Accelerate organizational agility with SharePoint

SharePoint Document Management System Pharmaceuticals | DMS Pharma |

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 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. So, not only are your documents tamper-proof, you get an audit trail too. Validation is important and what better way then blockchain. Pre-defined templates: There are certain fixed regulatory standards when it comes to document 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( Abbreviated New Drug Application) submissions are more common than you think. Such document templates with proper document review workflow will ensure documents are created, reviewed, and approved on the first cut. Automated workflows: This is a very basic yet 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 provide. 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 have 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.

How SharePoint is being used in pharmaceutical industry.

A growing number of global pharmaceutical companies are deploying SharePoint as the means to manage teams and projects. Microsoft Sharepoint is a browser-based collaboration and document management platform. It is a full-fledged content management system allowing groups to set-up a centralized, password protected space for document sharing. SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office. It is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is said to have multiple applications in various fields and the usage varies substantially between organizations.The Pharmaceutical industry is rapidly gaining proportions to be reputed as one of the fastest growing and most crucial businesses. And here is why Sharepoint is preferable. Pharma companies have two principal needs for collaborative documentation: one, the need for a flexible platform that provides a basis for ad hoc collaboration of project teams without the intervention of IT, and two, the need to consolidate the plethora of legacy systems acquired over decades, which are expensive to maintain.Enterprise content management (ECM) is a set of defined processes, strategies and tools that allow a business to effectively obtain, organize, store and deliver critical information to its employees, business stakeholders and customers.SharePoint allows for storage, retrieval, searching, archiving, tracking, management, and reporting on electronic documents and records. Many of the functions in this product are designed around various legal, information management, and process requirements in organizations. SharePoint also provides search and 'graph' functionality.With the emergence of SharePoint as a viable ECM platform, pharmaceutical companies are evaluating its role in their enterprise content management architecture and strategy. Some believe that it's role should be initially limited to accessing content stored in other environments, and there are tools available on the market to address that requirement. But, other companies are ready to make the move and use SharePoint to manage and store their regulated content. For those companies, it is encouraging that the market is responding with solutions targeted specifically at managing controlled content in pharmaceutical companies.Some companies struggle with how to approach the validation of life sciences applications built on a platform that includes both controlled and uncontrolled content. SharePoint makes this easy by allowing you deploy an independent web application/site collection or controlled sites for regulated documents and processes.As long as there is a clear separation between controlled (validated) and non-controlled environments, the two environments can co-exist and it is compliant. The validation would be limited to the controlled environment. This architecture model offers both flexibility and control and reduces validation / change control scope.Hence, given the critical nature of activities of the pharmaceutical companies, it is fitting to state that SharePoint is a powerful platform for the management.

How to Collaborate Better with SharePoint and Teams

The events of 2020 have accelerated cloud adoption by many folds, and we are moving towards a future where cloud is not a good to have but rather the default solution. When it comes to online collaboration tolls, people often get confused with SharePoint and Teams or how SharePoint fits into the modern collaboration space of Microsoft with Teams’ popularity. To use a product efficiently, it's important to understand a minimum about it. In this blog we will try to explain some behind the scenes of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, and how these two enable productivity and collaboration. What is SharePoint Online? SharePoint is a collaborative and communication platform used to build intranets. It comes with a build in cloud storage that helps share and manage content, knowledge, and applications anytime anywhere. It also powers file collaboration across the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. What is Microsoft Teams? Microsoft Teams is a chat-based collaboration platform. It brings everyday workplace tools, apps, and services to one place. Collaborate on documents, plan on projects, or get data insights. Teams is the hub for teamwork for you. It’s not a place to store files. Since its inception in 2021, SharePoint has been Microsoft’s gold standard for collaboration in the workplace, and continued it’s run for over two decades. However, with pandemic accelerated digital adoption, the rage has been all about Teams. This popularity is only going to increase because Teams has achieved what SharePoint could not all these years. It’s simple and user-friendly. Teams has achieved what SharePoint could not achieve on all these years. It’s simple and user-friendly. The number of active users of Teams jumped from 75 million in April 2020 to 115 million in October 2020 to 145 million in April 2021, which has also influenced the increase in SharePoint usage. Microsoft says that SharePoint Online now has 200 million monthly active users. Wonder how? Let’s go behind the scenes. Behind the scenes: Teams and SharePoint Let’s understand how Microsoft Teams and SharePoint interact with each other. Let’s say we create a Marketing Team in Teams, to better discuss, communicate and plan campaigns with co-workers. As we do so, a SharePoint site name Marketing Team automatically gets created. For those you aren’t familiar with the concept of SharePoint site, consider it as a container within which all your files and document libraries are stored. For every channel we create in Teams, a folder within the SharePoint document library gets created automatically. The documents we access in Teams aren’t stored within Teams they are stored in SharePoint site by the name of your team (in our case Marketing Team). We can access, edit, review these SharePoint files from the “Files tab” within a channel in Teams. This eliminates re-uploads every time edits are made. Same goes for Projects created within Teams. SharePoint is the centralized place where all the content and files that users share within the team are stored. In a way, it powers the collaboration within Teams. SharePoint powers collaboration within Teams Thus, SharePoint brings in content storage and Teams is where things get done. Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online are in essence a dynamic duo for virtual collaboration. It’s not if we should go for SharePoint or Teams, if you are using Teams, we are capitalizing on SharePoint storage. Hope this blog helped clear some confusion on SharePoint and Teams. Next up, we will discuss SharePoint Governance. Whether you are looking for SharePoint migration, a complete newbie to the Microsoft universe or exploring online collaboration tools in general- a good governance policy is paramount.