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Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical IndustryA review of current working practices

Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration

in the Pharmaceutical Industry

A review of current working practices

Table of Contents

FOREWORD ............................................................................................................................. 1 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY....................................................................................................... 2 2. STUDY OBJECTIVE ............................................................................................................. 3 3. THE INDUSTRY FACES PROFOUND CHALLENGES ....................................................... 4 4. THE IMPORTANCE OF COLLABORATION ....................................................................... 5

4.1 WHAT IS COLLABORATION? ................................................................................................ 5 4.2 THE NEED FOR COLLABORATION ........................................................................................ 6 4.3 KNOWLEDGE COLLABORATION ........................................................................................... 6

5. THE GLOBAL ENTERPRISE ............................................................................................... 8 5.1 CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS ARE THE NORM ....................................................................... 9 5.2 THE MOVE TO VIRTUAL TEAMS ......................................................................................... 10 5.3 MANAGING GLOBAL DIVERSITY......................................................................................... 11 5.4 ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT IN PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES ............................................. 12

6. IGNORE CULTURAL ISSUES AT YOUR PERIL............................................................... 15 6.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF RELATIONSHIPS FOR EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION............................. 16 6.2 THE FORMATION OF THE 24/7 CULTURE............................................................................ 17 6.3 LANGUAGE BARRIERS IMPEDE COLLABORATION ................................................................ 17 6.5 ORGANISATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR COLLABORATION ....................................................... 17

7. THE BACKBONE FOR COLLABORATION ...................................................................... 18 7.1 INTRANET ........................................................................................................................ 19 7.2 GROUPWARE................................................................................................................... 21

8. CURRENT COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE ....................................................................... 22 8.1 AUDIO ............................................................................................................................. 23 8.2 AUDIO CONFERENCING .................................................................................................... 24 8.3 VOIP............................................................................................................................... 24 8.4 PRESENCE AWARENESS................................................................................................... 24 8.5 INSTANT MESSAGING ....................................................................................................... 25 8.6 EMAIL.............................................................................................................................. 25 8.7 SHARED WORKSPACES.................................................................................................... 26 8.8 DATA REPOSITORIES ....................................................................................................... 27 8.9 ELECTRONIC LAB NOTEBOOKS ......................................................................................... 28 8.10 PORTALS....................................................................................................................... 29 8.11 EXPERTISE LOCATORS................................................................................................... 30 8.12 NET MEETINGS.............................................................................................................. 30 8.13 VIDEOCONFERENCING.................................................................................................... 31 8.14 FACE-TO-FACE.............................................................................................................. 32 8.15 SUMMARY OF ATTITUDES TO CURRENT COLLABORATIVE TOOLS ...................................... 32

9. WINNING STRATEGIES FOR BETTER FUTURE COLLABORATION ............................ 33 9.1 SELECT THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGICAL COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENT................................ 33 9.2 ENSURE COLLABORATION IS CONTEXTUAL – INTUITIVE AND SEAMLESS............................... 35 9.3 CREATE THE CULTURE..................................................................................................... 36 9.4 MEASURE THE IMPACT ..................................................................................................... 36 9.5 PROMOTE THE BENEFITS TO IMPROVE ADOPTION ............................................................. 38

10. CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................ 39 11. APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................ 41

11.1 ABOUT THE AUTHORS .................................................................................................... 41 11.2 ENDNOTE ...................................................................................................................... 41 11.3 CONTACTS .................................................................................................................... 42

Winning Strategies for Effective Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Foreword

Considerable investment is being made by the pharmaceutical industry to enable teams to work

effectively together across departmental, functional, company and geographic boundaries.

This is a natural response given the complex nature of an industry where key success factors include:

• Global research, development and product team inter-working

• A knowledge based industry working on a project basis

• A global matrix working environment with many areas of deep expertise

• Critical partnerships with third parties such as Contract Research Organisations, universities

and biotechnology companies

When speed to market is critical, where informed and timely decisions can have large financial

implications, collaboration is a key factor to ensure value is delivered.

Investment in collaboration has varied tremendously across companies in both the level of investment

and the degree of success.

As a leading provider of collaborative solutions to the industry for many years, BT has developed a deep

understanding of the particular collaboration issues faced by the pharmaceutical industry – and how

they may be overcome to generate business improvements, improve cost management and deliver

increased shareholder value. Active reviews with many of our customers have revealed different

strategies in different stages of collaboration development.

We are acutely aware that the answer to improved collaboration lies in many areas such as corporate

culture, social networks, and trust between individuals – to name but a few. Technology is a strong

enabler to better collaboration but it must be intuitive, easy to use and enable natural people interaction

for widespread adoption.

We also believe that the correct technology, coupled with cost reductions, can allow richer social

collaboration and more intuitive usability. These factors include, but are not limited to:

• Advanced Interaction, including presence, all forms of messaging, conferencing, etc

• Collaborative work environments

• IP telephony and the ability to integrate voice and video with other solutions

• Ubiquitous broadband availability

• IT system improvements

• Reduced cost of bandwidth

It is against this background that BT commissioned this research to develop winning strategies for

collaboration … and to share them with all interested parties.

We are sure that you will find this report a valuable aid to improving your collaboration initiatives.

Gary Hawksworth, Healthcare Solutions, BT

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1. Executive Summary

In an environment of rising costs and increasing demands on productivity

and innovation, the challenge for today’s pharmaceutical company is to “do

more with less.” Having sought economies of scale and product pipeline

boosts through M&A activity, pharmaceutical companies are being forced

to look internally to seek the improvements needed to meet the

expectations of financial investors. Productivity gains at each phase,

however small, have an amplifying effect - “they don’t just add up, they

multiply.” Enterprises that fail to use modern communication technologies

and who do not leverage the knowledge base of their workers, limit the

potential for collaboration and run the very real risk of falling behind the

competition.

Collaborative solutions employ information systems to enable individuals or

groups of individuals to work concurrently on information. The result is that

the working environment behaves in the same way regardless of

geographical location, communication channel or device - and the benefits

apply to all:

• Advanced interaction

• Collaborative working

• Mobility

We are in the midst of a fundamental paradigm shift as new technologies

bring integrated voice, video, and web solutions to the pharmaceutical

desktop. Emerging collaborative solutions now offer the user the ability to

co-ordinate seamlessly between tools without the need to switch between

systems. Information can be shared in an integrated and synchronised

manner allowing decisions to be made on the most up-to-date information.

Collaborative solutions provide both hard, quantifiable benefits and many

soft, difficult to measure benefits. Even small productivity increases can

shave months off development times and provide millions of dollars in

savings; while the soft benefits such as improved management of

dispersed teams and faster decision making, accrue to deliver significant

productivity improvements.

Study findings highlighted the fact that collaboration is primarily about

behaviour not technology. Successful implementation of collaborative

working practice and collaborative tools requires:

• A corporate culture of openness and sharing

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• Rewards for effective team working and collaborative behaviour

• Appropriate and timely training to support the introduction of new tools

• Intuitive and straightforward solutions

• Integrated and linked solutions (contextual collaboration)

• Rigorous document and records management

• The impact of collaboration to be measured whilst at the same time

promoting the benefits

Although all pharmaceutical companies practice collaborative working, the

quality in many cases is poor and leaves significant room for improvement.

This report examines the relationship between the key elements of

technology and behaviour, and provides an insight into the winning

strategies for further improvements in business performance through

enhanced collaborative practice in the pharmaceutical industry.

2. Study Objective

The objective of this project was to review how well collaborative practice is

embedded in today’s pharmaceutical industry by understanding the

relationship between business performance, business processes and

collaborative behaviour. The project focused on the use of tools in normal

working practice and their relation to the culture and behaviour within the

organisation.

The study was based on 30 semi-structured, qualitative, in-depth interviews

conducted with a representative sample of executives from a wide range of

functional areas including discovery, clinical development and commercial.

Interview feedback was used to build an overall picture of the macro-

business processes which might benefit from improved collaborative

working. The majority of interviews were concentrated in the UK, and

where relevant North America and Continental Europe. Participant

companies included:

• AstraZeneca • BMS • Pfizer

• GSK • Eli Lilly • Wyeth/AHP

• Novartis • Roche • J&J

• Bayer • Sanofi-Aventis

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Industry Challenges

First to market pressure

Pressure to sustain product flow

Decreasing periods of exclusivity

Pressure to meet investor expectations

Patent expiries

Lack of new products

Generic competition

Healthcare cost containment

Spiralling R&D costs

M&A activity

Pace of globalization

Outsourcing and strategic partnering trends

Heightened regulatory demands

Managing vast amounts of information created by new technology

Managing geographically dispersed teams

Travel restrictions

3. The Industry Faces Profound Challenges

Today’s pharmaceutical industry exists in a fast-changing environment,

with mounting pressures exerted from many different directions including

regulatory constraints, rising costs, demands on productivity and

innovation, mergers and challenges to patent protection.

Drug development costs are reaching unsustainable levels - in 2003, in

excess of $900 million was required to take a product to market, as

opposed to $230 million in 1987.1 Blockbusters, which have driven

impressive growth in recent years, are becoming increasingly difficult to

find and the falling number of new medicines now means that R&D

productivity is a key issue. Just to keep pace with the annual industry

growth rate of 10%, the top 10 Pharma players need to launch at least 5

significant NCEs per year.2

Companies have invested heavily in new discovery technologies

characterised by the convergence of life sciences and information

technology. We are now entering a period where the promise of these

“New Sciences” will begin to deliver, but the application of new technology

has created an added problem in terms of the vast amounts of new data

that now need to be organised and managed.

Added to these factors are increasing regulatory demands and the need to

demonstrate the utility of new treatments versus existing treatments.

Recent concern about the safety of medicines in addition to the shrinking

willingness of the public to accept side effects, has led to some drug-safety

experts and lawmakers wanting even larger and longer clinical trials for

new drugs, further increasing development costs.

The research-based pharmaceutical industry has long been one of the

most complex and resource-intensive in the world - but complexity is now

increasing at a spectacular rate. In order to maximise the quality and speed

of the discovery and development process, companies are dramatically

increasing the collaborations within the different parts of R&D as well as

their reliance on external partners. This collaborative approach is the right

way to do business, but it adds a level of complexity to both intra- and inter-

functional interactions. Multiple units within an organisation must

collaborate across the extended enterprise i.e. not only with each other, but

also with external partners.

Exacerbating these complexities is the challenge of size. Consolidation

within the industry as well as organic growth, have created extremely large,

global organisations. Infrastructures are stretched to the limits,

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‘Collaboration has been a huge success - geographically dispersed teams recognised the need for a vehicle of communication over and above telephone and travel.’

inefficiencies are amplified and simple tasks such as access to data,

become cumbersome. Paradoxically, these very large organisations still

rely on high-innovation work and intensive small group collaboration.

Science innovation occurs best in smaller environments. A serious and

growing challenge is therefore for companies to re-create a small-company

environment within the larger organisation without harbouring “knowledge

silos.”

The result of these challenges is that the pharmaceutical industry now has

to do “more with less,” the response will require a fundamental change in

the traditional way companies operate internally; without this, increased

innovation - and increased profitability - is an improbable outcome.

4. The Importance of Collaboration

4.1 What is Collaboration?

The definition of collaborative working varies greatly from person to person

and from company to company, in its simplest form, secure collaborative

working uses information systems to enable individuals or groups of

individuals to work concurrently on information, no matter whether they are

dispersed or co-located.

Collaboration is already a huge part of the corporate way of life in the

pharmaceutical industry - employees rely on email, telephone and video

conferencing; they are also leveraging the capabilities of the digital

workplace to share knowledge and information with people across the

enterprise as well as with external networks. However, in reality not all

pharmaceutical companies have realised the true potential of collaborative

tools - much money has been spent in this area but crucially many

companies have omitted to invest in encouraging personal interaction, the

result being poor uptake and severe limitations on true collaborative

working.

To derive value from collaborative investments, collaboration must be

viewed as more than just technology deployment. This activity is about

behaviour, work habits, culture, leadership, management, and business

goals and value. Collaboration is a business strategy, not a tool strategy

and technology implementation alone does not change behaviour.

Collaboration strategies are now shifting from a focus on tools to the

integration of collaboration into business processes to improve

performance. Improving work practices within business processes requires

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‘Collaborative tools are just enablers - it is the human links that are crucial.’

