Servier

Challenge

Servier Laboratories is an international pharmaceutical group founded in France in 1954, run by a non-profit organisation and committed to therapeutic progress to meet the needs of patients. It is currently present in more than 150 countries, including Spain, and has more than 20,000 employees. Its philosophy places the patient at the centre of the company, prioritising their needs.

In the pharmaceutical sector, the relationship with doctors - nicknamed RELEM - is of the utmost importance. Despite its acronym, it addresses a wider audience: commercial and promotional team, marketing, external service providers, accounting and finance, legal and medical team.

In the last year alone, more than 7,500 doctors were part of the Servier network. Such numerous stakeholders translate into a large volume of documents to manage, both digital and paper-based.

Unlike other companies, at Servier Spain the initial transformation had already started, but the processes were lengthy. The lack of traceability was another major obstacle, as it was not possible to know where each document was in its lifecycle. In short, the lack of visibility necessarily translated into a lack of security.

As an additional aggravating factor, ERP and CRM did not communicate and every time an inconsistency arose it had to be checked manually, which added to the loss of time. The company needed a tool capable of extracting the necessary information from the CRM and autonomously requesting what was missing from the user. In short, Servier needed:

• Being able to see where each document was at any point in time.
• Being able to guide the user.
• Support different departments.
• An open, expandable and user-friendly tool.
• Short development time.

Solution

Servier’s corporate philosophy played an important role in the choice of the Hyland platform. The multinational uses the Slim Model, an expression summed up in the phrase “Dare to innovate”. It is a model that encourages employees to come up with new ideas to improve their daily work. Thanks to this corporate culture, Sonia López - Financial Solution Specialist at Servier - found OnBase. In her own words, “it was love at first sight”.

Servier’s Spanish subsidiary operated with a CRM (Veeva) and an ERP (JD Edwards - Oracle). OnBase became the brain of all operations and represented a radical change in Servier’s document management. Its function was to extract information from the CRM to automatically generate documents and correctly distribute instructions to complete tasks. In addition, a specific development was implemented for invoices. In simple terms, when a receipt enters the ERP it is automatically posted and in the corresponding “entries”, working autonomously. All this allows for better budgetary control, while ensuring transparency - an essential factor in the pharmaceutical sector.

The process started in September 2021 and was completed in February 2022. Overall, the implementation of OnBase enabled the following objectives to be achieved:

• Define roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder.
• Optimise the documentation and transparency process.
• Having a visible and useful budget control.
• Ensure FMW.

Once it was confirmed that OnBase was the ideal travel companion, the Servier team wanted to continue to improve. Together with Hyland, they developed a project based on the famous Agile Methodology with the following objectives: reduce time, gain flexibility and accuracy, implement the Digital Signature, streamline budget management, visualise an instant dashboard and track RELEM statuses.

Advantages

OnBase more than lived up to expectations. The excellent results achieved can be confirmed by Servier employees, who emphasise the many advantages:

From document manager to process manager

The flexibility of OnBase makes it possible to find a solution to every business challenge. In Servier’s case, it was able to transform a document manager into a process manager. This was the real key to return.

Digital transformation

The introduction of OnBase has eliminated most manual processes, reducing errors and increasing efficiency.

User-friendliness

Far from being a “hostile” tool, OnBase stands out for its simple operation and extreme adaptability. Thanks to this tool, problems have quickly turned into solutions.