration platform. Our needs for content management had more to do with collaboration and that was the enterprise level driver.

There were specific business needs within our R&D business area that made SharePoint appear to be the best option.

The third potential business use was for records and information management. When we initially implemented SharePoint, we decided it wasn’t ready for this purpose. We needed some customization to improve SharePoint in this area. It was a quality records management platform from the standpoint of a traditional records management platform where you’re classifying individual files.

SOLUTION

What was your process for selecting Cabeus to work with?

They were referred to us from an outside source. I engaged our leadership team and got their backing to put together a governance team. I felt that my company needed the knowledge, some consultations to really help with pulling everything together.

Cabeus was a known entity in the governance area so it was an easy choice to work with them. I did an assessment and determined that Cabeus could do the job well.

What parts of the project was Cabeus involved with?

Cabeus was involved with establishing the approach, running demos, drafting the governance model and the business and technology strategy. Cabeus also provided consultation as we were going through the vetting process to find clients and stakeholders. There wasn’t much technology delivery. It was a governance and consultation project.

Were there any other technologies used besides SharePoint?

No.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours?

It was slightly over $100,000.

When was the project completed?

Almost two years ago in 2011.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any stats or metrics that can kind of track improvement after you worked with them?

I do not have explicit metrics but they improved the system a lot. The governance model they created led to a more robust and efficient system. Everyone from our team began to understand their roles and tasks.

How did Cabeus perform overall?

I was very pleased with Cabeus' performance. The domain knowledge was definitely there. It was a partnership. I didn’t feel like I had to always check their deliverables and monitor them.

When working with Cabeus, was there anything unique or special about them compared to some other companies?

I felt like I got better value for my money because this was a partnership. I didn’t feel like I was just another client. We have worked with large consulting firms in the past that didn’t treat us as true partners.

Looking back on the project was there any area that you think Cabeus could improve upon or you would do differently?

This is probably just the nature of strategy consulting but it did seem like we built everything kind of from scratch as opposed to having plug-and-play pieces. We were breaking new ground but it would have been nice to have some established materials to work from.

BACKGROUND

Can you please provide a brief description of your company?

We are a medical device company. We’ve been in business for over 100 years. Our corporate office is located in Franklin Lakes. We have offices and manufacturing sites around the world. We make class I, II, and III devices.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the Director of corporate regulatory global systems. I am responsible for providing computer systems to enable the regulatory affairs associates to do their jobs more efficiently.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What were your company’s business goals for undertaking the project with Cabeus?

Our goal was to find a more efficient way to gather all of the regulatory affairs operating plans that come from the businesses and countries when they’re planning for registrations for products around the world. There’s a collaboration between the business and the countries to look at the list of the products they want to register each year. So there’s always a dialogue back and forth.

Our team creates Excel spreadsheets and we’ve taken harmonized them by columns. Within each cell, it was really messy and loose in the sense that there was no harmonized nomenclature to use.  Looking from one country to another and the businesses, nothing matched. The other hurdle we had was that everyone would create these disparate spreadsheets and then the businesses would have to compile those into one integrated form. That was a lot of extra work, data entry, and clean up. That really isn’t their job.

Cabeus came in and we said, let’s look at the SharePoint solution, which they use to view a list . Now, everyone can work in one place together in a sense that we could enter everything in, have it visible for approval, and also have Gantt charts against the dates. We now have a KPI kind of dashboard view. We harmonized all of the nomenclature that we’re using in another system of registrations. This enhances synergy.

We brought this problem statement to Cabeus and they started to gather some requirements. We put the requirements together also. They assisted us in that exercise. And then they started to go through the development of the system for us.

We presented to the leadership team last week, and they were thrilled. So it’s going to save them a lot of time. They won’t have to do any more cleaning up of the Excel spreadsheets. There’s none of that combining and integrating into one spreadsheet. They’ll be able to view all of this in one list, and filter the list however they want to see it either by country or business or by product even. So I think their solution is really elegant and clean and easy. I think it will be easy to use.