‘Adoption of collaborative tools across the organisation is patchy. It all depends on culture and team leadership.’

collaboration “in context” while tapping into ‘communities of practice’ as

sources of best practice and innovation.

“Contextual collaboration” as it is known, has the potential to help

pharmaceutical companies bridge the gaps that chronically reduce

productivity such as the geographic dispersal of workers, the coordination

of management where there is joint responsibility, and working across

organisational boundaries and time zones. The goal is to make online

collaboration as simple and as intuitive as it is to work with people in the

same room; while extending the boundaries of that “room” to be

independent of function or geographic location.

4.2 The Need for Collaboration

Given the pressures that the pharmaceutical industry currently faces, it is

clear that even incremental gains in efficiency and productivity can result in

a faster time to market for a product or technology. As part of this strategy

many companies are putting in place initiatives to improve collaboration

across the extended enterprise. The primary purposes are to foster

communication between increasingly specialised and geographically

dispersed groups, provide accurate reports of programme advancement,

and support decision making processes. The success of any business is

driven largely by the quality of decision making and the skill at which teams

execute those decisions. Both decision making and decision execution are

dependent on the quality of communications and access to information and

knowledge. Better communications and knowledge access lead to better

decisions, and better results implementing those decisions.

Productivity gains at each phase, however small, have an amplifying effect

- they don’t just add up, they multiply. Enterprises that fail to use modern

communication technologies and who do not leverage the knowledge base

of their workers, limit the potential for collaboration and run the very real

risk of falling behind the competition.

4.3 Knowledge Collaboration

The pharmaceutical industry is unique - essentially pharmacos and

biotechs collect and manage knowledge, the drug products being the

physical manifestation of this process.

Knowledge is said to exist in two forms: 3

a. Knowledge which can be expressed in words and numbers. This is known

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‘Despite all collaborative efforts, only around 10% -15% of intellectual capital is captured in any structured format. The rest resides on paper, in lab notebooks and in researcher’s heads.’

‘‘Knowledge sharing is achieved through cross-team learning.’

as “explicit” knowledge and can be easily communicated and shared in the

form of data, standard procedures or universal principles. This is the hard

knowledge stored in databases.

b. Knowledge stored in people’s heads. This is known as “tacit” knowledge

and is highly personal and hard to formalise. Insights, experience,

intuitions and hunches fall into this category.

In a strict sense, it is the individuals themselves that work within the

pharmaceutical industry that create knowledge - this can occur in one of

four ways:

a. Socialisation - formal and/or informal discussions as well as corridor chats

leads to the sharing of opinions, observations and knowledge. Participants

are sharing their “tacit” knowledge.

b. Externalisation - this is where an individual converts the knowledge from

his/her own head into a format which can be reused by other people - e.g.

by writing a report or summing up experimental conclusions. Here “tacit”

knowledge is being converted into an “explicit” form.

c. Combination - here individuals take “explicit” knowledge (or data) from one

or more sources and combine them to form new knowledge. This is the

combination of existing “explicit” knowledge - e.g. an individual may mine a

database and publish his findings for others to use.

d. Internalisation - this is where an individual uses “explicit” knowledge to

create new “tacit” knowledge in his/her own head - e.g. equivalent to the

above example of mining the database but not publishing the results.

The knowledge-intensive nature of pharmaceutical R&D makes the ability

to capture, communicate and exploit knowledge, not merely to provide

decision-support tools, a key determinant of their success. Systems are

already available to take care of explicit knowledge - SOPs and other

procedures as well as clinical data can be managed through intranets,

document management systems and information management systems.

The hard part is managing the tacit knowledge - e.g. tapping into the

experience, intuition, and knowledge in a scientist’s head. This type of

knowledge is almost impossible to document and according to many

respondents, represents a huge problem for any organisation. Important

tacit knowledge is too often lost through staff turnover.

Conversion between tacit and explicit knowledge requires the interaction of

human beings and is instrumental in the formation of new knowledge.

Collaborative tools play a large part in this process by facilitating the

human linkages - whether by means of a directory of different thought

leaders in a given company or by virtual meetings that bring subject matter

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‘The majority of people work in teams most of their working day.’

‘Most teams in development are therapy specific. This limits the transfer of best practice through collaboration.’

experts together.

Collaborative tools underpin the processes of knowledge creation in the

pharmaceutical industry - without effective collaboration the products of

R&D cannot be realised - i.e. knowledge cannot be created without

facilitating human linkages, and documents cannot be produced unless

geographically dispersed teams are united.

5. The Global Enterprise

All the companies interviewed work in a collaborative way utilising teams to

progress individual projects which are aggregated into drug discovery,

candidate development and launch programmes. Work is sub-divided

down from large programmes into projects and sub-projects to which teams

of specialists deliver their outputs.

The cross-functional team is the basic functional unit and consists of a core

group which is supported by an extended network of specialists. Work is

allocated across the team members for concurrent completion.

Individuals and teams are constantly connecting with one other, allowing

them to share information and knowledge in order to progress projects

forward. However, the effectiveness of the collaborative working practices

employed by functions, teams, and individuals varies greatly - both by

company and within individual companies.

The nature of the project work and the resultant collaborative working style

varies depending on the area of R&D.

In discovery, data collaboration predominates. Researchers share and

explore new ideas, collect and record data and synthesise it to validate

these ideas and create new knowledge. Higher teams must then

collaborate across functions to evaluate this information to decide on future

research directions. Typical discovery cross-functional teams include:

• Core group – usually site specific: chemistry, biology, pharmacology and

HTS, etc

• Therapeutic team – often globally distributed: strategic role to steer the

project and the work forward (technical + commercial representatives)

In clinical development, the emphasis of collaborative work is on the

creation of documentary evidence of the results of clinical trials, ensuring

compliance with strict and detailed regulations and project

schedules/deadlines.

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‘Many project leaders have stopped thinking altogether and do not practice strategic collaboration – they’re too busy fire fighting!’

‘Functional experts are just required as a technical resource - they are not required for guidance, wisdom or other expertise!’

In development, typical cross functional teams include:

• Study teams

• Multi-country clinical teams

• Sub-teams for operational needs

• Product development teams

In pre-launch/commercial the collaborative emphasis is on decision

making.

The typical cross-functional teams include:

• Strategic marketing

• Market research

• Medical affairs

• Clinical

• Manufacturing

5.1 Cross-Functional Teams are the Norm

All respondents reported that team working has become the predominant

way of working at all levels. Individual working now may only account for

less than 40% of daily working time compared to historic norms. The trend

is to continue to work more in teams and undertake more joint work

together with colleagues during meetings.

Teams have also become much more dynamic and may be formed on an

ad hoc basis to meet short-term needs, or on a long-term basis to meet

strategic objectives. Tactical teams rely on accessing information quickly

and establishing short-term collaborative relationship to solve a specific

tactical problem or manage a particular study. After the work is completed

in weeks or months, they break-up and individuals are reassigned to new

teams. It is increasingly common for functional specialists to be working

both tactically and strategically on several different teams concurrently.

In contrast, at the start of a new candidate development programme a

“product team or therapeutic team” is appointed. These long-term teams

are responsible for steering the development programme through to

launch. The team is responsible for apportioning and delegating tasks/sub-

projects to functional departments. Therefore, team members have to

establish a wide network of collaborative partnerships with the various

specialist functions - usually spanning several different international sites.

Functional departments in development are now largely repositories for

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‘Drug development is becoming a mechanical, robotic process with little time or opportunity for sharing knowledge.’

‘Multi-national collaboration can be a problem in virtual teams. Culture clashes often occur between the Europeans and the US - each side knows best.’

knowledge and resources to service the needs of the therapeutic areas. In

the majority of companies interviewed, therapeutic areas are discrete with

little cross therapeutic communication and collaboration, albeit with a few

notable exceptions driven by “grass roots” scientists. The result is

“therapeutic silos,” especially in clinical where there is a marked resistance

for therapeutic teams to share good and bad experiences with other teams.

This issue of “lessons learned” is being addressed by a few companies to

spread “best practice” and reduce repeatable and avoidable mistakes

made by project teams.

Study results confirmed that the cross-functional team is now the

cornerstone of all team working in the industry and is prevalent at all levels.

Cross-functional teams are not simply site specific but are, more often than

not, international in their dimensions. The variety, structure and duration of

these cross-functional teams will continue to increase.

5.2 The Move to Virtual Teams

Project working has changed significantly in the pharmaceutical industry as

companies have become increasingly decentralised. Organising and

tracking project work could easily be done in the past by moving around on

site to see all team members - individuals could simply exchange

information and brainstorm together in the same room. Now with team

members highly distributed, managers have to visit project resources

virtually rather than physically – this is virtual project management. Project

working and management is increasingly using Internet – based

collaboration tools.

A virtual project is a collaborative effort towards a specific goal or

accomplishment which is based on “collective yet remote performance.”4

This need to work apart and together has driven the need for management

tools that enable communication and coordination at a distance. The

global structure of teams has grown up to support the “virtual projects /

programmes” that now dominate the way R&D is progressed on a

worldwide scale. This trend to web project management has facilitated

distributed decision making in global teams, the next step being integrated

process management.

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‘Global pharmaceutical companies are 24/7.’

‘It is not easy to manage people scattered all over the place - you need to ensure that people are contributing.’

5.3 Managing Global Diversity

The research indicated a clear trend for companies, who although global,

favoured as much co-location for discovery team members as possible. In

development, a minority of respondents reported a trend to regionalisation.

Pre-launch to commercialisation was very much driven by global teams.

In discovery, intensive collaboration is crucial to enable the core teams to

exchange information and validate information on drug targets and leads.

Study findings suggested that this is best undertaken in an environment

where scientists can easily physically share information on their areas face-

to-face and informally. The research clearly indicated an emerging trend

towards co-location which was felt to enhance collaboration and knowledge

sharing between teams by reinforcing social networks. Discovery units tend

to be grouped together by a therapy speciality on specific sites to foster the

feeling of being part of a small company and of entrepreneurship – yet with

the resources and support of a global player.

Clinical development is highly regulated and process orientated supported

by comprehensive documentary evidence that provides a traceable link to

every individual step of a drug candidate’s development pathway. This

means the collaborative basis of team work revolves around document

construction, management and project schedules. Each phase of clinical

development has clear regulatory and commercial objectives which the

team must help the drug candidate to clear in order to progress to the next

stage. There is intense pressure on the product/therapy teams to meet

deadlines and push the candidate forward whilst still meeting regulatory

commitments.

Clinical development has become more complex with higher standards and

with larger, more global trials. Product and study teams have become

international with representatives from different countries and cultural

backgrounds working together to manage projects on a virtual basis.

Overlaid on this has been the M&A activity which respondents indicated

had often brought different or even conflicting working practices and

hindered collaboration. The research clearly indicated that the majority of

companies contacted were struggling to efficiently and effectively manage

the complexity of global clinical development in a collaborative manner.

The key strategic team in development/pre-launch has become the “global

product team or therapeutic team” – a high level and powerful cross-

functional team which is responsible for managing the whole development

programme from the time a lead becomes a candidate though to launch

where it will hand over to the global commercial/marketing team. Typically

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‘Product teams are so focused - they will not seek out expert help until they are faced with a full blown crisis.’

‘CROs are a necessary evil in clinical development – but if you are close enough to them, it is possible to detect problems early enough to intervene and clear things up.’

this team will comprise of representatives from key clinical departments as

well as commercial (strategic marketing).

Top management has invested very significant decision making power in

this team which in the past would have rested with functional heads and

technical specialists. However, respondents have indicated that this has

caused collaboration problems due to an emphasis on individual task

completion rather than collective thinking - i.e. each team member is so

focused on his/her own share of the work that they lose sight of the

common objective.

Outsourcing and working with external suppliers has become an every day

activity for R&D teams. No more so than for clinical teams who have an

ever increasing need to collaborate closely with CROs and contract

laboratories; however, the depth and breadth of this collaboration is in the

majority of cases limited. There is significant resistance to allowing the

CRO or laboratory team members to work closely with the core study or

product teams. Respondents were unanimously suspicious of contractors

and were reluctant to share information and knowledge with them. In part

respondents commented that the strategic goals and aims of CROs were

not aligned to that of their customers.

5.4 Room for Improvement in Pharmaceutical Companies

Although all pharmaceutical companies practice collaborative working, the

quality in many cases is poor and leaves significant room for improvement.

