Life Sciences organizations are navigating increasingly complex research and compliance environments, and information services play a critical role in supporting innovation and decision-making.
In our three-part interview series, we spoke with CCC experts to gain insight into best practices companies can take to support the implementation, adoption, and long-term success of these services.
In part one of our series, Caleb Keen, Senior Manager, Client Engagement & Delivery, shares practical insights into how Life Sciences organizations can approach implementation and onboarding in a way that supports long-term success. Keen works closely with clients to introduce new technology solutions, manage global implementations, and ensure successful onboarding across complex research environments.
What are some of the most important considerations clients should keep in mind during the early stages of implementing new technology?
Keen: The first thing to do is identify who your primary internal stakeholders are and engage representatives from those teams early in the implementation process. CCC takes a consultative, iterative approach to implementing our software and the more internal clients we can consult the more tailored the training and user experience at “go live.” This also makes it much more likely we will identify ‘must haves’ early in the process so that we can meet those business or workflow requirements within the initial implementation.
It’s also a good idea to get started identifying and cataloging your content as soon as possible. Partners, like CCC, with a wealth of experience and support services can assist clients through this process, so the earlier you can reach out to them, the better.
Our clients often find that important journal article or other document collections are spread out across their business, and it takes longer than they’d anticipated to manage the metadata and assets.
How do your teams balance speed of deployment against quality and compliance when working with clients in highly regulated industries like Life Sciences?
Keen: We manage requirements for gathering, configuring, testing, and training in parallel under the direction of an experienced technical implementation manager. This eliminates unnecessary delays and project bottlenecks.
We’ve never had a client who was ready for “go live” have to wait for CCC to finish a requirement so they could roll-out to their enterprise. Our Delivery team has decades of combined experience implementing Life Science companies on our software and are ready to implement proven solutions that meet the requirements of the regulatory and compliance scenarios our clients face. That includes custom reporting that can help you easily manage Regulatory and PV audits.
Our experience, combined with deep product and technical acumen, means you don’t have to wait while requirements are passed between internal teams who have their own sets of priorities and schedules. Everything is managed by our assigned implementation specialist.
What best practices have you seen help clients get up and running smoothly and efficiently?
Keen: We’ve found that many clients need a solution to support core business needs ASAP while recognizing that not all essential configurations and data migration can be accomplished within a week.
We utilize a phased approach that enables a core group of users to be up and running on features like Document Delivery, the enterprise Digital Library, and even Personal & Shared Libraries just a few days after contract signature. The CCC technology platform allows us to build out the rest of the functionality around this initial group of users while they accomplish fundamental business objectives.
We also recognize that different groups of users in Life Science companies have different needs. Med Affairs and R&D users often have different workflow or business challenges, and our team can present tailored workflow and configuration advice to meet those requirements.
Considering how many stakeholders are needed for the solution as early as possible in the implementation is a core objective of our practice.
How do you and your teams work with clients to align onboarding with their existing systems architecture, workflows, and culture?
Keen: We have decades of combined experience transitioning clients from their existing 3rd party or internal content management solutions to our suite of products. CCC is a leader in the content management and copyright compliance space, and we’re skilled at managing metadata about content and associated rights. We know that identifying core data assets as early as possible in the process is critical. We are happy to assist with every step, including metadata assembly and export, migration of document metadata and full text content, and full copyright analysis of existing document libraries. We then import and test all migrated data before the enterprise onboards to the final product.
Can you share an example of where a thoughtful and consultative onboarding of new software made a significant difference in a client’s long-term success?
Keen: We once implemented our complete suite of services with a large, Boston-area pharmaceutical company and approximately halfway through requirements gathering we discovered that a major stakeholder group was missing functionality critical to performing their role. The client lead told us that if the requirements of this team couldn’t be accommodated, they would need to halt the implementation and reconsider their options.
We brought in our product owner and sat down with the team in question, mapped requirements for their core workflows, and implemented changes that met their needs by the conclusion of the remainder of the scheduled implementation. Even after this company was acquired by a multinational pharmaceutical company, that core workflow is still in use to this day, and the functionality we developed to support them is now in use with many other clients.
Experiences like that reinforce an important lesson for us that successful implementation comes down to listening to stakeholders and adapting to real workflows. When onboarding is collaborative and flexible, organizations are set up for long-term success, and everything that follows becomes much smoother.