Hear from Claire Hogikyan, senior director – Intellectual Property at Pfizer, about how Pfizer has achieved a 113-percent ROI with a break even point or payback period of just 18 months after the EMC Documentum deployment, based on a study from Forrester on the total economic impact of EMC Documentum. Learn what factors Pfizer considered when developing their content management strategy and why they chose the EMC Documentum platform.

Transcript:

Host: Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

Hello and welcome. My name is Toni Eddleman and you’re listening to the Enterprise Content Management Podcast series “When Content Matters” from EMC. I’m excited because we have a very special guest joining us today, Claire Hogikyan a Senior Director of Intellectual Property at Pfizer Inc., to discuss with us the Content Management Deployment and why Pfizer has selected EMC Documentum. Hello and welcome, Claire.

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

Thank you.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

Can you take a minute and tell us a little about yourself, Pfizer, and your role at Pfizer?

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

Sure, the Pfizer Incorporated is a multinational pharmaceutical company that is dedicated to better health and greater access to healthcare for people and their valued animals or companion pets. Pfizer’s purpose is helping people with longer, healthier, and happier lives. Personally, I’m a Senior Director in the Intellectual Property or IP Department, which is a part of the Corporate Legal division. I have responsibilities for what’s called the Global Legal Information Science Team or what we refer to internally as ‘GLIST’. The IP Systems Infrastructure Team and IP Communications, and I’ve been with the company for 20 years.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

Wow, 20 years that’s just great. Can you describe for our listeners the content management platform you’ve implemented and the business processes it’s currently addressing today?

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

Yeah. In November 2003, the Senior Vice President and Associate General Council responsible for the Global Intellectual Property Department made a business decision that would fundamentally change the way we do business. He decided that if we were to succeed in the global and fast-paced business world, with its ever increasing demands or speed of action and global collaboration then we needed to implement what we then called a “Paperless Office”. While the project took off it was quickly renamed to “EFR”, which stands for Electronic File Room. It seemed the phrase of ‘Paperless Office’ was a bit too much for our colleagues to accept. Then in August 2004 the EFR IT Team delivered a prototype of EFR based on the EMC Documentum and platform.

The goal was to completely replace the paper IP file, or patent, trademarks, and IP enforcement with fully text searchable documents in Adobe PDF format, because Pfizer is the result of number of mergers, the business processes of these practice groups had not yet been harmonized. But, part of this process entailed the team working very closely with the client to establish a consistent business process that would be followed globally, and that consistent process was put in place in an electronic system. This was critical to the success of the EFR project in the end and also helped with acceptance of the system.

There are two basic business processes the EFR addresses, the first is the drafting and filing of patents and trademark documents with governmental organizations such as the US Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office and the second process focuses on the IP Enforcement Practice Group, which has the primary responsibility of ensuring enforcement of valid patents and trademarks, thereby protecting Pfizer’s intellectual property assets.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

You fairly have leveraged the content management platform in your Intellectual Property department leveraging your Electronic File Room as a true global deployment. Now, why did Pfizer select EMC Documentum for the Content Management Solution?

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

Well, given the global nature of Pfizer and the sheer volume of historical information but active files that needed to be scanned into EFR, which we estimated to be approximately four million pieces of paper we really needed a document management solution that was flexible, reliable, and scalable. In addition, Documentum was a product already very much used throughout Pfizer and therefore we had an existing knowledge base from which to draw and leverage for guidance and support.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

Now, that you’ve leveraged Documentum in your EFR deployment for the past several years. Can you tell us a little bit about the key business and IT drivers behind your deployment of this system?

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

Yes and I alluded to some of these in my previous answer. In summary though, I would say the key business and IT drivers were the fact that we wanted a single repository that was globally accessible. The system had to be highly available with help desk support in seven time zones. It had to be relatively easy to use and I know the concept of being user friendly is over subscribed to, but the reality is we were taking paper away from approximately 150 attorneys and if they couldn’t use it then it would all have been a monumental waste of time and resources. We had to reduce or eliminate onsite storage of paper files, we needed to improve file integrity with the introduction of standardized business processes and finally we had to optimize the use of our human resources.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

Truly a great summary of the drivers and I would believe that several of our listeners would be faced with some of these similar business and IT drivers. Now, what are some of key benefits you’ve realized from implementing and deploying a Content Management Solution?