This is because companies have had to manage a new and more complex

environment in which their R&D and commercial teams are widely

dispersed - due to both M&A activity and organic growth.

The research showed that team members do not fully commit themselves

to collaboration and fail to achieve the “multiplier effect” of true

collaborative working - instead they simply tolerate collaboration, not

getting much more out of it than they commit to it. There was a growing

realisation amongst some respondents that simply putting together a

diverse group of people to work in a cross-functional team does not

necessarily result in a timely and well run clinical study, or a well rounded

development programme for a drug candidate.

This research and other similar studies have shown that “programme/

project/ product quality” depends on how effectively members from different

functional areas integrate information and perspectives – i.e. work

collaboratively. In reality, this means the migration from a parochial view of

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‘Internal collaboration contributes to innovation and efficiency.’

‘Effective collaboration reduces duplication of work. It avoids reinventing the wheel and enables teams to move faster.’

the world - “my function, my values and my goals are paramount” - to a

broader view that - “we are all in this together.” In those companies with

high levels of collaborative working practices, individuals and teams are

committed to effective and meaningful collaboration with each other and

with external stakeholders. They take the time to understand, appreciate

and utilise the data and opinions that each member brings to a team. They

are also eager to solicit help outside the team when they reach an

impasse.

Poor team working skills often appear to be at the root of poor collaborative

working practices. Several respondents were of the opinion that a key

failure point for collaborative working especially in the technical areas, was

due to differing or hidden agendas – political infighting between

departments and functional representatives which spills over into

operational activities. This crops up particularly in cross-functional teams

where different site cultures result in different working behaviours. The

basic failure to collaborate can cause project delays and sometimes

jeopardise entire projects.

Although there is now top management emphasis on “success is team

success and rewards are team rewards,” too often interviews revealed that

this was not really embedded in company practice. Personal accountability

and responsibility remain important and cannot be hidden away under team

blame and failure. Collaborative working practices start from an individual

understanding and commitment to team working as demonstrated by the

leading companies who have invested heavily in supporting managers to

improve their team working skills.

There was a consensus from the research that effective and timely

communication practices are the basis of collaborative working. The

majority of respondents wanted to have at least one face-to-face meeting

with other team members prior to the commencement of a project. This

very human need has been lost as a result of decentralisation. Repeated

reorganisations have broken up many social networks and with so many

people spread over so many locations, it is very difficult to re-establish

these social links. E-tools from a team working perspective, so far have not

managed to effectively recreate and rebuild these social networks for

effective team working.

The respondents also reported that the old ways of disseminating

information between team members and their “extended networks” do not

work efficiently anymore. The pressure to meet deadlines especially in

development has meant a lack of time for proper exposure and testing of

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‘In the long-run if employees don’t evolve, then they won’t last!’

knowledge. Similarly the lack of opportunities to access people either

because they are in meetings or simply not in the office due to travel

commitments or home working, limits opportunities for knowledge sharing

and collaboration. The reluctance of product teams to seek external

knowledge through closer collaboration with functional departments and to

exercise “best practice” across therapeutic areas has led to some

significant problems - including avoidable delays and even major safety

concerns. This appears to be in part due to the emasculation of functional

departments and the intense pressure on product teams to avoid delays to

project schedules.

The system-centric company

In Practice• High investment in sophisticated tools but slanted strongly towards improving discovery productivity and efficiency. Slow to introduce collaborative tools for the rest of the company.• Indiscriminate and over use of e-mail:

– mass emailing for corporate communications– “block deletes” without reading – emails often need to be backed up by voice calls to ensure receipt

• “Metrics” orientated environment deters workers from entering information readily into the official system - regarded as too “reports” orientated to be a true database.• High resistance to change. Scientists reluctant to share “personal lab information” by switching from paper to e-lab notebooks.• Restricted access to “expertise locator” available to higher management only – e.g. team leaders and upwards.• Shared workspaces used to varying degrees and success – many just “data dumps.” Preference to share data via email attachments.• No official top management encouragement towards information sharing or collaboration – simply viewed as just “another management initiative.” • High preference for insular, small teams with little interest in collaborative working with other teams.• Social networks predominate.• Teleconferences and net meetings main meeting tools for virtualteams.• Limited use of videoconferencing due to poor quality images.

In Theory• Company intranet in place.

• Advanced system in place for tracking the efficiency of the discovery process – for example:

– therapy areas under investigation at any one time

– number of employees working on a particular area, and

– status of target evaluation

• A sophisticated discovery portal system that allows users to define and receive information that interests them – e.g. a biologist’s page will be different to that of a chemist’s even though at times the same information is being mined.

• Users are able to submit news onto the system and make it available to others in different locations.

• Planned investment in technology to collect lab bench information e.g. e-lab notebooks.

• Portal system to be rolled out over the whole company.

Company A: has invested much money in collaborative technologies and in-house software development but has failed to pay attention to the “human issues” surrounding technology implementation. Behaviour has not widely changed as a result of implementation and resistance to change persists.

In Practice• High investment in sophisticated tools but slanted strongly towards improving discovery productivity and efficiency. Slow to introduce collaborative tools for the rest of the company.• Indiscriminate and over use of e-mail:

– mass emailing for corporate communications– “block deletes” without reading – emails often need to be backed up by voice calls to ensure receipt

• “Metrics” orientated environment deters workers from entering information readily into the official system - regarded as too “reports” orientated to be a true database.• High resistance to change. Scientists reluctant to share “personal lab information” by switching from paper to e-lab notebooks.• Restricted access to “expertise locator” available to higher management only – e.g. team leaders and upwards.• Shared workspaces used to varying degrees and success – many just “data dumps.” Preference to share data via email attachments.• No official top management encouragement towards information sharing or collaboration – simply viewed as just “another management initiative.” • High preference for insular, small teams with little interest in collaborative working with other teams.• Social networks predominate.• Teleconferences and net meetings main meeting tools for virtualteams.• Limited use of videoconferencing due to poor quality images.

In Theory• Company intranet in place.

• Advanced system in place for tracking the efficiency of the discovery process – for example:

– therapy areas under investigation at any one time

– number of employees working on a particular area, and

– status of target evaluation

• A sophisticated discovery portal system that allows users to define and receive information that interests them – e.g. a biologist’s page will be different to that of a chemist’s even though at times the same information is being mined.

• Users are able to submit news onto the system and make it available to others in different locations.

• Planned investment in technology to collect lab bench information e.g. e-lab notebooks.

• Portal system to be rolled out over the whole company.

Company A: has invested much money in collaborative technologies and in-house software development but has failed to pay attention to the “human issues” surrounding technology implementation. Behaviour has not widely changed as a result of implementation and resistance to change persists.

The culture conflict company

In Practice• The new merged organisation has stepped back 3-4 years in terms of collaborative efforts compared to the strong predecessor company.• Collaborative efforts have ceased until the new organisation reaches a steady-state – losing valuable time. • Incompatible legacy data in many different formats.• Significant “tacit” knowledge lost as a result of staff turnover following merger – failure to manage this in the transition period.• There has been a failure to nurture “communities of practice”– a “kick start” will be required to recreate them and build new relationships.• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. This imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.• Teleconferencing and email attachments predominate in the new organisation with limited use of share workspaces and videoconferencing.• An inherent dislike of sharing information has been compounded following merger with the arrival of many new, unfamiliar and unknown people from a different company. Internal silos persist especially along company boundaries. • An efficient “expertise locator” remains an unmet need – but top management do not want to invest in this area. Many workers still rely on their social networks and self-developed contact lists; but networks have been broken following merger.• In the new organisation there is a need for more customised information - too much is pushed at workers via email and it takes too long to find operationally relevant data.

In TheoryThe collaboratively strong predecessor company:• Organised its knowledge management and collaborative efforts around the intranet and a Groupware model:

– All tools were accommodated on the intranet

– Single point of entry was provided via portal technology

– The central data repository had forced people to store information in a standardised format – “future proofing”

– Communities of interest were very active

– Videoconferencing was a readily available tool

• Had strong commitment to using collaborative working practices from top management.

• Had widespread commitment to the use of cross-therapeutic collaborative teams to bring “learning” from across the organisation.

The collaboratively weak predecessor company:

• Termed “weak” as a result of its corporate culture towards collaboration and poor implementation of collaborative working practices.

• It had many of the same e-tools for collaborative working as the strong company, but simply viewed e-tools as an “added layer of complexity to the business, rather than “an opportunity to improve productivity and effectiveness.”

• Knowledge management was not a corporate priority and there were limited initiatives in place.

Company B: the collaboratively weak company purchases the collaboratively strong company and collaborative efforts grind to a halt following merger.

In Practice• The new merged organisation has stepped back 3-4 years in terms of collaborative efforts compared to the strong predecessor company.• Collaborative efforts have ceased until the new organisation reaches a steady-state – losing valuable time. • Incompatible legacy data in many different formats.• Significant “tacit” knowledge lost as a result of staff turnover following merger – failure to manage this in the transition period.• There has been a failure to nurture “communities of practice”– a “kick start” will be required to recreate them and build new relationships.• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. This imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.• Teleconferencing and email attachments predominate in the new organisation with limited use of share workspaces and videoconferencing.• An inherent dislike of sharing information has been compounded following merger with the arrival of many new, unfamiliar and unknown people from a different company. Internal silos persist especially along company boundaries. • An efficient “expertise locator” remains an unmet need – but top management do not want to invest in this area. Many workers still rely on their social networks and self-developed contact lists; but networks have been broken following merger.• In the new organisation there is a need for more customised information - too much is pushed at workers via email and it takes too long to find operationally relevant data.

In TheoryThe collaboratively strong predecessor company:• Organised its knowledge management and collaborative efforts around the intranet and a Groupware model:

– All tools were accommodated on the intranet

– Single point of entry was provided via portal technology

– The central data repository had forced people to store information in a standardised format – “future proofing”

– Communities of interest were very active

– Videoconferencing was a readily available tool

• Had strong commitment to using collaborative working practices from top management.

• Had widespread commitment to the use of cross-therapeutic collaborative teams to bring “learning” from across the organisation.

The collaboratively weak predecessor company:

• Termed “weak” as a result of its corporate culture towards collaboration and poor implementation of collaborative working practices.

• It had many of the same e-tools for collaborative working as the strong company, but simply viewed e-tools as an “added layer of complexity to the business, rather than “an opportunity to improve productivity and effectiveness.”

• Knowledge management was not a corporate priority and there were limited initiatives in place.

Company B: the collaboratively weak company purchases the collaboratively strong company and collaborative efforts grind to a halt following merger.

14


‘Culture is the single biggest barrier to sharing knowledge and information.’

‘There are no real incentives to promote information and knowledge sharing.’

The collaborative company

In Practice• ‘Grass roots’ scientists within these tight therapeutic areas recognised the benefits of collaboration and requested the formation of communities of practice to link people across the organisation around a given subject.

• The majority of communities of practice are supported by adequate resources.

• Workflow benefits are increasingly being realised as a result of access to e-tools via the desktop.

• Increased use of mobile systems for remote workers – especially senior executives and remote/home office workers.

• Cross-therapy learning events take place in order to generate new knowledge and re-use existing knowledge.

• Adoption and use of the e-collaborative tools remain patchy throughout the organisation despite intensive support efforts.

• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. As in other companies, this imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.

• To reduce the amount of “corporate emails” the onus has now been place on individuals to check the relevant bulletin boards.

• Increased emphasis on visual communications:

– High quality videoconferencing available (as good as face-to-face) but very expensive and available only on major sites

– Access problems to normal video suites

– Evaluating video kiosks in offices and labs for “impulse use”

In Theory• Discovery efforts in the new organisation were organised into tight therapeutic areas to allow smaller groups of researchers to work independently and quickly (recreating a small company environment).

• Branded collaborative intranet.

• Communities of practice in place company-wide via portal technology.

• Central data repositories.

• Implementation of e-lab notebooks in the near future to enhance discovery data sharing and collection.

• Expertise bank.

• Groupware software in place:

– Email

– Instant messaging available to all

– Shared workspaces/ object sharing

• Net meeting facilities.

• Emphasis on visual communications:

– Two levels of videoconferencing available:

• High quality

• Normal quality

– Evaluating new visual communication modes

• Evaluating opportunities for VoIP implementation.

