Drugs giant cuts speed to market

Pharmaceutical manufacturer AstraZeneca is rolling out a global content management system to help bring new drugs to market faster.

The company is implementing the new software from supplier Documentum to help deal with the vast amounts of data and documentation created through the regulatory approval cycle for drugs.

And the aim is to make this process much more efficient, says Steve Atkinson, enterprise software manager at AstraZeneca.

'The pharmaceutical product development cycle creates enormous amounts of data, even up to millions of documents in some instances, which are now managed far more efficiently,' he said.

Strict regulatory approval processes add substantial costs and delays to the product development lifecycle: a quarter of the company's marketing and operations budget is taken up dealing with compliance issues.

Each new drug has to be submitted to either the European Medical Evaluation Agency or the US Federal Drug Administration for trials and approval.

AstraZeneca is now starting the second phase of the project's rollout, which will use the Documentum content management system for its estimated 1,000 intranet and 150 internet sites.

'It allows us to reuse and manage our online content, cutting costs and making it easier and quicker for us to develop sites,' said Atkinson.

The system is also making a significant impact on the sales and marketing of the business.

'All of our sales and marketing documentation has to be approved by the relevant regulatory authority,' said Atkinson.

'The software helps us reuse this content and other digital assets more effectively, cutting costs and speeding up site development,' he added.

Last year, successes like Nexium and Seroquel - multi-billion dollar drugs that treat gastrointestinal disease and schizophrenia, respectively - drove the company's revenues to nearly $18bn.

To continue driving out big sellers like these, AstraZeneca spends over $11m every working day on research and development, totalling $3.1bn in 2002.