Nearly 70% of life sciences respondents have seen an increase in data loss incidents caused by insiders over the past year. Download our eBook to learn more.

The post The Partner That Knows: Life Sciences Industry eBook appeared first on Thrive.

Thrive’s recent acquisition of Timlin Enterprises is a collaboration that’s proving to be a game changer in the Managed Services Provider (MSP) ecosystem – offering an enormous opportunity and value to our customers.

This partnership is powerful and there is no other collaboration like it positively impacting and shaping the MSP landscape. The Timlin solutions added to the deep Thrive portfolio of NextGen managed services becomes an innovative vehicle to collectively create a holistic road map for our customers, which includes strategic discussions about the “big picture” of technology and services our customers depend on to achieve their goals. We understand that IT exists to enable and support the goals of the business, but it is not the driver of technology. Instead, IT contains the resources to help deliver those capabilities effectively over time and adapt to the changing needs of the business and supporting platforms like Microsoft 365.

Prior to this acquisition, our customers often had to choose an IT services provider, but then realize that their vendor lacked the capabilities to provide the business productivity and collaboration support that Timlin is known for delivering. This collaboration enables a pivotal head start for our customers as Thrive is now able to explore our customers’ IT and business needs earlier in the process of aligning with their IT service provider.

With our strong focus on Life Sciences, it is even more apparent that the rapidly changing needs of our customers, as they grow through phases of programs, could create increasing strain on their IT services provider.  A larger organization like Thrive helps to solve these issues with their investment in technology solutions and access to more resources as the customers’ needs and complexity escalates.

Thrive has built an organization focused on the people, process, and technology necessary to execute on the best possible total client experience. With the addition of Timlin, Thrive will be able to help this industry operate more efficiently, from initial Discovery through Product Commercialization and beyond, by leveraging Microsoft 365 to improve processes.

This is a really a great position for our team to be in – the opportunity to get involved with the IT and business needs much earlier in the process as we align with our customers’ IT service provider.  A solution much greater than the sum of its’ parts.

Interested in learning more? CONTACT US TODAY!

The post Thrive and Timlin — A Powerful Combination for Life Sciences Organizations appeared first on Thrive.

The post Cybersecurity Fundamentals appeared first on Thrive.

Life sciences companies experience various degrees of growth based on their evolution through discovery and R&D efforts leading into clinical trials. As a company’s target drug receives positive feedback through initial clinical trials, they can experience 50% to 100% growth in one year. If they are granted approval, they also can experience growth as they add on more personnel to sales and operations.

This growth is exciting but results in insecure collaboration and significant challenges to operational efficiency.

As a life science company grows, what was once an efficient process quickly gets out of control and becomes an operational burden. Manual processes that were once simple and easy become cumbersome and inefficient.  This may be simple HR processes like vacation requests or expense management, or it may be more complicated solutions such as employee reviews, contract management, or the onboarding of new employees.

Navigating the ups and downs of growth phases is successful only if your organization adopts the proper processes and technology to support its day-to-day operations.

Defined and automated solutions that can handle basic and complicated operational tasks – and automatically scale and retract as appropriate – will enable your organization to focus on developing and moving drugs through the FDA approval process.

In this blog post, we’ll explore five key areas where business processes automation can make a material difference, based on our work with 70+ life sciences organizations – from nimble start-ups to publicly-traded enterprises.

1.) Human Resources

We find many life sciences companies use 3^rd party Human Resource (HR) providers/tools, such as ADP, that allow them to automate some business processes.  Other companies use SaaS solutions for HR workflows that, depending on the solution, have some capability to automate processes.

Whether you have a separate HR solution or not, we have found that the tools in Office 365 can easily be used to automate and simplify many HR processes.  The best part — you can implement these solutions at a relatively low cost without requiring any additional investment in software.

Here are some examples of how we’ve automated HR processes in Office 365 for our customers:

• Vacation Request and Carry Over
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Review Process
• Timesheet Tracking
• Employee Training and Tracking

These streamlined and automated processes save HR and your users a significant amount of time.  Instead of managing your review process via emails and multiple versions of a review document, an automated solution ensures all individuals involved in a particular review are notified, their responses are tracked, and, if you have multiple managers submitting data on one review, and all responses are automatically tallied into one final review.

2.) Contract Management

A Confidential Disclosure Agreement (CDA) is one of the most widely used agreements in the life sciences sector.  Although this is a simple agreement to execute, with the volume of CDA’s sent to partners, vendors, and contractors, finding and managing these documents can quickly get out of control.

Beyond CDA documents, contracts also need to be maintained for all your key relationships.  These contracts need to be organized, searchable, and easily tracked for renewals. You also need to ensure proper rules are in place to approve and process contracts efficiently.