Company C: following merger a few years back, this company has cautiously and carefully invested in the e-tools as well as in change management to help workers adapt and adopt new working practices. This system has been built around communication and collaboration rather than knowledge management.

In Practice• ‘Grass roots’ scientists within these tight therapeutic areas recognised the benefits of collaboration and requested the formation of communities of practice to link people across the organisation around a given subject.

• The majority of communities of practice are supported by adequate resources.

• Workflow benefits are increasingly being realised as a result of access to e-tools via the desktop.

• Increased use of mobile systems for remote workers – especially senior executives and remote/home office workers.

• Cross-therapy learning events take place in order to generate new knowledge and re-use existing knowledge.

• Adoption and use of the e-collaborative tools remain patchy throughout the organisation despite intensive support efforts.

• The concept of a shared workspace differs in each predecessor company. As in other companies, this imbalance has led to the inappropriate and over-use of email in certain situations.

• To reduce the amount of “corporate emails” the onus has now been place on individuals to check the relevant bulletin boards.

• Increased emphasis on visual communications:

– High quality videoconferencing available (as good as face-to-face) but very expensive and available only on major sites

– Access problems to normal video suites

– Evaluating video kiosks in offices and labs for “impulse use”

In Theory• Discovery efforts in the new organisation were organised into tight therapeutic areas to allow smaller groups of researchers to work independently and quickly (recreating a small company environment).

• Branded collaborative intranet.

• Communities of practice in place company-wide via portal technology.

• Central data repositories.

• Implementation of e-lab notebooks in the near future to enhance discovery data sharing and collection.

• Expertise bank.

• Groupware software in place:

– Email

– Instant messaging available to all

– Shared workspaces/ object sharing

• Net meeting facilities.

• Emphasis on visual communications:

– Two levels of videoconferencing available:

• High quality

• Normal quality

– Evaluating new visual communication modes

• Evaluating opportunities for VoIP implementation.

Company C: following merger a few years back, this company has cautiously and carefully invested in the e-tools as well as in change management to help workers adapt and adopt new working practices. This system has been built around communication and collaboration rather than knowledge management.

6. Ignore Cultural Issues at your Peril

The biggest challenge to get employees to work together collaboratively is

not a technological problem - it's a cultural and organisational one.5

The study identified a number barriers to collaborative working which

include:

• Inherent dislike of sharing information - “knowledge is power”

• Low perceived “value” in sharing information

• Mistrust of those who individuals have not met in person

• Concerns over who will have access to the information - worries over repercussions where sensitive information is concerned

• Geographical distribution of workers

• Working styles - culture

• Resistance to change

• Effort required - an added burden

• Lack of leadership

• Lack of training

• Transactional nature of relationships - idea of separate functions working towards different goals

As companies grow and as the amount of information generated increases,

fewer people have time to read the literature or are able to personally

interact with those outside their particular programme. This results in

isolated projects, the inability to stay current, and the repetition of effort.

The problem in large pharmaceutical companies is that there are too many

people, too much information and too little time devoted to overcoming the

15

‘‘There are people who think that knowledge is power and who do not share information - or they share knowledge but only on their terms.’

‘Technical tools cannot substitute the traditional, human, face-to-face way of sharing information around the table - they can only reinforce contact.’

barriers to sharing information in order to develop a collaborative culture.

Collaborative tools on the market today make it easy to coordinate large

groups by enabling members to post questions, work jointly on documents,

schedule meetings and track progress toward goals. But not every

company is positioned to take advantage of the tools. The danger for many

is overspending on collaborative technologies without making the cultural

and organizational adjustments necessary to derive any benefit from them.

Collaboration software just won't work if you don't have an environment

that encourages people to work together. This will be a big leap for many

companies where individuals are rewarded for controlling knowledge and

highlighting their own achievements, rather than for sharing knowledge and

focusing on team accomplishments.

The study results highlighted that culture was indeed a critical factor in

ensuring greater collaboration - “as with any technology implementation,

20% rests on the technology itself, and 80% on culture.” This issue is even

more important where ‘virtual teams’ are concerned - the process of

developing a common understanding in virtual teams is complex and often

slows decision making down. Many respondents felt frustrated by their

company’s internal culture as it does not create the right environment for

collaboration.

6.1 The importance of Relationships for Effective Collaboration

Many times in the context of this research respondents have commented

that nothing quite beats face-to-face meetings - i.e. “seeing the whites of

their eyes.” To work effectively, relationships must be built with other team

members or decision makers; and close relationship are best built through

face-to-face contact.

There is currently little time for social chat within the modern

pharmaceutical workplace - the friendly building of relationships around the

coffee machine or water cooler have gone as a result of decentralisation

and remote working. Many respondents felt that some form of visual

communication is better than just voice to further relationships. For teams

to collaborate effectively and to share information freely there needs to be

an element of trust that is inherent in a corporate culture. This can only be

achieved through the development of good relationships.

The hierarchical nature of pharmaceutical companies prevents some teams

collaborating well. Senior people can be very territorial, defensive and even

closed. If these senior people happen to be part of your team, team

16


‘The problem of having to work in family time is becoming a problem – it is like being trapped in a never ending process.’

‘Everyone automatically works in English – very often people forget that their colleagues are not as fast as they are – and often don’t understand subtleties.’

collaboration becomes difficult as individuals have to work around

managerial “egos” and sensitivities.

Information hoarders will always exist and with a lack of incentives that

reward results, personnel often feel that it is not in their interests to share

information - they become economical with information, thus impeding

collaborative efforts.

In many cases collaboration is at odds with the company’s corporate

culture so implementation will be disruptive. Shifting a corporate culture

from being competitive to being co-operative is not easy, requiring changes

at all levels of the organization, including the CEO.

6.2 The Formation of the 24/7 Culture

With businesses becoming global and with the vast majority of

pharmaceutical companies having offices across all time zones, it is often

necessary to conduct business outside the normal working day. The time

differences between the US and Central Europe, or between Europe and

Asia only allow for minimal work day overlap. This requires interaction

between global team members to occur early in the morning or late into the

evening and team members that engage in frequent global interactions

might keep a 12-16 hour a day work schedule. This type of frequent, out-of-

hours interaction has a negative impact on quality of life.

6.3 Language Barriers Impede Collaboration

Collaborative teams within pharmaceutical companies are more than likely

to include many different nationalities, particularly in the strategic pre-

launch teams which are global by nature. As more and more collaboration

is becoming virtual and thus not face-to-face, team members often forget

that English may not be their colleagues’ first language. Very often people

are guilty of not making allowances for others, particularly when there is

little face-to-face contact. Silences can be misinterpreted as a failure to

understand and even as stupidity when in fact, they are due to colleagues

taking the time to work out a response.

6.5 Organisational Framework for Collaboration

Organisational structural changes during the 1990s as a result of M&A

activity and efforts to speed up development had far reaching changes on

17

‘The problem is that key user groups are often not properly consulted - then technology is imposed that does not meet user needs.’

‘Information hoarders exist – incentives that reward results often mean that individuals do not feel that they benefit from not sharing information.’

teams and team working. One of the key changes was to structure aspects

of discovery and all development around therapeutic areas, rather than

functional departments. In the new structures respondents explained that

functional departments are required to “sell their services” to therapy areas

and sometimes to compete with external providers e.g. CROs, as top

management seek to speed up development and reduce costs through

increased outsourcing. The other major change has been the proliferation

of R&D sites around the world. This trend to decentralisation has increased

the complexity of operational management and the deployment of teams.

Collaboration strategists must overcome organisational issues such as

persuading people to work differently, establishing incentives and

performance measures that foster greater information sharing and co-

operation. Community building efforts are valuable to create synergies

across processes and functional groups. Embedded within the

collaborative application might be a “my networks” pane that lists personal

resources (e.g. team members, friends, mentors, learning modules),

communities of practice (e.g. communities of people around a given

subject matter) to which the user belongs, and other project teams working

in closely aligned areas. This approach provides users with peripheral

vision of what else is going on that might influence their own work

practices. In this respect, collaboration becomes a cornerstone of

knowledge management and enterprise learning strategies.

IT departments of many large pharmaceutical companies appear to be out

of touch with the real needs of the business and often lag significantly

behind the pace of technological change. However, some respondents

mentioned that IT departments are now catching up and focusing more on

business needs.

7. The Backbone for Collaboration

Pharmaceutical companies are organising their collaborative technology

platforms around an intranet and Groupware model.

18


‘The intranet is not well designed and you can never find the information you require - most is out of date.’

‘I spend too much time trying to access relevant information - both from inside and outside the company.’

Figure 1: Collaborative Platforms

Internal Libraries

ToolsData MiningVisualisation

Decision Support

Groupware

Directories

Data Repositories

Portals

ExternalContent

External Libraries

CollaborativeIntranet

Email

Shared Workspace

Instant Messaging

Scheduling

White Boards

USERS

E-Lab Notebooks

Internal Libraries


Decision Support

Groupware

Directories

Data Repositories

Portals

ExternalContent

External Libraries


Email

Shared Workspace

Instant Messaging

Scheduling

White Boards

USERS

Internal Libraries


Decision Support

Groupware

Directories

Data Repositories

Portals

ExternalContent

External Libraries


Email

Shared Workspace

Instant Messaging

Scheduling

White Boards

USERS

E-Lab Notebooks

7.1 Intranet

An intranet permits a widely dispersed group of people to interact,

connecting them and their ideas. It offers the best and fastest solution for

information to be dispersed in order for knowledge to be created but it

cannot succeed alone.

The goals behind a collaborative intranet include:

• To facilitate the interaction of individuals

• To enable data to be repurposed and reused

• Increase effective use of online tools - including training tools (FAQ,

tutorials, classes, etc.)

• Allow web-based approaches for collaboration - including means for

researchers to easily and rapidly post information in a variety of data

formats

• Identify a network of experts for answering inquiries

• Lead focus groups to determine needs

• Investigate approaches peers are undertaking

• Smoothly interface all departments and other necessary groups

• Promote the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge by creating a process

19

‘What is needed is change management and training not just the tools. People are busy doing their day-to-day job and do not have the time take on extra burdens.’

‘The IT department is not in tune with the company’s real business needs. They tend to focus on fixing what they have rather the new emerging technologies.’

to capture vital information residing on scientist’s computers and in their

heads

Portals are creating new channels for information and data access from a

single entry point. The content and presentation of the default page

presented upon access can be customised therefore allowing companies to

define and tailor the information and tools available to different sets of

workers across the organisation.

Many pharmaceutical companies have expended a lot of effort on the

intranet model and not enough on the area of personal interaction.

Creativity and innovation are fostered in small groups of people with

different, but complementary, perspectives. In order to compete in the post-

genomic era, pharmaceutical companies need to use a dynamic intranet to

create a network that allows these small groups to find one another and

innovate. They need to fashion a truly collaborative intranet in order to

facilitate individuals to use the intranet to help them create knowledge.

Most intranets do not yet facilitate the creation of a vibrant community and

have not succeeded in decreasing the friction of information transfer

between different groups. It is usually very difficult for individuals to post

explicit information in a useful manner for others to view and the

presentation of tacit information is virtually impossible. Knowledge creation

does not arise spontaneously - it requires people: people to examine facts;

people to combine facts; people to use the facts. It requires the creation of

a community of practice that can socialise, externalise, combine and

internalise the data, allowing new knowledge to come forth. It emerges

from the personal interactions, conversations and contemplations of

people.

Knowledge cannot be separated from the communities that create, use and

maintain it. These communities are particularly useful in the pharmaceutical

industry with an organisational structure that tends to be based on cross-

functional teams. Communities of practice are effective tools to link people

within their discipline while maintaining the focus of a cross-functional

team. Industry experience is that behavioural and organisational, rather

than technology issues need to be in the centre of attention when

establishing new or encouraging existing communities of practice. A critical

requirement is resource allocation to help create and maintain a viable

community - information and links must up-to-date, without this information

flow will stagnate and the community will die.

20


‘Global team rooms have had a huge impact and the benefits have been felt by all – it has certainly cut down on travelling time.’

‘When the Europeans switch off the US can take on the work and then hand back to the Europeans the next day.’

