pfizer

Pfizer achieved 75% efficiency by transforming its documentation processes with MSB Docs

The integration with MSB has completely transformed the day-to-day work at Pfizer. We have used the platform for our corporate credentials and SAFETM, where paper-based signatures are now seamlessly replaced by digital signatures. This has helped us in streamlining the approval and management of electronic laboratory notebooks, regulated electronic documents submission and management of confidential software development documents. Now, two or more users can instantly, digitally sign documents in a controlled environment, as opposed to the previous process of shipping documents from site to site across the globe to gather signatures. This has also helped us lower our costs significantly and we are extremely pleased with the results.

– George S. Rathbun- Director, Worldwide Technology Engineering, Pfizer

Key takeaways

  • Before MSB Docs, Pfizer used to record all the experimental data in paper lab notebooks.
  • The manual recording in paper lab notebooks involved high turnaround time, high cost, low productivity and compliance issues.
  • MSB Docs was chosen by Pfizer to streamline the manual, cumbersome processes.
  • The solution offered by MSB Docs has proved to be immensely valuable for the pharma leader in terms of time and cost savings as well as increased speed and agility.
Table Of Contents

The Company

Founded in 1849 and headquartered in New York, Pfizer is one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies engaged in the discovery, development, manufacture, marketing, sales and distribution of biopharmaceutical products. The company has a vast portfolio of medicines and vaccines, which are known in the worldwide market for preventing and curing multifarious diseases effectively. As pioneers of innovation for over 170 years, the company is committed to using cutting-edge technologies and procedures to accelerate the development of new therapies and treatments, with an aim to redefine healthcare.

Business Challenge

As a global pharmaceutical conglomerate, Pfizer conducts extensive documentation for a wide variety of processes, including clinical trials, drug discovery, quality assurance and control, risk assessment and many more.

Traditionally, before integrating with the MSB platform, the company used to follow a pen-and-paper approach to fulfil all its documentation requirements, wherein all the experimental data used to be recorded in paper lab notebooks. A single drug discovery project generated piles of documents, that used to be manually signed, compiled and stored as a proof of discovery and for patent protection reasons. This manual, cumbersome process had taken a toll on the company’s operational efficiency, as the following challenges surfaced:

  • High Turnaround Time

    Getting the paper documents of an experiment signed and witnessed involved coordination between multiple stakeholders and continuous repetition of the print-sign-scan-fax cycle. This severely impacted the turnaround time and scientists had to wait for a few days before actually processing their experiments. As a result, the drug development process was delayed, which in turn deferred the delivery of treatments into the market.

  • High Costs

    The company incurred mammoth expenditure on printing, scanning, faxing, couriering and maintaining documents. The cost of resources deployed to conduct these mundane tasks was also a significant, unnecessary expense, and the pharmaceutical giant wanted to do away with these profit-eating costs.

  • Low Productivity

    The lab personnel spent most of their precious hours in conducting the routine paper work, which left them exhausted and thereby took a toll on their productivity levels.

  • Compliance Issues

    The delay caused by paper processing led to various compliance issues.

Pfizer was actively looking for a scalable solution which could efficiently address the above challenges & facilitate seamless information sharing throughout the organisation.

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The Solution

As one of the leading eSignature solutions providers, MSB Docs was chosen by Pfizer to streamline its growing documentation requirements and to improve its signing and approval process. A seamless integration of Pfizer’s Chemistry Electronic Notebooks (CeN) was done with MSB’s electronic Signatures in the following manner:

  • As the drug experiment gets conducted, the chemist directly keys in the experiment data into Chemistry Electronic Notebooks (CeN), assigns a witness and proceeds to enter his/her credentials using MSB’s electronic signatures.
  • As the chemist applies his/ her electronic signatures, MSB automatically sends a Signature Request email to the witness for immediate review and signing of the experiment document, that could be done simply with the click of a button.
  • Once the witness applies signatures, MSB sends the fully executed documents to Records Management for archival.

Thus, all the time-consuming, paper-based processes at Pfizer were conveniently automated and converted into simple, digital signing processes.

Value Delivered to Pfizer

The integration with MSB Docs has proved to be immensely valuable for the pharma leader. Besides generating significant cost savings, the team at Pfizer is now able to work yet more efficiently, thus creating and delivering breakthrough therapies to people in a timely manner. Precisely, MSB Docs has helped Pfizer in realizing the following benefits:

  • Users at Pfizer are now able to sign and access their experiments conveniently. All other documents can now be created, collaborated, managed and distributed securely, all through a single unified system.
  • The process is non-intrusive and easily fits the way chemists conduct their day-to-day work.
  • The use of eSignatures has transformed the management of lab notebooks, where each page is required to be carefully signed and witnessed.
  • The lab personnel at Pfizer now spends less time on managing the paper and more time conducting experiments in the lab, which has led to enhanced productivity and improved output.
  • The process of signing and witnessing has become faster and more traceable, which has in turn led to greater compliance with internal policies.
  • As experiments are now signed, dated and time-stamped instantly at completion, it has increased the long-term patent protection.
  • MSB’s robust and detailed audit trail provides further evidence for audits and disputes.

The Real ROI

roi

85%

Enhanced Savings

ROI

90%

Increased speed, quality & agility of the drug development process

ROI

95%

Increased efficiency in documentation, signing procedures and records management

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