The Document Hunter: Why Life Sciences Document Management Has Failed
I was talking with a client the other day and asked her what her greatest challenge was in producing her clinical study reports. As a seasoned document management user from a Top 10 pharma organization with document management systems in place since the mid-90’s, I expected her answer to be something like “automatic generation of study report structures,” “intelligent hyperlinking” or “component authoring” – all hot topics in the world of Life Sciences advanced document management. Her answer, however, startled me: “Finding the documents that I need. Today, I am nothing more than a document hunter.”
Wow. In fact, double wow with a little jaw dropping. Not only was this answer focused on some pretty basic stuff, it was, startlingly, the same basic stuff I heard from people 15 years ago when the first of these Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems started going in. So, what happened?
1) Companies lost sight of the basics – With all the bells and whistles available for document management systems today, companies seem to have often lost sight of the basics. For example, users may have the ability to run an enterprise search engine across multiple data and document sources, but if the results are meaningless or too broad, they are useless. And this is just one example; there are many more, from intricate taxonomies, to integrations and technical architectures so complex that they are nearly impossible to maintain.
2) Processes became more collaborative and global, but systems did not – The past 5 years have seen tremendous change in the way the life sciences industry works. More than ever, companies are creating collaborative networks across organizations and across the globe. However, document management technologies continue to remain siloed and stuck behind a corporate firewall so thick that the only way to work together with others outside the organization is to duplicate, email and find other ways of sharing information. This practice, while well intentioned, only adds to the difficulty of finding and managing information.
3) We let the word “Enterprise” = “Complex” instead of “Collaborative” – Some of the best and most useful technologies are also the simplest to use. Think Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Snapfish and other consumer-facing technologies that have taken activities far more complex than finding a document and made them easy for even the most novice of technology users.
4) Technology became a barrier, not an enabler – When did this happen? 15 years ago, document management technologies made submissions production times shorter, publishing easier, and document review and approval better. At what point did this same enabling technology grow so complex that we started hearing things like “I can’t get the report finished because the system isn’t working”; “I can’t find anything in my document management system”; and “I can’t share that document with you because I can’t give you access to our systems”? Ask a document management end-user if their technology is helping or hindering them, and you will most likely get a resigned (and resounding) sighhhhhhhhhh.
So where do we go from here? How do we make sure that document management system users have the tools they need to work effectively? How do we return to a model of technology enablers and not technology barriers?
I’ll be sharing some thoughts on these questions in our next blog post. In the meantime, I welcome your comments on your own challenges using EDM systems.
Jen Goldsmith is the Vice President of Veeva Vault. Contact her at jen.goldsmith@veevasystems.com