7.2 Groupware

Groupware is software that groups or teams use together over computer

networks and the Internet. It is based on the assumption that computer

networks can help people increase their decision making ability and

productivity by collaborating and sharing information. The core element of

Groupware is that it provides mechanisms to share and distribute

information. Frequently, communication is informal in this environment and

users freely exchange information and collaborate. Groupware

technologies are particularly well suited to R&D, where specialists in given

technologies or techniques who may be dispersed worldwide need to

exchange their expertise in order to find solutions to specific problems.

Groupware defines the flow of documents and the work that must be done

to complete the project. It facilitates interaction which must occur in order

for knowledge to be created and decisions to be made by providing

communication and collaboration mechanisms where face-to-face

conversation is difficult or expensive.

Some Groupware systems offer simple communication tools such as email,

instant messaging, white boards, or threaded discussion groups. This type

of Groupware primarily provides means for users to share, structure, and

exchange information that typically lies outside of corporate data

repositories. Other Groupware packages provide similar communication

mechanisms but are more integrated with corporate data repositories and

can reference the documents or experimental data within those

repositories. This type of Groupware also typically provides a work

environment where information is organised on a project-based structure.

Depending on the nature of the required collaboration, Groupware can be

tightly integrated with existing email, resource management, scheduling, e-

learning, and project management systems. Given the increasing

importance of collaboration both within and between organisations,

Groupware systems provide selective access and information sharing.

As is the case in communities of practice, behavioural and organisational,

rather than technology issues are at the forefront when encouraging the

adoption and use of Groupware. The structure and goals of the shared

workspace need to be defined in advance as do roles and responsibilities.

Without leadership and resource allocation the shared workspace will

deteriorate into a collection of disjointed documents and unrelated

information.

21

‘There is much resistance to enter information into the official system over and above what is required.’

‘Very sophisticated tools are in use in discovery, but there is a real need to improve the tools available to the rest of the company.’

8. Current Collaborative Practice

Collaborative solutions have reached the level of reliability, ease-of-use,

and utility levels whereby they are finally beginning to change behaviour.

The tools are helping to build more effective work teams, manage globally

dispersed resources, shorten development cycles and lower operating

costs.

Selecting the right tool for the right task is an important feature and will

result in positive collaborative experiences. Important considerations

include the size of the audience, the intended level of interaction and the

immediacy of the required response. Chat and instant messaging are forms

of synchronous communications. Like a telephone call, a chat or instant

messaging session is live and each user responds to the other in real time.

In contrast, discussion forums and email for example, are asynchronous

communications. Some amount of time may pass before a person

responds to a message and/or reuses, repurposes or redistributes the

information. Effective collaboration requires the right mix of both

synchronous and asynchronous tools used in the appropriate manner.

Table 1: Pros and Cons of Synchronous and Asynchronous Collaborative Tools

Pros• Time to structure response and gather necessary information • Durable store of knowledge and information• Organisation of information and knowledge• Information can be reused/re-purposed and re-distributed• Audit trails of usage can be applied – added securityCons• Delay in response• Static by nature• Information transfer rather than communication – does not promote externalisation• Information/knowledge sharing must be encouraged so that the system does not stagnate• Users must know how to access required information

Pros• Immediacy of response• Brings geographically dispersed teams together in real-time• Ideal for decision support• Dynamic by nature• Facilitates socialisation • Promotes flow of tacit knowledge• Lies outside corporate data repositories – less inhibitedCons• Information must be prepared/ready to be shared • Data requires capture and storage• Presence required in the same “space” in real time • Users must be able to access others – expertise locator, directories.

• Email• Discussion groups/forums• Data repositories/databases• Intranet• Document sharing (e-room environment)• Recorded broadcasts/web-casts

• Chat – telephone, mobile, teleconferencing• Instant messaging• Net meetings• Video conferencing• Face-to-face

Asynchronous Collaborative ToolsSynchronous Collaborative Tools

Pros• Time to structure response and gather necessary information • Durable store of knowledge and information• Organisation of information and knowledge• Information can be reused/re-purposed and re-distributed• Audit trails of usage can be applied – added securityCons• Delay in response• Static by nature• Information transfer rather than communication – does not promote externalisation• Information/knowledge sharing must be encouraged so that the system does not stagnate• Users must know how to access required information

Pros• Immediacy of response• Brings geographically dispersed teams together in real-time• Ideal for decision support• Dynamic by nature• Facilitates socialisation • Promotes flow of tacit knowledge• Lies outside corporate data repositories – less inhibitedCons• Information must be prepared/ready to be shared • Data requires capture and storage• Presence required in the same “space” in real time • Users must be able to access others – expertise locator, directories.

• Email• Discussion groups/forums• Data repositories/databases• Intranet• Document sharing (e-room environment)• Recorded broadcasts/web-casts

• Chat – telephone, mobile, teleconferencing• Instant messaging• Net meetings• Video conferencing• Face-to-face

Asynchronous Collaborative ToolsSynchronous Collaborative Tools

There is a wide variety of collaborative tools available within

pharmaceutical companies - but often these tools are being used

inappropriately. In addition, many of these tools are not intuitive, which

limits their wide spread adoption and use in everyday collaborative

working.

Respondents reported that all too often the selection and introduction of e-

tools failed to take into account the practical business needs of their work

function. Consequently there was a mismatch between expectations and

22


‘The mobile phone plays a key role in global collaboration by allowing people to contact other team members to share immediate thoughts.’

reality. A further point raised, was that many of the tools were complicated

or cumbersome to use (switching between different applications) - resulting

in limited uptake. Finally implementation of new packages was more often

than not poorly managed with little follow up to initial training programmes.

Unsurprisingly widespread adoption of collaborative tools has not met

expectations of IT departments and top management. In contrast, a few

respondents reported that their companies are now investing more time in

canvassing the opinions of managers on their needs and investing heavily

in implementation programmes, resulting in higher uptake.

The study examined the attitude and perceived value of current

collaborative tools. Results confirmed the fact that human beings are

inherently visual beings - we want to see as much as we want to hear.

Combining verbal and visual exchange of information was found to

increase the “richness” and add value to the collaborative experience.

Figure 2: Combination of Verbal and Visual Information Exchange

“Ric

hnes

s”

Connectivity

Audiotelephone, mobile

Webemail, instant messaging, e-rooms, white boards, discussion groups

Audio + Webnet meetings

Face-to-Face

Audio + Videovideo streamingvideo conferencing

Audio + Video + Webvideo conferencing + web meeting

8.1 Audio

Nothing compares to live conversation and since its invention over 100

years ago, the telephone has become the gold standard by which other

communication services are measured. Mobile networks have increased

reach and accessibility but at the same time, have made individuals too

accessible out of hours impacting on lifestyle.

23

‘People often do not give their full attention to the teleconference - some are even checking emails at the same time. This really devalues the quality of the discussion.’

‘VoIP has human as well as cost benefits. You can start a conference and then easily bring in other participants as well as other collaborative tools - this flexibility offers real user benefits.’

8.2 Audio Conferencing

Given the global acceptance of the telephone, it is no surprise that

teleconferencing is the most commonly used form of conferencing in the

pharmaceutical industry today. It is easy to set up and allows universal

access, unlike videoconferencing there is no need to book dedicated

rooms.

Teleconferencing is not without its weaknesses, however. The study

revealed that the vast majority of teleconference participants multitask

during audio meetings instead of focusing on the topic at hand. Some

companies have introduced a “closed laptop” policy to try and combat this

behaviour. Participants also complain that they do not know who is present

at any given time - “people log-in and wander off.” In addition,

teleconferences do not allow participants to share non-verbal cues

including gestures, posture and facial expressions. Therefore, despite the

obvious benefits, teleconferencing is not the perfect tool.

8.3 VoIP

VoIP (voice over IP) is emerging as the second best solution to face-to-

face or videoconferencing. It allows for natural voice exchange and is

cheaper for global organisations than meeting face-to-face or by video link.

Introducing VoIP is a significant investment but it offers long term cost

effectiveness as well as collaborative benefits over and above

teleconferencing - VoIP allows additional participants seamless entry into

discussions avoiding the need to dial long, complicated numbers; as well

as the ability to bring in other collaborative tools at any time. The move to

VoIP is considered by many respondents to be a move closer in the

direction of contextual collaboration.

8.4 Presence Awareness

Presence awareness, to data has been a specific functionality of instant

messaging that allows people to contact each other by the ability to “see”

who out of their contacts is online at any given time. It can be extended to

see where contacts are and the processes they are currently involved in.

Today presence awareness is starting to move out of just instant

messaging and into other systems such as VOIP, allowing the user the

ability to choose the communication medium based upon the availability

indicated by the presence system.

24


‘The aim of electronic tools is to reinforce contact and human practice.’

‘Too much information is pushed at executives via email - time is lost just trying to keep abreast of the situation.’

8.5 Instant Messaging

Instant messaging provides a way to send short messages to other people

in real time via pop-up messages. Initially these messages are typed, but

as network bandwidth and multimedia capabilities improve, instant

messaging will use voice and video. Instant messaging is one of the

fastest-growing forms of Internet communications due to its real-time

nature; it bridges the gap between voice calls and email. Like email it

requires a response but current systems do not archive messages.

8.6 Email

Email lets users communicate with one another, coordinate activities, and

easily share information. However, lack of discipline regarding the use of

email leads to inappropriate and over-use, email mountains result - some

respondents to the study complained of having 500+ emails on their

system at any given time.

Problems arise where alerts or notifications are sent out in duplicate and

where individuals inappropriately use the system as a means of document

sharing and/or transfer. The attitude and use of email is culturally

entrenched - many companies collaborative culture has revolved around

email systems with document attachment capabilities. Moving people away

from reliance on email requires a fundamental change in behaviour -

solutions noted in the study include placing the onus on individuals to

check bulletin boards to avoid the need for email alerts and stipulating that

data should reside in shared workspaces or data repositories. Instead of

attaching documents to emails, only a link to the document should be

provided. This saves data being circulated unnecessarily, avoids email

overload and affords the recipient the choice of whether to follow the link or

not.

Email “overload” is an underestimated problem in most pharmaceutical

companies, it has a negative impact on workflow - few people have the

time to deal with email, they block delete and the result is that information

is lost and/or not acted upon. For this reason email has not been regarded

as an effective communication tool with people preferring to use voice or

even face-to-face where possible.

25

‘Shared work spaces are revolutionising how people work.’

‘Our shared workspace is just a data dump and there is no logical order to any of the information - users know in advance that they will be unable to find anything of use in it.’

8.7 Shared Workspaces

Shared workspaces are a core of Groupware applications and provide a

mechanism to share and distribute information, documents and/or objects.

The ability to share any of these with ease and immediacy is critical to

meeting the expectations of joint working and to help people communicate

and collaborate - shared workspaces not only provide a central information

store but also access to common tools. They may also include chat rooms

for real time discussions and bulletin boards to post documents or

questions.

Access to the workspace can be controlled therefore promoting not only

internal collaboration, but providing a means for secure collaboration with

external partners.

In conjunction with other Groupware functionalities, shared workspaces:

• Stimulate cooperation between team members

• Coordinate people and processes and reduce bottle-necks in

information sharing

• Define the flow of documents and the work required to complete

various stage-gate processes

• Maintain version control and audit trails

• Archive in terms of record of events, activities, problems and solutions

• Facilitate decision making

Shared workspaces have revolutionised how many teams work in the

pharmaceutical industry but as with all technology implementations,

adoption is patchy across the industry and even within individual

companies. Culture and behaviour play a large part as does team

leadership. To avoid a “data dump” situation, discipline has to be exerted

over the structure of the workspace as well as adherence to roles and

responsibilities. Without permanent management of the information

throughout its lifecycle, it rapidly loses its value no matter how rich the

collaborative environment. Resource must be allocated to prevent loss of

information - for this an integrated approach as well as an integrated

solution is required.

Effective use of shared workspaces requires a fundamental change in

behaviour; users often revert to familiar tools that they are comfortable with

- e.g. email. The problem lies in the fact that many pharmaceutical

companies have invested heavily in IT solutions but have failed to provide

adequate training; therefore, the users lack the confidence to use the new

26


‘People are very busy. The thought of putting data into a database is often viewed as added work - why bother when they are done with the information and no-one is ever going to use it again.’

‘Always best to reinvent the wheel and hope you come up with a better design!’

tools effectively. The problem is further compounded by M&A activity that

brings together two culturally diverse organisations with different

technology implementations.

