Healthcare diagnostics company
Medical products manufacturer facilitates collaboration and AI innovation with OpenText™ Extended ECM and OpenText Document Control
About the healthcare diagnostics company
Summary
Challenges
- Improve collaboration between business teams and strengthen regulatory compliance by eliminating duplication of documents.
- Save costs by consolidating multiple document management systems into one.
Solution
- Built a standardized approach to content management.
- Migrated policy and procedure documents to a central platform.
- Created a single point of control for technical documents.
Results
Reduced manual document management by 50%
Accelerated document publication by 99%
Automated management for millions of metadata values
Enabled future AI innovation
Challenges
- Multiple document repositories led to duplication and hindered collaboration
- Managing thousands of documents manually was complex and time-consuming
- Limited document management oversight increased compliance risks
Operating in a highly regulated industry, document management is a crucial capability for this healthcare diagnostics company. Teams across the business—from research and development to sales and marketing—need fast access to information to perform their roles.
A spokesperson for the company said, “We need to make documents available to our stakeholders in a secure and well-governed way. As a medical device manufacturer, the audience for our documents isn’t just our internal teams and our regulators—we also need to make product information accessible to the public.”
In the past, the company used multiple different repositories to manage and publish content, including shared drives and purpose-built document management tools. However, this approach made it difficult for teams across the global business to collaborate effectively.
“We were using several separate repositories, which led to duplication of documents and significant difficulties with version control,” explained the spokesperson. “As well as the potential compliance risks, we saw siloed document management as a missed opportunity for collaboration. To make it easier for our global teams to work together, we decided to standardize our document management workflows. The goal was to strengthen compliance, improve operational efficiency, and facilitate innovation.”
Since we deployed the OpenText solution, we’ve seen a more than 50% reduction in manual, duplicated processes.
Solution
To create a central document management platform, the company deployed OpenText Extended ECM with OpenText Document Control—a best-practice solution that allows the company to control the creation, approval, revision and disposition of documents.
Products deployed
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OpenText™ Document Control
Ensure compliance and management of controlled documents throughout their lifecycle
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OpenText™ Extended ECM
Bridge information silos, improve processes, and strengthen governance
Building a standardized approach to content management
For many years, the diagnostics company had been using OpenText Extended ECM to store and manage mission-critical documents from its SAP business systems. Based on its positive experiences with the solution, the company decided to expand and enhance the existing document management capabilities.
“We were already using Extended ECM to store documents such as invoices, credit memos and shipping documents,” said the spokesperson. “We saw OpenText Document Control add-on as the optimal way to deliver the capabilities we wanted, while allowing us to continue to benefit from the security capabilities of Extended ECM.”
With lean in-house IT resources, ease of deployment and management was one of the company’s key selection criteria. The spokesperson confirmed, “We wanted a solution that would enable best practices straight out of the box without the need for costly and complex development work. Document Control is a low-code solution with industry-standard document control processes built in, which addressed this requirement perfectly.”
Migrating policy and procedure documents to a central platform
Working with OpenText, the diagnostics company quickly aligned on a shared, standardized approach to enterprise content management. As the first step on its information management transformation, the company deployed and configured Document Control to act as its central platform for policies, procedures and work instructions.
“Following a successful proof of concept, we moved thousands of documents from our quality management system into the Document Control environment,” said the spokesperson. “By integrating the OpenText solution with our learning management system, we enable employees to review updates to our policies and procedures and sign off any training they receive using electronic signatures—a key compliance requirement.”
Creating a single point of control for technical documents
With support from OpenText, the company continued to bring more document types into the central platform. It deployed two additional content repositories: one for technical documents, and for software development lifecycle documents. Today, the company manages everything from product design schematics to marketing brochures, promotions and advertising materials using Extended ECM and Document Control.
“One of the big advantages of moving to a central repository is that we can improve our ability to govern information throughout the lifecycle,” commented the spokesperson. “As a result, it’s much easier to offer our associates, trading partners, and customers access to up-to-date information about our products and services.”
When we first set out on our transformation journey, we set clear goals: to consolidate our documents, reduce redundant work and unify our processes. Thanks to our work with OpenText, we’ve achieved all those things.
Results
The diagnostics company has created a unified content hub with tens of thousands of documents and millions of metadata values, enabling it to strengthen compliance and foster smooth collaboration between employees throughout the business.
Reduced manual document management by 50%
The company has now consolidated multiple document management systems into one, replacing manual, duplicated processes with a single, streamlined approach. Today, research and development teams, regulatory affairs and quality assurance personnel, and many more use the OpenText platform to support their day-to-day work.
“Since we deployed the OpenText solution, we’ve seen a more than 50% reduction in manual, duplicated processes,” confirms the spokesperson. “Decommissioning our legacy systems has definitely enabled us to save costs and improve efficiency.”
Accelerated document publication by 99%
In the past, manual document management processes meant that staging and publishing content was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Today, the OpenText solution empowers the company to publish and update content faster than ever.
“We’ve moved from days of lead time to publish and modify content to just minutes,” commented the spokesperson. “If we need to make corrections to content on our public channels, our content managers can push out the changes in as little as five minutes—up to 99% faster than before. Crucially, there is a full audit trail behind every change, which is extremely valuable for regulatory compliance purposes.”
Automated management for millions of metadata values
With Document Control as its central platform, the diagnostics company is shaping a consistent approach to metadata tagging. Today, the company manages millions of metadata values in the OpenText environment, making it easier than ever for users to find and leverage content.
“Documents like product data sheets must be publicly accessible,” explained the spokesperson. “We have tens of thousands of technical documents, and it’s vital that we make the approved versions available—for example, to ensure that customers only get the latest product safety data. We can now leverage our metadata to do this in an automated way, which helps us to maintain cost-effective operations.”
Enabled future AI innovation
With a single process flow for content, the company is promoting closer collaboration between its internal teams and easier communications with its customers. And building on accurate and comprehensive metadata, the company is in a strong position to leverage its content for AI-powered use cases in the future.
The spokesperson concluded, “When we first set out on our transformation journey, we established clear goals: to consolidate our documents, reduce redundant work and unify our processes. Thanks to our partnership with OpenText, we’ve achieved all those things—laying the foundation for our long-term success.”
