A bittersweet pill to swallow

As a child of the M&A concept, one would imagine Franco-German pharmaceutical company, Aventis, to be somewhat familiar with the notion, especially now that both Sanofi-Synthelabo and Novartis are keen to purchase it. But, as Layisha Laypang discovers, with Aventis in the process of deploying a content-management system for its intranet, any potential M&A activity could cause difficulties.

Born out of the union between France’s Rhone-Poulenc Rorer and Germany’s Hoechst Marion Roussel in 1999/2000, life-sciences giant Aventis has never been far from the headlines. Last year, the merged company was lauded to be coming into its own as analysts estimated growth of more than 15 per cent, fuelled by Lovenox, a blood-thinning drug, and Taxotere, a chemotherapy treatment. More recently, however, the news has been far more controversial, with French pharmaceutical group, Sanofi-Synthelabo, launching a hostile takeover bid for its Franco-German rival. While the French government welcomed the bid, Aventis rejected it, only to attract fresh interest from Swiss group, Novartis. But for now, at least, it remains business as usual. The company is currently in the throes of implementing a content-management system for its intranet which, should it prove successful, will also become public-facing. Of course, any potential mergers and acquisitions activity could complicate the content-management process.

Aventis has adopted a three-pronged approach to content management, deploying systems to manage submission-related content, controlled documentation, and web content and non-regulated documents. Submission-related content refers to the highly regulated content that Aventis is obliged to submit to global health authorities, while controlled documents are also subject to regulatory guidelines, such as standard operating procedures, good laboratory practices and good manufacturing procedures, but not submitted. While some of these guidelines are referred to only occasionally, others are used on a regular basis by workers in laboratories or on plant floors. All of these guidelines must be adhered to internally and are used if the company is audited or if there is an inspection of some type. As well as compliance with regulatory authorities and improving internal efficiencies to ensure the company operates using current versions, there was a need for Aventis to realise its own internal intellectual property. “Information was dispersed throughout the organisation so we were unable to harness the power of the ideas in various documentation or, worse still, make sure it didn’t walk out of the door if the content owner left,” says Peg Mitchell, senior director, global drug innovation and approval information solutions, global regulatory approvals and marketing support, Aventis. “It was essential to address how to preserve this for the longer term.” Web content was similarly fragmented due to individual departments and groups creating their own websites. It was important to repurpose and reuse this content, including images and logos, ensuring that everything had the same look and feel, and that web standards were followed.

With so many different forms of content managed in different ways and using different systems, Aventis recognised the need for consolidation, as well as standardisation. However, the company merger four years ago had raised various challenges. Both Rhone-Poulenc and Hoechst had their own content-management systems based on the same technology, but dissimilar in scope and functionality. Therefore, content had to be migrated into a new, central system – a process which is ongoing today – using a common set of properties that would reflect the purpose of the original content. But defining attributes or values common to both legacy companies, such as disease group areas, was taxing. Mergers and acquisitions can also raise due-diligence issues, for instance, locating content related to a specific drug project that a newly merged company might be looking to combine its knowledge about or spin off. Mitchell says: “Bringing everything into a centrally located, secure repository has streamlined due diligence for mergers or litigations. A lot of litigations require records to be frozen to ensure nothing is deleted until the issue has been satisfied. It’s obviously easier if everything is in one place rather than crossing your fingers and hoping you’ve got it all.”

Other potential challenges include change management and helping people to realise that though it may be easier to save a document to the hard drive and have it there readily available, ultimately, it doesn’t benefit the enterprise as a whole. “Convincing staff that they should contribute content to a secure, searchable, retrievable, global repository for the greater good can be a tough sell when people are under immense pressure to deliver results,” says Mitchell. It’s a problem that Aventis continues to work on, although Alla Shpilsky, senior manager, global drug innovation and approval information solutions, knowledge management, Aventis, reveals rare, but significant moments, when the need for a central repository has been made visible. “When someone in senior management is given an incorrect version of a document and this information is publicly disseminated or a crucial decision is made based on it, that’s when there is the belief, or basically a top-down dictate, that we have to do a better job at managing our content,” she says.