8.8 Data Repositories

Since their inception, Pharma companies have run experiments and

recorded data. For many years that data was stored on paper or in a lab

book. Converting this data into an electronic format is essential for a

complete legacy system. This can be a major hurdle and probably the

biggest problem associated with re-working systems is getting data “into

shape” so it can easily be accessed by researchers who span the globe.

Magnifying this problem has been M&A activity, predecessor companies

are often made up of predecessor companies themselves which further

complicates the situation as each had their own legacy system and

preferred data storage format which may or may not be compatible.

There is much debate of the value of legacy data - some feel that so much

work has been done to clean up and add value to the data that it is cheaper

and easier to rerun the experiment. On the other hand, others believe that

there are insights into drug development in old data that are still valuable -

e.g. throughout the life cycle of a drug discovery programme, many insights

may emerge that are relevant beyond their immediate use. However, faced

with drying pipelines and the never ending quest to be more efficient in

drug development, pharmaceutical companies are beginning to tackle the

technical and cultural issues of what to do with legacy data. Keeping track

of all the information generated in the drug development process and

exploiting it to the full is far from straightforward. Much potentially useful

information continues to be lost because it never gets further than an

individual’s brain.

The challenges over successful data mining all centre around integration -

integration of access, integration of mining tools, integration of

interpretation tools, etc. At the moment, information still tends to be

fragmented and sit in “silos.” And, more importantly, the study highlights

the fact that the sharing of information and knowledge has not been high

priority. Companies often maintain large data sets which can be physically

accessed but which lack the “metadata.” Metadata is especially important

to legacy data because the context is lost over time. Therefore, to create

knowledge from existing information companies today have to make sure

that the data they are storing will be of use to future scientists - systems

must be designed that capture both data and the context of the experiment

27

‘Knowledge sharing in our organisation is not a global process.’

‘E-lab books are on their way but there is huge resistance to this initiative. Scientists are very protective over the information in their paper lab books and are very reluctant to share information.’

that generated that data (i.e. the metadata). By forcing data to be captured

in a standardised format, data repository systems are intended to provide a

“future-proof” solution to this problem.

Collaborative technologies such as corporate intranets have provided a

solution to the distribution of knowledge across pharmaceutical

organisations (knowledge management) by facilitating common access to

geographically distributed databases. People can now see information from

many different sources in an intuitive and integrated way. Data repositories

can be mined, visualised and then the results published so that others

across the organisation can use the information. However, as with other IT

implementations, organisations have focused heavily on the technical

solution and have over-looked the human element such as training people,

reducing their resistance to change, and encouraging people to share

knowledge.

An outstanding issue is that many researchers have difficulty dealing with

the huge amount of information available and many are still spending too

much time accessing irrelevant information. Even when new information is

processed, there are few effective ways to disperse any new knowledge

that is created. Portals are providing a partial solution by allowing user

defined functionality and role based access, yet there remains an unmet

need for search tools to be more intuitive and for users to be able to

effectively “profile” the information they want to see. Searching is time

consuming and relies on proactive user pull. Respondents commented that

they need a more intelligent system that allows them to pre-define the

information they require and one that automatically links them to critical

internal and external information based on this profile.

8.9 Electronic Lab Notebooks

Electronic lab notebooks are essentially data repository systems designed

to support user workflow and processes through the discovery cycle. In

practical terms this means being able to document accurately experiments

that have been carried out as well as search for, retrieve and analyse those

experiments in order to inform future research efforts - the key point being

that digitised information is far easier to share and collaborate on.

The research community has mixed emotions regarding the adoption of e-

lab notebooks. There are those who believe that their paper lab books are

as personal as diaries and who are unwilling to make that information

available to a wider audience; and then there are others who are eager to

28


‘Company-wide portals are expected to change working processes - portals will provide single access for all user needs.’

gain from the potential benefits of this tool:

• Faster experiment write-up

• Repetitive task automation

• Greater compliance with information standards and standard operating

procedures

• Generation of knowledge stores to enable smarter decision making on

future projects

• Access and retrieval across different research groups and sites - enabling

users to monitor experiments in progress and receive notifications when

new data is posted

Investment in e-lab notebooks will provide pharmaceutical companies with

the answer to an unavoidable need; namely that information storage,

sharing and retrieval affords a core competitive strength, but widespread

uptake of the tool will require attention to the more soft issues of human

behaviour. Widespread adoption of e-lab notebooks will require a change

in attitude and behaviour. Users must realise a net gain from the system

thus aiding not only uptake but also reducing resistance to change.

8.10 Portals

Portals are creating new channels for information and data access from a

single entry point. Single entry is becoming an important feature as users

find the process of having to go into different systems and enter multiple

passwords not only irritating, but time consuming.

Portals serve as a ‘one-stop’ information resource for specific topics on an

intranet and facilitate the link between cross-organisational communities.

The study revealed increased deployment of the portal model for therapy

groups, product teams and functional departments.

The content and presentation of the default page presented upon access

can be customised towards specific user communities or groups - users

can enter and immediately gain access to the tools they require and see

what is important, read it and/or download it. In an era where access to

vast amounts of data is possible, portals provide a means of pulling all the

relevant information for specific user groups together in one space so that it

can be accessed and mined.

29

‘If you want to find someone, you ring around.’

‘The efficiency of net meetings could be increased if documents for discussion were sent out in advance.’

8.11 Expertise Locators

For knowledge to be effectively created, connections must be made - not

only between information and people, but connections between the people

themselves.

The study highlighted that common questions are, “How do I identify

people in my organization who have the expertise I need to learn about;

and how do we share knowledge person-to-person?” Solutions to these

questions have been implemented to varying degrees across the industry

with many companies placing little emphasis in this area.

Online phone books are often available where people are listed under title

and department leaving it to a best guess scenario as to who to contact.

Departmental websites may provide contact details, but many people still

rely heavily on existing social networks. The problem is that social

networks are often broken following merger. Some companies have

introduced more formalised “expertise locators” which store information on

people’s competences and experiences.

Ideally, when storing data in central repositories, the metadata should

provide a link from finding the information to contacting the people involved

in its creation. Similarly having found a person, respondents commented

that it should be possible to find the work they have primed as author or

contributed to. Search navigation needs to be able to switch from

information based navigation to people and vice-versa.

8.12 Net Meetings

A network meeting application allows users to hold meetings over the

network. Attendees sit at their workstations and collaborate on a joint

project by opening documents on the screen and working on these

documents together. Electronic mediated communication such as this lacks

the interpersonal cues that are so important for building trust between team

members. Participation among new members may be difficult without visual

interaction. Introduction prior to these meetings helps build relationships

among participants. Respondents to the study commented that information

does not flow freely unless there is mutual trust between all attendees. As

with teleconferencing, it is preferable for photos of team members to be

distributed to help participants visualise real people.

The rapid growth in net meetings is due to the fact that users need only an

Internet-connected computer and a telephone, both of which are available

on virtually every desktop. The downside to net meetings is that there is no

30


‘Video-conferences are a good way of putting faces to names as getting everyone together face-to-face is not often possible.’

visual link, but the convenience and immediacy of the tool often outweighs

the need for visual cues. Where visual links are required, network meetings

are run in conjunction with videoconference sessions so attendees can see

one another and collaborate on computers at the same time. In fact, many

study respondents often expect a net meeting to run concurrently with a

videoconference not only to add value to the video link but to allow

additional non-visual attendance.

Net meetings in conjunction with videoconferences are particularly useful in

training situations, where new data has to be presented to teams, or in

situations that require decision making. In large meetings, respondents

found it is useful to have a chat window open. This helps where language

may be a barrier for some participants - due to their poor English skills they

may be hesitant to ask questions out loud, a dialog box gives these people

the time to compose the question before it is posted.

8.13 Videoconferencing

Where audio conferencing fails, videoconferencing excels by allowing

participants to share both verbal and non-verbal cues. By allowing people

not only to hear but also to see other participants, videoconferencing

enables more effective communications and fosters and environment of

interaction and collaboration. In addition, visual cues allow foreign

language speakers to be better understood. A particularly important issue

is that participants on-camera cannot easily multitask, leave the room, or

be distracted; which further enhances the overall impact of the meeting.

The ideal videoconference situation remains high-interaction meetings

between a relatively small group of participants or locations - multiple

screens (>4) often diminishes the overall quality of the interaction.

However, collaboration is more effective if the attendees have met face-to-

face before - people tend to trust others more if they have already met and

built a personal relationship; and teams that have established mutual trust,

communicate and exchange information more readily and openly.

Although videoconferencing is an excellent vehicle for bringing globally

dispersed teams together, it is far from a perfect tool. Imperfect visual

images plus time delays lead to misinterpretation of verbal communication

and body language. Technology is already in place that affords “movie

quality” pictures, but videoconferencing is inherently expensive, hence high

quality systems are not widely available.

Co-ordinating access to videoconference suites across multiple locations is

31

‘The impact of the video-conference begins to diminish if you have more than 4 or 5 participating locations.’

‘Ideas are best seeded by human contact, collaborative technologies then allow individuals to pursue those ideas.’

also a cumbersome task - many rooms are booked well in advance. In

addition, even with dedicated administrators, time is lost in set up and

getting everyone ready to start. For many, today’s videoconferencing

experience offers little value over and above teleconferences and/or net

meetings.

To make videoconferencing appeal to a wider audience it has to be

cheaper as well as more accessible, reliable, and faster to set up. Many

respondents to the study were concerned that desktop video chat would be

greedy in terms of bandwidth and if general access were allowed then

network performance could be seriously compromised. In response to the

accessibility issue, a small number of companies are piloting video kiosks

which offer wide potential across organisations:

• Human resources: global interviewing and recruitment

• Discovery labs: viewing samples and discussing projects

• Senior executives: strategy and operations meetings

8.14 Face-to-Face

Technical tools cannot substitute the traditional human face-to-face way of

collaborating and sharing information around a table - “nothing beats

seeing the whites of their eyes.” It is the best way of building relationships

and team moral. Face-to-face affords the full range of visual cues without

any misinterpretation. Nevertheless, wide geographical distribution of

teams means that routine face-to-face is not possible due to cost of travel

and time constraints of participants. Even co-located workers often resort

to teleconferencing rather than attempting to get multiple people together in

the same room at the same time.

The goal of future of collaborative environments is to simulate “face-to-

face” working as closely as possible by affording seamless transfer

between different modes of communication and collaboration.

8.15 Summary of Attitudes to Current Collaborative Tools

The following tables summarise respondent views to current tools and

practices.

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‘Technology must be simple to win acceptance quickly.’

Table 2: Pros and Cons of Synchronous Collaboration

• Co-location required for routine face-to-face• Wide geography means expensive - cost/ time of travel • Co-ordination of travel around other commitments

• “Nothing beats seeing the whites of their eyes” –personal, social• Best way of building relationships and team moral• Immediacy – excellent for decision making• Full range of communication signals – little misinterpretation

Face-to-Face

• Imperfect visual image• Time delay – misinterpretation of verbal communication• Co-ordination of access to VC suites in multiple sites• Expensive for little benefit over TC• Desktop solutions (video chat) would disable network• Time to set-up and get everyone ready to start• Cost to set-up and equip rooms plus telecommunication costs (biggest chunk)• Dislike of adding cost to cost centre

• Second best to face-to-face• Latest technology is like have person sitting next to you• The package (bandwidth) that the company opts for dictates quality• An excellent vehicle for bringing globally dispersed personnel together – heavily used at times such as 9/11• Enables users to see facial responses and body language • Can be combined with other smart tools e.g. white boards• Attendees can make contributions in advance by way of bulletin boards and email

Videoconferencing(VC)

• Requires training• Easy to forget how to set up • Incompatible with some telecom systems• No visual link

• Enables team to work from the same document and discuss same page/data• No time delay – real time• Fast to set up – convenient for participants• Flexible scheduling – sit at own workstations• Multiple parties in many locations

Net Meeting

• Requires response• Annoyance factor – potential for overuse

• Messages in real time via pop-ups • Potential for voice and video messages

Instant messaging

• Not sure who is present at any given time• Overuse of expensive mobile time in many cases • Distractions of other tasks

• Easy to set up and universal access – does not require booking of meeting roomsTeleconferencing (TC)

• Mobile phones make individuals too accessible • Life style impact on out of office hours – ‘never away from desk’

• Instant access• Text messaging can be good for instant accessPhone / Mobile

ConsProsSynchronous Collaboration

• Co-location required for routine face-to-face• Wide geography means expensive - cost/ time of travel • Co-ordination of travel around other commitments

