Customer Solution Brief


Microsoft Office 2010
Customer Solution Case Study

/ Documents – and vacations – now easier to find at Cardiome with help of Office 2010

"This has made such a difference in our office. Tracking down information used to be such a big part of our day, but now it’s completely off our shoulders. Using Office 2010, we have that time back."

As’ad Suleiman, Director of IT, Cardiome

Based in Vancouver, Cardiome Pharma Corp. is a drug development company dedicated to the commercialization of new treatments for cardiovascular disorders. Its primary product is Vernakalant, a candidate for the treatment of atrial fibrillation – an irregular heart rhythm considered a risk factor for stroke.

© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, [list other trademarks referenced] are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners..
Document published 11/2009


Situation

The pharmaceutical industry is strictly regulated, and Cardiome relies on technology to help it comply with government and other requirements as efficiently as possible.

In 2007 Cardiome worked with Vancouver-based SoftLanding Network Solutions Inc. to implement a portal based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server. The goal was to help its legal department streamline document management. For years lawyers and contract specialists struggled with version control issues, and many had trouble finding documents in the maze of folders and subfolders on the shared network drive.

The legal department is a much different place today. “The portal was a very successful project,” says As’ad Suleiman, Director of IT, Cardiome. “Our employees got really engaged, and we’re saving substantial amounts of time as a result.”

With that complete, Cardiome has shifted attention to its clinical team, where employees routinely email countless documents across the organization for review and approval. Once all comments and revisions are made, a team member must combine all of the information into a single document.

With so many people involved in document revisions, finalizing information is a challenge.

“You can end up with up to 15 different versions or more,” says Kathryn Ratelich, Regulatory Affairs Manager, Cardiome. “It turns into an absolute monster when you have to collate numerous comments and revisions from different team members into a single version. And by collating manually, there is always the chance that something may be missed.”

Cardiome’s HR team also struggled with document workflow. Employee vacation and sick-leave requests were tracked using a massive spreadsheet and approved via paper-based forms, leaving questions around the accuracy of information.

“Seventy per cent of the HR administrator’s time was spent managing spreadsheets, calculating vacation time left, and informing employees,” says Slavica Gordon, SharePoint Practice Lead, SoftLanding. “That’s information they could easily find on their own with the right solution.”

Given that Cardiome expects to hire aggressively over next 12 months, the company decided to act.

Solution

Working with SoftLanding, Cardiome implemented Office SharePoint Server 2010, the business collaboration platform for enterprise content management.

Cardiome and SoftLanding designed a customized portal solution for the clinical and HR teams incorporating:

·  Office SharePoint Server 2010 Records Center for easier information discovery

·  Microsoft InfoPath® Forms Services to streamline vacation requests in HR via online forms

·  Office 2010 for automated PDF document conversions and co-authoring

·  Office Visio® 2010, to help employees visualize document workflows

Cardiome successfully piloted the solution with a handful of employees in the HR and clinical departments. The company is preparing to roll the program out to the rest of the team. But its impact is already being felt

Better outcomes, fewer steps

With the automatic document conversion features of Word 2010, regulatory team members no longer waste time converting documents to PDF. It happens automatically. And the new coauthoring tool in Word 2010 allows more than one user to work on a document at once, reducing review times, while at the same time eliminates the need for an individual to manually collate team comments. The coauthoring capability is a huge advantage to Cardiome considering their documents are typically reviewed by anywhere from three to over 20 individuals.

A new forms-based solution based on InfoPath 2010 has made the vacation-request process much simpler. Employees simply complete the online form, and from there it is routed automatically to supervisors for approval. The solution provides automatic email notification to the employee and updates staff members’ vacation days accordingly.

“This has made such a difference in our office. Tracking down information used to be such a big part of our day, but now it’s completely off our shoulders. With Office 2010, we have that time back,” says Suleiman.

Information that’s easy to find All clinical regulatory and HR content now resides in the Office SharePoint Server 2010 Records Center portal, making it easier for the legal and regulatory teams to find clinical data details and ensure compliance with government and contractual obligations.

As well, the Backstage feature in Office 2010 enables users to quickly access document information - such as who last opened the document, and when it was modified - so clinical regulatory team members don’t have to go digging for those details.

“The pharmaceutical sector is highly regulated, and the regulations can change depending on the location,” Ratelich says. “We need to be sure that we know what’s expected, and that we’re addressing what needs to be addressed. This new information management platform helps us do that.”

Less workload for IT

The Backstage has helped make life easier the IT department as well. “It used to be that the IT team would get calls from users, asking us to hunt down document details,” Suleiman says. “Those calls have stopped, and my team and I are able to focus more on the company’s overall technology strategy.”

Office SharePoint Server 2010 is also designed to make it even easier for IT to set up and manage. “We can actually do more customization and administration in less time,” Suleiman says. “And now that the disaster recovery features are more granular, it should be easier for us to restore operations if anything happens.”

© 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, [list other trademarks referenced] are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners..
Document published 11/2009