International School of Information Management

University of Mysore, Mysore

 

 

Seminar on Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

February 6, 2010

 

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ECM in Pharma Research Enterprises

 

by

 

Dr. Arun Gowda

Global Product Manager for Healthcare,

Nokia

 

&

 

ECM in IT Enterprises

 

by

 

Mr. Arjun Thomas

Consultant, Knowledge Management Office,

Dell Perot Systems

 

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The event started with Prof. Shalini Urs, Executive Director, ISiM welcoming the guests. Mr. Bhanu Potta, faculty for ECM to the M.Tech students of ISiM, then introduced the two guests – Dr. Arun Gowda and Mr. Arjun Thomas. Of the two speakers, Dr. Arun Gowda who is currently the Global Product Manager with Emerging Market Services Unit of Nokia was the first one to address the gathering.

 

Dr. Arun delivered his lecture on the topic of ECM in Pharma Research Enterprises. He started off the presentation by pointing out that the latest cinematic blockbuster - AVATAR had a script that ran into 6000 pages and it grossed USD 2 bn worldwide. With that as yardstick, he asked the audience to imagine what amount of content must have been developed to bring out ‘Lipitor’ – cholesterol reducing drug by Pfizer grossing an yearly revenue of over USD 10 bn for over a decade now. Citing this as a metric of the amount of content/research that goes into the making of a Pharma product. He then gave an insight in to the typical life cycle of a pharma drug and the various types of content that gets generated all along.

 

He further pointed out that the typical drug related content follows a life cycle of five stages – Collection, Storage, Processing, Analysis and Dissemination. All along the data cycle, the technology acts as the enabler to draw conclusions and interpretations. He acknowledged the role of the Web crawlers, Analytic tools, Data mining techniques and Advanced Search features in assisting the clinical research.

 

Dr. Arun then went on to point out the various forms of content that get generated during the lifecycle of drug research. The Clinical Test Protocol, Case reports Forms and Clinical Trial Data forms the bulk of data. These data, which is inherently confidential in nature is then stored in a secure database. The data is then analyzed employing advanced Clinical Trial Data Management (CDM) softwares. The analysis is done by the copy editors, Statisticians and Medical writers who report their findings through Regulatory Submission Reports, Posters and Publications among other means. He stressed that the entire process is carried out under utmost data confidentiality environments, perhaps next only to those in automobile manufacturing industry.

 

He made a special mention of Oracle, Accenture and Quintiles as the leading technology providers for clinical R&D data analysis. Pennside, PharmARC, Genpact and TCS are some of the companies known for their expertise in Pharma related Data Analytics.

 

The second part of the seminar was on the topic of ‘ECM in IT Enterprises’ presented by, Mr. Arjun Thomas, Sr. Consultant at the Knowledge Management Office at Dell Perot Systems. Mr. Arjun started his presentation by defining the ECM as applicable to the IT enterprise. He pointed out that the IT companies typically ride the wave of ECM and are more likely to endorse new trends in the field.

 

He pointed out that since the advent of the Web 2.0 framework, many new channels of content creation have emerged. He compiled most of the new channels in a wagon wheel picture.

 

He particularly, pointed out the popularity of Wiki’s, Facebook, Blogs, Folksonomy, YouTube, RSS feeds and Slide Share among our generation and their impact on the social life. In a lighter vein, he also pointed out that “These days, one is so busy social networking on the internet that he has no time for face-to-face socializations”.

 

He then put forth the concept of incorporating these tools within an organization’s intranet to engage the employees as an organizational strategy. Such a technique could result in better dissemination of information, formation of collective opinions and effective management of human resources. He also opined that such a framework can also be employed to create whitepapers to capture knowledge and expertise that could be archived for later use.

 

 

He further mentioned how the ECM tools can be leveraged to meet organizational goals. He concluded his talk with some tips on looking out for usability and customer experience factors to create an effective ECM system.

 

The event concluded with Prof. Shalini proposing the ‘Vote of Thanks’ and presenting the speakers with a memento.

 

For more details of the event please log on to http://isim.ac.in/Events/Enterprise%20Content%20Management%20(ECM).htm

 

 

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Thanks & Regards

Roopa

International School of Information Management, (ISiM)

University of Mysore, Manasagangotri

Mysore - 570006