The Case for Digital Transformation: Start in the Lab

Digital transformation is a concept being embraced across industries—and for good reason. A recent Boston Consulting Group study found “digital leaders” achieved earnings growth 1.8 times higher and total enterprise value growth 2.4 times higher than “digital laggards.” A study from PTC found the leading benefits of digital transformations included improved operational efficiency, faster time-to-market, and the ability to meet changing customer expectations.

As a technology vendor supporting pharmaceutical companies worldwide, LabVantage Solutions’ view of digital transformation is through the lens of helping enterprises use technology and data to build business ecosystems that reduce risk, accelerate innovation, and drive growth.

Laboratories are data-generating factories within a pharmaceutical company and, as such, are ripe for digitization. We still encounter labs using paper-based and manual systems, or enterprises with multiple disconnected systems of various maturity and true usefulness. But we’ve also helped pharma and biotech companies standardize, harmonize, and consolidate with our laboratory information management system (LIMS).

From R&D to quality, labs each have their own work processes and practices and are often disconnected from each other and other key business systems, leading to inefficiencies, longer turn-around times, and increased operational costs—not to mention hampering collaboration and innovation.

Righting these wrongs is the goal of digital transformation, and the choice of lab informatics solutions—and the vendors you’ll partner with—is one of the most important business decisions you’ll make.

FOUR KEYS TO SUCCESS
We’ve found the right team, the right strategy, the right technology, and the right KPIs are the essential ingredients for a successful digital transformation. As executives, you first must build, lead, and empower the transformation team. Include your CIO (or equivalent) and IT, staff with frontline knowledge of the interdependent systems undergoing transformation and external experts with the experience to guide you.

Second, develop a digitization strategy that strikes a balance between improbable “all-at-once” transformation and incremental “where-to-begin” indecision. Knowing what you want to achieve and seeking to empower people, overhaul the processes, and introduce new technologies will best serve your organization. Probe where digitization can add value by generating greater insights: eliminating redundancies, replicating successes, removing obstacles to innovation, increasing speed.

When it comes to selecting the right technology, you’ll be navigating a wide-ranging product landscape—including LIMS. Rather than selecting technology that fits with legacy systems and process, it’s better to reimagine heavily customized or burdensome processes with modern technology systems that can simplify steps and more easily handle complexity. Look for solutions based on modern technologies that preclude expensive, time-consuming code with easily configured workflows. Look for technology vendors who take a consultative approach to implementation that leverages out-of-the-box functionality for rapid deployment with a global reach (if required) and scalability to meet future needs, and a track record of success with satisfied, long-held customers and new business wins.

Fourth, be sure you can measure transformation. That starts with identifying the KPIs you’ll use to evaluate progress. Map them back to the business objectives identified as part of your strategy early in the process.

LabVantage, with 40 years of experience serving the pharmaceutical industry, delivers a centrally hosted, technologically modern LIMS that drives the standardization, harmonization, and consolidation required for effective transformation. Our dedicated pharmaceutical LIMS, LabVantage Pharma, is pre-configured to eliminate non-value-added activities and paper records. It captures results directly from lab instruments and interfaces with critical business systems from a more complete view of the lab.

Learn more here: labvantage.com/pharma