Timlin has built several solutions to manage the entire contract management process at life sciences firms.  Historically we accomplished these solutions using 3^rd party workflow and forms solutions.  Recently, we have seen that the evolution of Microsoft Flow and Power Apps has allowed us to build these solutions using the tools and applications within Office 365, removing the need for our customers to purchase 3^rd party solutions.  Here’s an example below:

With the core document management and publishing capabilities in SharePoint Online, combined with the forms and workflow capabilities of Flow and Power Apps, and integration of electronic signatures, life science organizations can have a powerful contract management solution.

3.) Onboarding and Offboarding Employees & Contractors 

Although technically an HR process, the critical nature of efficiently and securely onboarding and offboarding employees and contractors has proven to be a huge benefit to our customers.  When you’re hiring 15 people a week, it’s essential to have a pre-defined and automated process to onboard everyone, so they add value and perform their tasks as soon as possible.

Life science organizations should consider automating the entire onboarding process.  The process would begin before the new employee or contractor has set foot in the door.

For example, we can build a workflow that will add a new record into your Active Directory (AD) when an offer is accepted, and then the flow triggers based on the employee start date to enable access to the appropriate systems on that date.  Our onboarding solutions can integrate with your HR, finance, and other systems as required to ensure all required steps are handled based on pre-defined rules.  One of our customers was able to help automate the analysis of over 400 systems and services with this solution.

In addition to onboarding new employees and contractors efficiently, it is equally important to shut down all access once someone leaves the organization.

Data and intellectual property protection are incredibly important for life science organizations to maintain. Not only does access need to be terminated, but these actions also need to be logged, especially for public companies who are under SOX compliance.  We have delivered automated offboarding solutions at several organizations, and have built offboarding PowerShell scripts that:

• Capture last login date
• Last password set date
• Current AD security group membership
• Set new password
• Cancel O365 meetings
• Remove from all AD security groups
• Remove manager
• Set default group to “No Access”
• Move user to off boarded OU

4.) Finance

Finance is another key area ripe for automation in life sciences organizations.  Imagine implementing expense request approvals and reporting that provide separate approval workflows based on the amount of the expense, requestor, or department.

Another key finance flow that has proven to greatly help finance operations is Purchase Order (PO) approvals and processing. An automated PO process allows users to enter details on a new PO Request, then a workflow is triggered to ensure the correct individual(s) approve the request based on the amount, requesting department or individual.

The workflow would also provide full transparency to the submitter on the status of their request. Lastly, the workflow can integrate with or allow finance to enter the required General Ledger items.

5.) Information Technology

There are two primary areas where automating IT processes make a material difference. First, life science organizations typically follow a specific documentation review and approval process. Imagine if that workflow was built into documentation development using SharePoint? Not only is the process streamlined, but also results in more effective document management and security.

The second area is the trouble ticket resolution. Given the speed at which life sciences organizations operate, uptime is critical. Providing self-service and automated trouble ticketing solutions ensure all IT requests are tracked and managed effectively.

Successful Growth Phases Are Dependent on Strategic and Sustainable Business Automation

When you are in a high-growth phase of your company’s lifespan, it’s critical to ensure business processes are efficient. It may feel stressful most of the time, but it’s a good problem to have. These phases mean you are receiving positive results in your drug development and clinical trials.  With the proper levels of process automation, your life science organization will be able to easily and efficiently ride the waves toward FDA approval.

If you’re interested in learning more about the automation services we provide to life sciences organizations, reach out to our team of Office 365 and SharePoint experts here.

The post How Automating 5 Key Business Processes Can Help Life Sciences Companies During High Growth Phases appeared first on Thrive.

We recently brought together leaders in the Boston life sciences community for an Office 365 Life Sciences Symposium to share how they are solving real-world challenges – like document management, collaboration, security, compliance, and the need to operate more efficiently – using Office 365. It was an exciting and informative afternoon at bluebird bio’s office in Kendall Square, and we wanted to share the five top takeaways from the incredible presentations and conversations.

1. IT is becoming a key stakeholder to life sciences organizations

When Raj Padmanabhan joined Paratek Pharmaceuticals as VP of IT, they only had one person on the IT team, and the organization was growing fast. Technology had dramatically changed, and the team wasn’t able to stay on top of all the updates and innovations. They had limited resources for competing responsibilities. As a result, the company couldn’t collaborate efficiently or securely to get their jobs done.

Raj stepped in and identified Office 365 as the platform for all file sharing, process automation, and collaboration internally and externally. But identifying a technology wasn’t enough. In order to improve user adoption and productivity, Raj and his team also:

• Established a sense of urgency
• Created a guiding coalition
• Developed a change vision

Raj explained that the results they’ve seen to date wouldn’t have been possible if the organization had continued to treat IT like a project. Instead, IT became an integral part of the process and key stakeholder within the company. He explained that communication buy-in, training, and governance by the right teams were essential to turning IT from an after-thought to an integral part of the business.

2. Adopting OneNote for information storage in a fast-moving industry

Rapidly growing companies must balance focusing on multiple strategic objectives against completing a seemingly endless list of action items. Roles and responsibilities can shift quickly, resulting in undocumented processes and lost historical information.