Despite the challenges of implementing a content-management system at Aventis, the benefits are proving enormous. In addition to ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements and facilitating operations, Aventis is building what it calls a network-centric organisation in which information is repurposed and shared to reduce project lifecycles. “Things like text mining or something a little beyond the general search engine capability can drastically reduce time to discovery,” says Mitchell. “You may not be aware that people are involved in an area of work related to yours and hold relevant contacts. More importantly, you may be able to dredge new information from existing research and avoid recreating the wheel.” Unexpected benefits relate to the events of September 11 and the subsequent emphasis on disaster recovery and business continuity. With all of its major intellectual property stored in a global central repository replicated into different servers around the world, Aventis already had some level of protection in place. But while its initial objective was to gain control over its content – getting it into foundation systems in line with global accessibility and security requirements – it is now focusing on the multiple ways in which it can access it. Mitchell says: “We’re now looking at implementing portals, websites and e-rooms, in fact, just about any way in which we can access information as long as there is only one source of that information available.”

To ensure there is only a single information source, the Aventis governance board, which is anticipated to evolve into a full standing content-management governance board, has created a governance model that spans everything from data ownership to access and security. A business rule has been formulated that all content – including intellectual property and organisational documents, which can vary from meeting minutes to why a business decision was made and the thought processes behind it – be created within, or at least assigned to, one of the three repositories mentioned previously (submission-related content, controlled documentation, and web content and non-regulated documents). Sometimes, content is created external to the organisation, while people are travelling or working remotely for example. In such instances, the information must be restored to the appropriate repository as soon as possible. Enforcement of these rules is expected to be based on three key factors: official guidelines and standard operating procedures; communication and endorsement from upper management that will perhaps works its way into individual performance measurements; and, where feasible without being constraining, technical forms of governance.

As well as monitoring governance, Aventis has key performance metrics for every IT application it rolls out. No project is delivered by IT without sponsorship from a business partner, who has to make the business case, justify the need and define the metrics. “So our projects are largely driven by the business and the goal of IT is to support the business function,” says Mitchell. “We work with the business partner to find the best solution or to suggest alternatives, including process improvements, to go hand in hand with the implementation. After all, a new technology is not always the answer. There are times when the IT department comes across technologies that it thinks could improve the business so it sells senior management on it. But nothing goes forward without clear business buy-in and sponsorship.” Looking back, however, the main driver for Aventis’ early investment in technology was compliance. Mitchell admits that when it comes to compliance, the pharmaceutical company tends not to measure return on investment (ROI) in financial terms. “If it’s a compliance-related issue, we never measure ROI by cost because it’s something we need to do anyway,” she says. “Ultimately, the ROI is you stay out of jail.” But Mitchell is quick to admit that a long-term relationship with these technologies has been a real benefit in that it has allowed Aventis to exploit them to their fullest by extending into areas other than compliance.

Giving advice to companies that are looking to implement similar content-management strategies, Mitchell warns: “It’s a long, hard road.” She suggests greater likelihood of quick success through strong, top-level endorsement that will support and promote the initiative instead of adopting a grassroots, bottom-up effort. She also advises against trying to tackle the entire content domain at once, but suggests targeting highest-need, highest-value areas first. “Learn the technology and learn how to use it and how to benefit from it,” she says. “Then your change management also becomes easier to deal with because you have pockets of success on which to ride on moving forward in other areas.” Finally, Mitchell points to the importance of tackling governance in the early stages of a deployment. She recommends thinking about business rules and policies once a pilot or proof of concept has proven successful in a particular area. “Defining the business rules as early as possible sets the context within which everybody ought to be operating rather than trying to go back and change habits and working practices after the fact.” Going forward, as mentioned earlier, Aventis will be focusing on ways to provide staff with a dashboard view to their information, and mining and exploiting this information beyond the limits of searching for a document.

Peg Mitchell is senior director, global drug innovation and approval information solutions, global regulatory approvals and marketing support at Aventis. Alla Shpilsky is senior manager, global drug innovation and approval information solutions, knowledge management at Aventis. They may be contacted at alla.shpilsky@aventis.com.