Breaking free from the paper trap
A research-based company's most important resource is its intellectual property—often information contained in the notebooks of its scientists. Berlex Laboratories, a biopharmaceutical company, wanted better assess to the research of its scientists, which was contained in paper notebooks.
Paper notebooks have many drawbacks: For example, they're difficult to search and share. If a Berlex scientist wanted to reference earlier research, he or she would have to track down the notebooks themselves or have an administrator retrieve them from microfilmed records or warehouses—sometimes even in another country. And once the paper information was found, the writing could be illegible.
Berlex wanted to alleviate its paper problem and reap the benefits of electronic records keeping ... without waiting for electronic records to be fully sanctioned by the legal profession. So a few years ago, Berlex decided to implement an enterprise content management platform from Documentum to help manage drug submissions worldwide, and it has been expanding the system ever since.
Documentum Consulting created a system that enabled Berlex scientists around the world to record their research using the familiar Microsoft Word and Excel interfaces. Users author content on machines in their labs and offices, and that content is stored on local servers but replicated to a central server each night. Scientists can access content on the central server, allowing them to search information from every office worldwide. After the system was deployed at the Berlex office in California, Documentum began to implement the system globally, ""The whole project was done with minimal internal staff. Most of the time, it was just one consultant, a global project manager and me," says Charlie Sodano, Berlex's manager of information services. They designed and implemented a plan to affiliates worldwide. Today 800 scientists in the United States, Germany, Japan and Finland use the system. And as of this summer, the solution was slated to replace paper lab notebooks in each of the company's major R&D sites.
"Being able to find information quickly and easily is a huge time saver for our scientists, lawyers and others," says Sodano. "Before, if the information was in storage, it could take hours or days to retrieve it. Now it can take just seconds.
Having information online enables Berlex and its affiliates to build a resource library and leverage its intellectual property longer.
"Knowledge contained in paper notebooks becomes less valuable after it goes into storage because few know what information resides where and too often the only one who can read it is the one who wrote it," Sodano says. "Knowledge that can be easily accessed and understood , however, retains its value much longer."
Adds Sodano, "When we show people the old notebooks and the quality of the information being captured by our scientists today, they are absolutely astonished. The difference is like night and day."