Emily Mancini, Manager of Enterprise Solutions & Collaboration at bluebird bio, began using OneNote to track and organize her own meetings. As she realized the power of OneNote, she identified the potential for greatly improving the efficiencies for internal meetings. The next step was to gain broader internal adoption. Her perspective was that high user adoption rates are rooted in passion and authenticity.

She has trained hundreds of employees at bluebird bio and explained in her session at the Symposium that high user adoption rates are rooted in passion and authenticity. Emily drove the build of bluebird bio’s usage of OneNote and SharePoint with the end users in mind. When it came to training, she explained how important it was to creatively engage employees. For example, she would host training and provide exotic cuisine and drinks. She made the sessions personal, fun and relatable. Emily and her team realized that the best training didn’t focus on business processes — it focused on the efficiency benefits of Office 365 tools, especially OneNote, so their scientists and employees could focus on their tasks and projects.

Some of her keys to introducing OneNote internally were marketing the tool and driving adoption:

• Identify “why OneNote” for your organization
• Internal marketing campaign
  • Evangelized by someone who has something in it for them too
  • Focus message to current company challenges
  • Prioritize getting them in the room
• Customize the training to what your end users care about
• Provide training materials & additional long-term support

These effective training practices have resulted in 90% Office 365 user adoption rates at bluebird bio.

3. Office 365 Tools and Best Practices Support M&A

Mergers and acquisitions are an inevitable part of the life sciences industry. In his session, Mike Gilronan discussed his lessons learned, best practices, and some tools of the trade that were used to help with the merger process now and also enable them to be prepared for any future M&A.

Shire is a large pharmaceutical that acquired Baxalta in 2016 and was then subsequently acquired by Takeda in 2019. In order to help facilitate a smooth transition, it was important the all employees could get the information they needed and effective collaboration could continue. This required a tremendous amount of migration and development to ensure intranets and team sites were fully functional, global navigation was available, and search could be utilized across the platform. With the scope of the migration, some key issues had to be addressed, including:

• Identifying who owns the content
• Analyzing and determining what content needs to migrate
• Ensuring they maintain security to sensitive information
• Minimize disruption

In our experience, while the scope of the issues at Shire was magnified due to the size of the organizations and their corresponding SharePoint infrastructure, the same issues need to be addressed for any migration. Shire developed a unique and robust set of tools, including their Hub Catalog to assist with the identification, notification, communication and analysis of the site data to address these critical issues.

Bottom line? Improve your content management to improve efficiency today and be better prepared for M&A tomorrow. 

4. Consider Compliance from The Beginning

In 2017, Jounce went from being privately held to being publicly traded on the NASDAQ. Shortly after this transition, the IT team was tasked with implementing the company’s first set of controls to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The team saw this as a unique opportunity to not only address the task at hand, but also look beyond it to also improve operational processes and implement automation while considering security and scalability.

Nathan Doyle, Senior IT Manager at Jounce Therapeutics, explained in his session how important compliance and security are in order to meet the requirements of a publicly traded life sciences company.

As part of that, he outlined in detail how they completely automated the onboarding and offboarding of employees. The previous onboarding solution was owned by Human Resources and was initiated by a SharePoint Form. Once submitted, the request was sent to the Jounce ticketing system run and controlled by the help desk. Changes required shoulder taps, e-mail, even text messages. Ultimately, time to implement at this stage was approximately 5-7 business days. This was highly inefficient and not secure. The help desk staff would then create AD accounts manually.

The new solution needed a way to manage the authorization and approvals process for access to the various systems deemed SOX applicable. A new SharePoint-based solution integrated with Active Directory (AD) automatically created the required user record and automatically enabled the AD account on the start date of employment.  The solution supported multiple request types, including HR, Finance, Data Access, and Administrative. Jounce took their solution to the next level by handling and automating tasks such as determining if employees were still working at the company and handling staff change requests.

Specific takeaways from Nathan’s presentations included:

• Fail safes are critical!
• Hiring the right resources goes a long way
• Culture, Experience, and Personality
• Be fluid!
• Take time to automate and evolve the process and make sure to include other groups
• You are never done
• Documentation – often overlooked but always critical

5. Office 365 is Enabling The Life Sciences Industry to Run Full Speed Ahead

One common theme that permeated the entire afternoon was speed. Getting things done fast is paramount in an industry growing as fast as life sciences. It’s why so many organizations turn to the Office 365 platform to improve efficiency.

However, growth without the proper management and controls can cause inefficiencies and security headaches later. These forward-thinking organizations are leveraging the management and security aspects of the very platform they chose to improve effectiveness as well to avoid those headaches.

If you’re in the life sciences space, and you haven’t already, is it time to see how Office 365 can help you work more efficiently and effectively?

If you have any questions on the takeaways or specific use cases cited, Contact Us, as Timlin has had the opportunity to partner with each of speakers and their organizations.

The post 5 Takeaways from the 2019 Office 365 Life Sciences Symposium appeared first on Thrive.