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

First and foremost, business critical files are now available in a secure and consistent manner for all IP colleagues from their desktops, wherever that desktop may be; that includes being in the office, working from home, or on the road. As long as the attorneys has access to the Pfizer Intranet, they’d have immediate access to any documents they have permission to view and of course they can download a copy of any file they need for use, when they don’t have access to the intranet but need access to the file. This is leaps and bounds better than having a single hardcopy of each file in one location and finding that it is needed in another location and either has to be boxed up and shipped or faxed one page at a time.

Additional benefits I would say include the ability to copy and paste text from scanned document, all of which goes through an OCR process and you can copy that text into a new document, thereby saving time in drafting responses for example to your official action or drafting new applications based on previous ones. EFR has also increased file integrity over the paper based method; just think about what happens when someone accidentally files a piece of paper in the wrong folder in the physical file room with thousands of folders, finding it is truly like looking for a needle in a haystack. With EFR we have full text searching available, so as long as we have a sense of what text is on the missing paper we have a really good chance of locating it and then filing it properly.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

I would say finding that piece of paper is harder than finding a needle in the haystack in some instances. On the topic of benefits, a common question that I’m asked is how do we quantify Return on Investment for your Content Management System, and what type of measurable benefits have you achieved?

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

Well, we had an opportunity to work with the Forrester Consulting group on this very topic. Obviously, this was a significant project and it was important for Pfizer to understand the ROI, so we worked with Forrester on completing a Total Economic Impact or TEI Study. The result of the Study were quite stunning, after adjusting for risk we achieved a 113% ROI with a break-even point or a payback period of just 18 months after deployment.

Our risk adjusted Internal Rate of Return was 73%, these are of course numbers management can live with and indeed likes to see when making capital investments in projects, not to mention committing a significant amount of human resource out of it. On top of the ROI, we also now have in place a fully supported and scalable Document Management System and infrastructure already being leveraged throughout their Legal Division to meet other document management needs and this will only add to the ROI over time.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

These are really great results and I think it’s something that our listeners can leverage and use for their own deployment, and that just kind of wraps up my next question I’d like to end with is what sort of practical knowledge can you share with our listeners that are creating their three to five years plans for their Content Management System?

Claire Hogikyan – Pfizer Inc.

Well, the first thing I want to emphasize is the importance of senior management support for a project of this nature. When you’re fundamentally changing the way people do business it is absolutely critical to have the ongoing and visible support of a senior sponsor. It is not enough to appear at the beginning of the project, say a few words of wisdom and then leave it to the IT team to get the job done. Secondly and equally important is the selection of the people who’ve worked on the IT Team. You do not need a large consortium of people; our team in fact consisted of seven core members.

You need the right mix of people and leadership, who are knowledgeable, willing to learn from each other, and who take unique approaches to the seemingly never-ending list of challenges that come up with a project like this. Be sure to get the best Principle Architect, you can from the outset and then let that person do what he or she does best and don’t make them waste time sitting in business or political meetings. Use the company resource who knows the people, and the business process, and who has some clout to sit in on their business meetings. Third I would say design the interface and then make something people are used to seeing, find out if there was another application they use all the time in their day-to-day work that they know and love, and if so copy it, it’s the best form of flattery and it makes implementation so much easier.

Design in multiple ways of doing the same thing, when people are forced to fundamentally change what they do everyday, which they don’t like one way, you will have alternatives to offer them which will ultimately increase the rate of acceptance. Finally, think beyond a single project or use of EMC Documentum you would be investing capital and human resources and depending on the size and scope of the project that may well be significant. You want to do a project like this properly and not cut corners. As I mentioned earlier, if you have planned ahead to use the infrastructure and software investment to meet other business needs, it will only increase your ROI.

Toni Eddleman – EMC Corporation

Claire that’s some great tips and I just want to thank you again for joining us and sharing your insights you’ve gained in deploying your Enterprise Content Management Solution at Pfizer and it’s been a very informative discussion. I also want to thank you, all of our listeners for tuning into the “When Content Matters” podcast series from EMC. For more information at Pfizer solution go to the software.emc web site and download the White Paper titled, “Forrester Consulting the total impact of EMC Documentum”. In addition I encourage you to learn more about our content management products and solutions at the software.emc web site, where you can also download additional podcast or subscribe to a number of EMC RSS podcast feeds. Thanks again.

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Tags: Claire Hogikyan, Documentum, Healthcare IT, Pfizer
 
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