• “Nothing beats seeing the whites of their eyes” –personal, social• Best way of building relationships and team moral• Immediacy – excellent for decision making• Full range of communication signals – little misinterpretation

Face-to-Face

• Imperfect visual image• Time delay – misinterpretation of verbal communication• Co-ordination of access to VC suites in multiple sites• Expensive for little benefit over TC• Desktop solutions (video chat) would disable network• Time to set-up and get everyone ready to start• Cost to set-up and equip rooms plus telecommunication costs (biggest chunk)• Dislike of adding cost to cost centre

• Second best to face-to-face• Latest technology is like have person sitting next to you• The package (bandwidth) that the company opts for dictates quality• An excellent vehicle for bringing globally dispersed personnel together – heavily used at times such as 9/11• Enables users to see facial responses and body language • Can be combined with other smart tools e.g. white boards• Attendees can make contributions in advance by way of bulletin boards and email

Videoconferencing(VC)

• Requires training• Easy to forget how to set up • Incompatible with some telecom systems• No visual link

• Enables team to work from the same document and discuss same page/data• No time delay – real time• Fast to set up – convenient for participants• Flexible scheduling – sit at own workstations• Multiple parties in many locations

Net Meeting

• Requires response• Annoyance factor – potential for overuse

• Messages in real time via pop-ups • Potential for voice and video messages

Instant messaging

• Not sure who is present at any given time• Overuse of expensive mobile time in many cases • Distractions of other tasks

• Easy to set up and universal access – does not require booking of meeting roomsTeleconferencing (TC)

• Mobile phones make individuals too accessible • Life style impact on out of office hours – ‘never away from desk’

• Instant access• Text messaging can be good for instant accessPhone / Mobile

ConsProsSynchronous Collaboration

Table 3: Pros and Cons of Asynchronous Collaboration

• Security, sensitivity and confidentiality• Too much information – filters required• Information must be maintained

• Highly effective for sharing data, information and knowledge with a large audience• Best place to house tools• Portals provide single point of access and can be tailored to audience requirements

Intranet

• Don’t know where to look for information• Search tools not intuitive enough• Relies on proactive user pull• Not successful at capturing tacit information• Legacy data a major issue• Huge amounts of information constantly being generated• Requires users to add knowledge and information to the system

• Easily accessible• Effectively captures and stores knowledge• Forces knowledge to be captured in a standardised format• Data can be used for validation purpose• Static• Future proof if data standardised

Databases / Data

Repositories

• Changing people’s working processes• Barrier to sharing information with people they have not met • Users need to “buy into” the concept of sharing information• Must synchronise with existing desktop environment• Training required• Not sufficient document control for validation purposes

• Facilitates communication where face-to-face is difficult or costly• Can be used with external suppliers as well• Maintains version control• Excellent archive in terms of record of events, activities, problems and solutions• High accessibility• Promotes joint team working • Facilitates decision making• Promotes informal communication

E-rooms/ Groupware

• Not deemed as communication – better to use voice or even face-to-face• Overused – e-mail mountains, communication overload and can lead to ‘e-mail rage’• Difficult to manage version control• Legal ramifications on wording of email • Emails often dumped without action

• Easy to use – part of desktop setup and via systems such as “Blackberry”• Instant data transfer both internal and external• Suitable for a large or small audience

Email

ConsProsAsynchronous Collaboration

• Security, sensitivity and confidentiality• Too much information – filters required• Information must be maintained

• Highly effective for sharing data, information and knowledge with a large audience• Best place to house tools• Portals provide single point of access and can be tailored to audience requirements

Intranet

• Don’t know where to look for information• Search tools not intuitive enough• Relies on proactive user pull• Not successful at capturing tacit information• Legacy data a major issue• Huge amounts of information constantly being generated• Requires users to add knowledge and information to the system

• Easily accessible• Effectively captures and stores knowledge• Forces knowledge to be captured in a standardised format• Data can be used for validation purpose• Static• Future proof if data standardised

Databases / Data

Repositories

• Changing people’s working processes• Barrier to sharing information with people they have not met • Users need to “buy into” the concept of sharing information• Must synchronise with existing desktop environment• Training required• Not sufficient document control for validation purposes

• Facilitates communication where face-to-face is difficult or costly• Can be used with external suppliers as well• Maintains version control• Excellent archive in terms of record of events, activities, problems and solutions• High accessibility• Promotes joint team working • Facilitates decision making• Promotes informal communication

E-rooms/ Groupware

• Not deemed as communication – better to use voice or even face-to-face• Overused – e-mail mountains, communication overload and can lead to ‘e-mail rage’• Difficult to manage version control• Legal ramifications on wording of email • Emails often dumped without action

• Easy to use – part of desktop setup and via systems such as “Blackberry”• Instant data transfer both internal and external• Suitable for a large or small audience

Email

ConsProsAsynchronous Collaboration

9. Winning Strategies for Better Future Collaboration

9.1 Select the Right Technological Collaborative Environment

Selecting the optimal collaboration tool to fit the situation is a critical

consideration.

33

‘The most important factor is to keep the technology straightforward and intuitive so that it is easy for people to learn and to use - that way they keep using it.’

‘All too often the technology is too complicated to use.’

Table 4: Considerations for the Selection of Collaborative Tools

YesPotentialYesAsynchronous

HighMediumLowData sharing

NoYesNoSynchronous

HighHighHighAccessibility

Excellent fitPoor fitGood fitAudience size >25

Excellent fitMedium fitGood fitAudience size 5-25

Excellent fitExcellent fitGood fitAudience size 1-5

NoYesYesRequires response

MediumHighHighEase-of-use

Shared WorkspaceInstant MessagingEmail Criteria

YesPotentialYesAsynchronous

HighMediumLowData sharing

NoYesNoSynchronous

HighHighHighAccessibility

Excellent fitPoor fitGood fitAudience size >25

Excellent fitMedium fitGood fitAudience size 5-25

Excellent fitExcellent fitGood fitAudience size 1-5

NoYesYesRequires response

MediumHighHighEase-of-use

Shared WorkspaceInstant MessagingEmail Criteria

In selecting the appropriate conferencing tool, users must consider the

nature of their requirements and the potential benefits (and weaknesses) of

their conferencing options. The most important considerations are the size

of the audience and the intended level of interaction. As above, the right

choice might include a combination of options. For example, a quarterly

commercial team meeting might include a videoconference between 3 or 4

locations, a teleconference to permit remote users to participate and a live

net meeting session.

Table 5: Considerations for the Selection of Collaborative Conferencing Tools

LowHighLowHighAccessibility

Excellent fitGood fitPoor fitPoor fitMeeting size >25

Excellent fitGood fitMedium fitGood fitMeeting size 5-25

Excellent fitGood fitExcellent fitGood fitMeeting size 1-5

HighLowLowLowOther expenses (e.g. travel)

ZeroLowHighLowNetwork cost

ZeroLowHighLowEquipment cost

HighMediumMedium - LowHighEase-of-use

HighHighHighLowCollaboration environment

YesYesSometimesNoPresentation of data

YesNoYesNoVisual cues

Face-to-faceNet MeetingVideoconferenceTeleconference Criteria

LowHighLowHighAccessibility

Excellent fitGood fitPoor fitPoor fitMeeting size >25

Excellent fitGood fitMedium fitGood fitMeeting size 5-25

Excellent fitGood fitExcellent fitGood fitMeeting size 1-5

HighLowLowLowOther expenses (e.g. travel)

ZeroLowHighLowNetwork cost

ZeroLowHighLowEquipment cost

HighMediumMedium - LowHighEase-of-use

HighHighHighLowCollaboration environment

YesYesSometimesNoPresentation of data

YesNoYesNoVisual cues

Face-to-faceNet MeetingVideoconferenceTeleconference Criteria

34


‘Collaboration is not just a technology fix; collaborative solutions must address how people work within processes.’

9.2 Ensure Collaboration is Contextual – intuitive and seamless

Since the 1990s, collaboration strategies have revolved around tools with

little attention being paid to user needs and behaviour.

Email, group calendars, and discussion forums are representative of first-

generation solutions for individual and team activity. Instant messaging,

web conferencing, and Groupware represent second generation tools

being deployed. However, simply giving users the perfect tool for each

situation is not always the correct strategy. Not only does the unchecked

proliferation of tools for each situation result in higher levels of IT

complexity (and costs), but individual productivity gains without impact on

process outcomes are unlikely to impact on the bottom line.

Earlier collaborative efforts focused on people; today the focus is on how

people work within processes - it is no longer a personal productivity

endeavour (e.g. saving time or making individual tasks more efficient), the

goal now is to enable processes to perform at a higher level.

Contextual collaboration carries with it several attributes and features.

Tools currently used for collaboration typically require the user to switch

from among several open windows in order to communicate with team

members or colleagues - this can be both cumbersome and frustrating.

Contextual collaboration represents an integration of tools into a unified

interface - tools such as word processors, instant messaging, shared

calendars, Groupware, presence and real-time capabilities would all be

integrated so that teams could communicate quickly and instantly from a

single environment. The integrated environment provides a managed

repository providing document and record management and an audit trail.

Without permanent management of the information throughout its lifecycle

it rapidly loses value no matter how rich the collaborative environment.

Figure 3: Unification of Tools

CONTEXTUAL COLLABORATION

Conversation(VoIP)

PresenceAwareness

ObjectSharing

e.g. Documents,Databases

SharedWorkspaceAggregation of shared objects

& tools

CONTEXTUAL COLLABORATION

Conversation(VoIP)

PresenceAwareness

ObjectSharing

e.g. Documents,Databases

SharedWorkspaceAggregation of shared objects

& tools

35

‘The only way adoption of collaborative tools can be improved is to employ a top down solution – team and project leaders have to set the example and then dictate the means of collaboration for the team. This sounds hard, but if a soft approach is taken, then people just ignore the directives.’

The goal of contextual collaboration is to make online collaboration as

simple and as intuitive as possible allowing more proactive goal

management and more focused work processes. It mimics the richness of

co-located small team working by combining process rigour for compliance

with captured ad hoc interaction and collaboration. The movement towards

contextual collaboration continues to be adopted to improve productivity,

reduce coordination costs, and better connect people to peers and teams.

9.3 Create the Culture

Not only do pharmaceutical companies have to ensure that the technology

is intuitive and seamless, but they need to develop and reward a culture of

openness and sharing. Shifting a corporate culture from being competitive

to being co-operative is no small undertaking and will require changes at all

levels of the organisation, including the CEO.

Training is required - users must be familiar with and comfortable using the

tools. If they lack confidence in their abilities, they won’t adopt. When a

collaborative solution is first adopted, the structure of the workspace is only

an approximation of user best practice, no matter how intimately involved

the users were in defining the environment. Over time as end-user

confidence and familiarity evolves, the sophistication of the workspace will

grow accordingly. With adequate training and support, the result will be a

constant cycle of positive reinforcement and continuous enhancements in

productivity.

Employees need to be given incentives to contribute to the system;

rewards could be either financial or psychological (e.g. peer recognition).

Users must realise a net gain from the system and the value of sharing

information through collaboration must be reinforced. A major failing is that

the majority of pharmaceutical companies do not yet reward or include

collaboration in personal objectives - and without incentives behaviour will

not change.

9.4 Measure the Impact

Collaborative tools are likely to be adopted more widely within

pharmaceutical companies and their use become more routine if

employees and executives understand how much time and money can be

saved - and savings can be dramatic.

For example, at some companies, collaborative technologies have reduced

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‘Collaborative initiatives have impacted on productivity - but this is very difficult to measure.’

‘

the length and number of meetings. At Shell, it is believed that online

collaboration saved the company at least $237 million in 2000.6

The example below is based on the most obvious hard benefit from

collaborative solutions in the pharmaceutical industry i.e. that of travel

reduction; it is indicative only and based on comments and opinions

gathered during the interview process. The direct expenses of salary,

flights, sundries and hotels are included.

