Update SharePoint as ECM solution for Pharma Companies

A growing number of global pharmaceutical companies are deploying SharePoint as the means to manage the Process.

Companies cite two principal reasons for adoption: 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.

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 SharePoint’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 to using 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.

While analysing the need of Pharmaceutical Company, it is found that following are the biggest concerns:

Key Summary

This article from InApps Technology, authored by Phu Nguyen, discusses the adoption of Microsoft SharePoint as an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution by pharmaceutical companies to address critical operational and compliance needs. It highlights SharePoint’s flexibility and ability to consolidate legacy systems, making it a viable platform for managing regulated content. Key points include:

• Reasons for Adoption:
  • Flexibility: Enables ad hoc collaboration for project teams without IT intervention, supporting dynamic workflows.
  • Consolidation: Replaces costly, fragmented legacy systems accumulated over decades, streamlining content management.
• Role in ECM:
  • Some companies use SharePoint to access content stored in other systems, supported by available integration tools.
  • Others fully leverage SharePoint to store and manage regulated content, with market solutions tailored for pharmaceutical needs.
• Key Concerns Addressed by SharePoint:
  • Intellectual Property Protection:
    • SharePoint’s integrated permissions ensure data access is restricted to authorized users.
    • Integration with Active Directory Rights Management Services (ADRMS) extends protection to files outside SharePoint (e.g., password-protecting files on local drives).
  • Risk & Compliance Management:
    • Addresses inconsistent handling of service/complaint issues and ensures drug safety monitoring compliance.
    • Uses Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) features like permissions and approval workflows for automated escalations and faster execution.
  • Cross-Functional Communication:
    • Facilitates collaboration among departments (e.g., pricing, sales, planning) via shared document workflows.
    • Tracks changes, merges comments, and presents a unified document view, simplifying multi-departmental processes.
  • Research & Development (R&D) Portfolio:
    • Integrates R&D into portfolio reviews to assess technical/commercial uncertainties and funding impacts.
    • Supports accurate valuation of new chemical entities (NCE) and product line extensions (PLE), risk/return calculations, and resource allocation decisions.
    • Identifies revenue gaps for in-licensing compounds.
  • Business Intelligence:
    • Overcomes challenges of integrating data from multiple sources/vendors and handling incomplete/bad data.
    • Provides real-time, 360-degree customer views through dashboards integrating sales, market activity, and marketing data.
    • Enables drill-down reports and detailed activity tracking for brand planning and focused marketing.
• InApps Insight:
  • InApps Technology leverages SharePoint alongside React Native, ReactJS, Microsoft’s Power Platform, and Azure, using Power Fx for low-code solutions and Azure Durable Functions for scalable workflows.
  • Combines Node.js, Vue.js, GraphQL APIs (e.g., Apollo), and Azure to deliver tailored ECM solutions, targeting startups and enterprises, particularly in regulated industries like pharmaceuticals.
• Call to Action:
  • Contact InApps to explore SharePoint-based ECM solutions or develop eCommerce and enterprise applications for pharmaceutical companies.

Intellectual Property Protection

Success of any Pharmaceutical Company depends on its Intellectual property, and the biggest worry for the company is safety of this Intellectual property.

To gain larger market any Pharma Co will need Intellectual property Bank, and how they are storing this important data is also critical for the business.

SharePoint has integrated Permissions tightly within itself, so you can rely on SharePoint for safety as the one who don’t have access to data can’t see the data.

Going one step ahead, you can integrate ADRMS (Active Directory Rights Management Services) and now you safeguard this documents outside SharePoint too, imagine a scenario, you had one important file regarding patient on your local hard disk drive, and your local admin has access to your machine,

so eventually that file, but with this ADRMS integration, you can password protect this files outside SharePoint too, so that your valuable data remains in your control only.

Risk & Compliance Management

In most pharmaceutical companies, there is always a need to improve inconsistent handling of service and complaint issues related to their marketed products.

From both regulatory and business liability perspectives, it is critically important to pharmaceutical and medical device companies that they have robust and compliant drug safety monitoring processes.

We can achieve the same using Out Of the Box (OOTB) features of SharePoint mainly through permissions and Approval workflows.

It can support Auto Escalations also after predefined time, which can lead in faster execution.

Cross Functional Communication

We can bring together cross-functional (e.g. pricing, sales, planning) stakeholders to discuss the inter dependencies and brainstorm an optimal future state that accounted for their various needs.

This collaborative process can lead organizational buy-in and better communication that continues to permeate the culture even after implementation is completed.

Just consider an organization with 15 departments and the document has to through all the departments, this can be nightmare for the boss or document owner to track the changes or merge the comments and represent them in single view, SharePoint can be the solution in this case, it will allow single document to transits through multiple departments, it can capture the comments, get involved in approval and at last present itself as finished document.

Research & Development (R&D) Portfolio

Main Problem with R&D is to calibrate the impact of technical and commercial uncertainties and funding options on the expected value of specific R&D projects.
To address this, SharePoint can involve R&D portfolio in the company’s portfolio review process. As an impact Client can continuously improve their R&D process and tools.

Client can now make accurate estimates of the value of investment opportunities in new chemical entities (NCE) and product line extensions (PLE).

Generate risk/return calculations that support the R&D management team’s resource allocation decisions.

Identify expected revenue gaps to be filled by in licensing compounds.

Business Intelligence (Get single view from multiple source of data)

Multiple source systems. Multiple data vendors. Incomplete data. Bad data. Looking for insights by hand. Paying too much for the result; getting too little in return.

Those are just some of the challenges pharmaceutical companies face in trying to integrate data and derive insights to improve sales and marketing. Today, pharmaceutical companies rely on data-driven insights, which require reports and performance metrics available at executives’ fingertips.

Pharmaceutical executives need real-time, 360-degree views of customers for brand planning, focused marketing, promotions and campaigns. But building a platform to integrate data and deriving insights can take years. How can companies integrate and interpret mountains of data to get a 360-degree view of customers without resorting to laborious and manual processes.

SharePoint has Business Intelligence features which can help achieve this in the form of dashboard that integrated sales, market activity, marketing programs and other data.
Develop drill-down reports that gave information on multiple dimensions for individual brands

Completed a “360-degree” informational view that showed detailed activity and reports for key customers

Risk

Using SharePoint, it is possible to address above concerns. System can also take care of certain pharma risks listed