Yeah, what we have to do now is migrate the old spreadsheets, we have to do some data cleaning to get it into the system. And they’re going to help us with that as well. And then once everything’s in, we’re going to be using it for the 2014 operating plan which they’ll start using in December. We want to try to get it all clean and released and tested, make sure it’s working and get people trained by then.

SOLUTION

Why did your company select SharePoint?

I knew that SharePoint works in lists and that was really the solution in my mind. Everyone is entering into one place, and they can all enter it at the same time. With Excel spreadsheets, if it’s open, someone else has it open it. You can’t collaborate, it can’t work together.

There were also some cascading lists that I needed to have created, which I knew were a little bit tricky in SharePoint and I knew Cabeus knew how to do that. We have product families, product types and brand names. If you pick a family, it will shorten the list into product type. And then you pick the type and that shortens the list even more for brand names. So all of that kind of intelligence built into it was attractive. However, I needed the expertise of Cabeus to assist me.

Was the filtering tool in SharePoint very effective for your organization?

Yes, we didn’t have a robust Microsoft Project plan, but at least it showed me Gantt chart views that we can edit. We put dates in, we can look at it through a Gantt chart view if we wanted to, which was also important.

Some of the dashboard views of things were really nice as well. That makes everything easier to view and quicker to work with.

Reporting to management is so much easier. Cabeus was able to show us. We showed the team that as well, and they were really thrilled.

What was your process for selecting Cabeus to work with?

I knew Bala, who is the president. We met while working on a project together for a previous organization.

We started discussing the information. He’s a regulatory person, so he totally understands and gets the problems and solutions. So it’s nice having someone from a regulatory background. It’s a strong background. And then his partner, Ravi, is the software person and the coder. He is also really easy to work with. It’s great.

Were they involved in planning, design, development and support?

Yes. They helped with the design. They helped with some of the documentation and some of the demoing of the systems and the support. They’ll help with some of the support as we roll it out. If we have problems, they’ll support us.

Were any other technologies used besides SharePoint?

Not for this project.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or personnel hours?

It’s not an expensive project. I would say it’s $75,000 at most. They spent a few months working on this or us. A lot of it is because we’ve even been making changes. For the initial first look at the prototype, it was probably one month. Then, we started showing it to the teams and they made comments. We were constantly going back and forth, tweaking the system to make it better. Now, we’re just doing iterations and things.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any stats or metrics to track efficiency improvements?

Not yet, but we will. We’re going to see two things. Some of it’s a soft metric. Some of it is more the visibility and the transparency of the system, which you can’t measure. I think what we’ll see is an efficiency in terms of getting a finalized plan quicker than they would in thepast.  The other metric would be how easily we’ll be able to know across the globe what we’re trying to register and what was registered. I think that’s going to be two big metrics that we’ll be able to track as we go forward. Now, we don’t have anything yet.

How did Cabeus perform?

They did swimmingly. They’re really easy to work with, flexible. We enjoy working with them.

What’s unique or special about Cabeus compared to some other companies that you may have worked with?

Bala [The Owner] is intimately involved in the project, that’s really helpful. Sometimes with larger firms, you get an account manager that may not really understand your job exactly.

Bala understands our issues, Cabeus understands it. He will translate that to his software coder who’s sitting right there. So usually when they go back to make iterations, it’s usually correct when it comes back to us. We don’t have a lot of back and forth, because I think they have a good understanding in the beginning.

With other companies, sometimes you have to go around a few times.

Thinking about the project, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

I know they kind of underbid the project a little bit to try to get our business. Later, they realized they shortchanged themselves in terms of the amount of work. They needed more time than what was predicted initially. However, they would do some of the iterations for free just because they locked themselves in at a certain price point. I don’t think they would do that again but overall there are no glaring weaknesses.