Sophisticated Software Isn’t Synonymous with Added Complexity

Today, R&D is carried out by a raft of research stakeholders ranging from academia and contract research organizations (CROs) to contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) and oil and gas service providers. We’re entering the realm of virtualized R&D with teams from different parts of an organization or third parties focusing on distinct parts of the research lifecycle.

Root and branch business transformation

This comprehensive change to the way research is carried out and how innovation comes about hasn’t just meant that organizations need to review their strategy, operations and structure. It’s also brought about a reflection on the informatics platforms that organizations are using as a foundation for this new world of research. While the limitations of paper-based working are clear and made all the starker by the needs of collaborative, virtualized research, there’s also been a shift in the approach to going paperless.

Less is more – lab simplicity

While in the past, an organization’s first steps into paperless working involved seeking out and deploying specialized, point solutions to handle specific tasks, these days the sector has evolved. Not only does pursuing the ‘best in breed’ strategy make less and less financial sense in a world where drug development costs for example have spiraled, it’s also no longer fit for purpose in a complex, multi-stakeholder research ecosystem.

The fact is that, as companies work with more and more partners, both across their own organizations and further afield, a complex web of internal software systems makes collaboration cumbersome and also raises challenges relating to training and licenses.

It’s for this reason that we’ve witnessed a shift towards a more streamlined ecosystem. What this means from an enterprise R&D software point of view is that organizations are looking for a single platform from which they can coordinate their work and integrate with existing systems. People are looking for a single source of truth that makes it simpler to collaborate and run research as a global, virtualized activity communicating with and pulling data from all research stakeholders.

Find out more at our Community Forums

We’ll be exploring the theme of a streamlined ecosystem for enterprise R&D software during our US Community Forums, back for their third edition and heading to Boston, Chicago and San Francisco during November – check out our event listings for more.