Table 6: Example of Potential Cost an Man Hour Savings through

Collaborative Solutions in Clinical Development

4 people = $360,8005 people = $451,0006 people = $541,200

1 person = $90,2002 people = $180,4003 people = $270,600

Total meeting cost savings over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)

$1,100Total cost per person per trip (salary + flights + hotel + sundries)

4 people = 492 days5 people = 615 days6 people = 738 days

4 people = 4,428 hours5 people = 5,535 hours

Hotel ~ $100 per nightMeals, taxis, car service, etc ~ $100

Hotel and sundries cost estimate

$450Round trip flight estimate

Assuming average salary of $100,000 pa = $150,000 pa amortised costAverage $450 per person per meeting

Salary costs for downtime

1 person = 123 days 2 people = 246 days3 people = 369 days ~ 1 year

Assuming average 9 hour day

Total downtime savings in terms of development man days (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)

1 person = 1,107 hours2 people = 2,214 hours3 people = 3,321 hours

NB: people vary over time

Total downtime over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)

82Number of meetings avoided during clinical development at a frequency of 1 per month

6.8 yearsAverage clinical development time (Ph I – NDA Approval)Source: Mean clinical development time for NCEs approved 2000-2001 (Tufts CSDD)

1.5 days per person Average work day 9 hours = 13.5 hours per personDowntime per meeting

1.5 hoursDuration of meeting

Assumption: That collaborative tools avoid the need for one face-to-face meeting per month over the average development cycle of an NCE (Phase I through to launch)

4 people = $360,8005 people = $451,0006 people = $541,200

1 person = $90,2002 people = $180,4003 people = $270,600

Total meeting cost savings over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)

$1,100Total cost per person per trip (salary + flights + hotel + sundries)

4 people = 492 days5 people = 615 days6 people = 738 days

4 people = 4,428 hours5 people = 5,535 hours

Hotel ~ $100 per nightMeals, taxis, car service, etc ~ $100

Hotel and sundries cost estimate

$450Round trip flight estimate

Assuming average salary of $100,000 pa = $150,000 pa amortised costAverage $450 per person per meeting

Salary costs for downtime

1 person = 123 days 2 people = 246 days3 people = 369 days ~ 1 year

Assuming average 9 hour day

Total downtime savings in terms of development man days (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)

1 person = 1,107 hours2 people = 2,214 hours3 people = 3,321 hours

NB: people vary over time

Total downtime over clinical development (in terms of the number of people involved in the meeting)

82Number of meetings avoided during clinical development at a frequency of 1 per month

6.8 yearsAverage clinical development time (Ph I – NDA Approval)Source: Mean clinical development time for NCEs approved 2000-2001 (Tufts CSDD)

1.5 days per person Average work day 9 hours = 13.5 hours per personDowntime per meeting

1.5 hoursDuration of meeting

Assumption: That collaborative tools avoid the need for one face-to-face meeting per month over the average development cycle of an NCE (Phase I through to launch)

From the simple example above it can be concluded that by avoiding 3 to 4

people the need to travel and meet face-to-face once a month over the

clinical development period; the savings in terms of man hours are greater

than one year, and that the cost savings equate to those of a toxicology or

small formulation study for example.

A growing trend in the pharmaceutical industry is the growing reliance on

external partners. With margins to preserve and resources to optimise,

companies today must shed “non-core” activities. The second example

relates to productivity increases in clinical development as a result of

improved collaboration with external partners. In the past, documents were

shared with external CROs using fax and/or courier. Now, shared

workspaces are created and teams from both sides are working in real time

on information - avoiding delays can reap significant cost savings in

addition to decreasing cycle times.

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‘Improved, better, and quicker decisions would prevent project hold ups.’

Table 7: Example of Potential Cost and Development Time Savings through

Improved Collaboration with External Partners

10%5%3%

US$11.4 millionUS$5.7 millionUS$3.5 million

Decreased cost of developmentBased on the direct cost of development of US$1.5 million per month. (Source: Friedman, Billings, Ramsey research. August 2000)

7.6 months3.8 months2.3 months

Decreased development time Based on the average duration of development time of 76 months per NCE (Source: Lehman Brothers research. “The Fruits of Genomics,” January 2001)

Results from varying levels of productivity improvementBenefits

Assumption: that collaborative tools support strategic alliances with external partners. The result of teams from both sides working in real time can offer significant productivity gains

10%5%3%

US$11.4 millionUS$5.7 millionUS$3.5 million

Decreased cost of developmentBased on the direct cost of development of US$1.5 million per month. (Source: Friedman, Billings, Ramsey research. August 2000)

7.6 months3.8 months2.3 months

Decreased development time Based on the average duration of development time of 76 months per NCE (Source: Lehman Brothers research. “The Fruits of Genomics,” January 2001)


Assumption: that collaborative tools support strategic alliances with external partners. The result of teams from both sides working in real time can offer significant productivity gains

The third example relates to productivity increases in discovery as a result

of easier access to relevant information and sources of expertise. In many

companies, researchers are spending more than 15% of their time

searching for data and information,7 this leads to bad and slow decision

making. High-tech, cutting-edge drug discovery programmes are all very

well but bottlenecks at the data processing stage often negate the potential

advantages of new technology.

Table 8: Example of Potential Productivity Improvements in Discovery

10%5%3%

US$19.8 millionUS$9.9 millionUS$6 millionDecreased cost of discoveryBased on the direct cost of discovery of US$3 million per month.(Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)

6.6 months3.3 months2 monthsDecreased discovery time Based on the average duration of discovery time of 66 months perNCE (Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)


Assumption: that collaborative tools result in productivity improvements in discovery as a result of easier access to relevant information and expertise

10%5%3%

US$19.8 millionUS$9.9 millionUS$6 millionDecreased cost of discoveryBased on the direct cost of discovery of US$3 million per month.(Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)

6.6 months3.3 months2 monthsDecreased discovery time Based on the average duration of discovery time of 66 months perNCE (Source: Parexel’s R&D Sourcebook 2001)


Assumption: that collaborative tools result in productivity improvements in discovery as a result of easier access to relevant information and expertise

Considering that the implementation of collaborative tools to support

knowledge creation and management has the potential to increase

research productivity by at least 5%, 4 then on average 3.3 months and

US$9.9 million could be saved in the discovery process.

9.5 Promote the Benefits to Improve Adoption

The bottom line is that effective collaboration strategies will enable

individuals and teams to be more productive within processes, with

success measured via improvement in process outcomes and more

sustained levels of innovation resulting from company insight.

New collaborative and communications tools deliver productivity

improvements as both hard, quantifiable benefits (already discussed), and

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‘Collaborative tools have reduced the bottlenecks of information sharing. They enable teams to be tracked publicly which keeps them on schedule.’

as soft benefits. Soft benefits are perhaps always the most under-

appreciated since they are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify with

precision. Soft benefits include:

• Enhanced creativity and innovation.

• Faster and more informed decision making – 24/7 availability of

information

• Increased transparency across the organisation - decisions based on

current not expired data

• Improved productivity/efficiency

• Improved management of project teams

• Increased reach – which includes remote workers and multi-geographies

• Improved quality of life by minimising travel requirements

• Elimination of downtime by reducing time away from the office

10. Conclusions

Collaborative solutions now represent a core business tool that global

pharmaceutical companies need to fully embrace in order to compete in

today’s global marketplace.

The major finding of the study was that successful implementation of

collaborative working solutions requires intuitive tools combined with the

right cultural environment.

Table 9: Summary of Critical Factors for Successful Collaboration

•A corporate culture of openness and sharing

•Rewards for demonstrating effective team working and collaborative behaviour

•Appropriate and timely training to support introduction of new tools

•Leadership and example - team leaders must provide authority on collaborative behaviour

•Resource must be allocated – both in terms of technical support and system maintenance, but also at team level to direct the use and continuous optimisation of the collaborative workspace

•Defined roles and responsibilities – at all levels from the implementation team down to the project teams themselves

•The impact of collaboration needs to be measured whilst at the same time promoting the benefits

•

s

•

•s

•li

•

•

•s

Simplicity - tools developed for large groups of people must be easy to learn as well as simple, intuitive and traightforward to use

Accessibility - tools must fit seamlessly within the desktop environment

Customisation - different groups have different needs, tools hould be customisable as well as facilitate the customised

access to information

Integration - tools ideally need to be in an integrated and nked family that enables a user to move seamlessly from

one tool to the next (contextual collaboration)

Relevance - the tools must be relevant to the context of work as well as to meet specific business objectives

Connectivity - easy access to everyone else

Reliability – tools must work in the manner expected and ystems must be maintained

Critical Success Factors for Creating a Collaborative EnvironmentCritical Success Factors for Tools

•A corporate culture of openness and sharing

•Rewards for demonstrating effective team working and collaborative behaviour

•Appropriate and timely training to support introduction of new tools

•Leadership and example - team leaders must provide authority on collaborative behaviour

•Resource must be allocated – both in terms of technical support and system maintenance, but also at team level to direct the use and continuous optimisation of the collaborative workspace

•Defined roles and responsibilities – at all levels from the implementation team down to the project teams themselves

•The impact of collaboration needs to be measured whilst at the same time promoting the benefits

Simplicity - tools developed for large groups of people must be easy to learn as well as simple, intuitive and traightforward to use

Accessibility - tools must fit seamlessly within the desktop environment

Customisation - different groups have different needs, tools hould be customisable as well as facilitate the customised

access to information

Integration - tools ideally need to be in an integrated and nked family that enables a user to move seamlessly from

one tool to the next (contextual collaboration)

Relevance - the tools must be relevant to the context of work as well as to meet specific business objectives

Connectivity - easy access to everyone else

Reliability – tools must work in the manner expected and ystems must be maintained

Critical Success Factors for Creating a Collaborative Environment

•

s

•

•s

•li

•

•

•s

Critical Success Factors for Tools

New tools and communication infrastructures are now on the horizon which

will enable true contextual collaboration. With the convergence of voice,

39

video, and data networks, more pharmaceutical companies will realise

increased value through deploying IP collaborative solutions - including IP

telephony (VoIP), unified messaging, voice mail, and audio, video, and web

conferencing. These personal tools will enable workers to communicate

anywhere, anytime, with local and remote colleagues, without leaving the

comfort and efficiency of their workspace. Individuals will be able to work

with live information that is relevant, current and fluid. Online collaboration

will be as simple and as intuitive as it is to work with people in the same

room.

However, to truly embed collaborative working behaviour requires a

fundamental change in everyday working practice - to succeed the benefits

of collaboration and knowledge sharing must be continually reinforced. A

successful collaborative framework is a driver for cultural change and is a

vehicle for pharmaceutical companies to realise the full potential of their

greatest asset - their people.

1Parexel’s Pharmaceutical R&D Statistical Sourcebook 2004/2005 via Eli Lilly 2 Andersen Consulting 3 Nonaka and Takeuchis, “The Knowledge-Creating Company,” (Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1995) 4 Krile and Juell 5 Kirsner – Ecosystem, mastering the business environment 6 Ecosystems-Mastering the e-business environment 2001 – S Kirsner 7 Interview feedback

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11. Appendix 11.1 About the Authors

RM Consulting and Urch Publishing partnered to implement this review, combining RM’s

recognised expertise in working with the pharmaceutical R&D community with Urch’s

experience in the business intelligence sector.

About RM Consulting

RM Consulting (est. 1999), is an international life science and chemical business consultancy

focused on providing management support services to the global pharmaceutical,

biotechnology, chemical and healthcare sectors. Charles Rowlands is the founding partner

with over 20 years experience in the life science and chemical sector. He has worked on

numerous strategy development and market assessment projects and can be reached on

[email protected].

About Urch Publishing

Urch Publishing Ltd. (est. 2001), is a specialist information provider and publisher to the

global pharmaceutical industry. Edwin Bailey is the founder and managing director. He can be

reached on [email protected].

11.2 Endnote

We would like to extend our thanks to all the respondents for their time and valuable inputs to

this review.

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11.3 Contacts

BT Healthcare Solutions Marketing

Gary Hawksworth

BT Healthcare Solutions Marketing

BT Global Services, UK Major Customers,

PP13, First Floor, Orion Building

Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath,

Ipswich,

Suffolk IP5 3RE

Tel: +44 (0) 1473 605832

www.bt.com

RM Consulting

55 Princes Gate

Exhibition Road

London SW7 2PN

Tel: +44 (0) 207 225 3538/ 207 838 1010

www.rmpharmachem.com

Urch Publishing Ltd.

PO Box 27554

London SE4 2GZ

Tel +44 (0) 207 060 1099

www.urchpublishing.com

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http://www.rmpharmachem.com

http://www.urchpublishing.com

http://www.bt.com