The Customer
A global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. Customer needed a global-sized solution for its records retention management strategy.
The Challenge
The customer’s prior solution lacked the international reach needed to cover countries in which the customer had a presence.
“The main challenge was even if there was a global retention policy, it wasn’t followed everywhere,” the customer’s RIM governance lead said. “It wasn’t forced to be implemented in different countries. So, the countries had their own retention policies, and it wasn’t regularly updated and there was not a group of reviewers.”
New legal record requirements had not been taken into consideration, the customer said. This became an issue when the European Union’s comprehensive privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), went into effect in May 2018.
“We would have problems with not only GDPR but also with the records over preservation because the policy was not updated and there was not this link with the different legal citations,” the associate director of records and information management said.
The customer manages many types of records including regulatory affairs, quality, and medical devices. These records were grouped into over 250 record series with thousands of record types.
In 2018, it came time to begin looking for something better.
The Solution
The customer ultimately chose Zasio’s Versatile Retention and Versatile Enterprise suite of applications because they satisfied “multiple criteria” evaluated in the request for proposal process.
Versatile Retention (VR): One of the biggest criteria, the customer said, was Versatile Retention met the customer’s retention and user requirements.
“It’s very user-friendly,” the RIM governance lead said.
“It’s easy for the end user to navigate. It was a great advantage because we didn’t have to force another training for people to be able to find retention requirements for their records. This saved a lot of time for us and also the cost for the implementation, to have thousands of providers and associates trained.”
She really appreciates how intuitive the user interface is.
“For us to manage our retention period to submit change requests, to approve them and the review process…from the administrative (side of things) it’s quite simple,” the customer said.
Versatile Enterprise (VE): When it comes to Versatile Enterprise, the customer has several favorite features. But one, in particular, stands out.
“One of the key items for us are the integrations. To be able to pull in updates from the record series into the tool itself without manually having to keep them in sync, I mean that is a game changer for a lot of the work we’re doing,” the customer’s associate director of records and information management said.
They also appreciate how VE isn’t overly complex.
“You don’t have to know SQL and scripting to be able to make even global changes. You can do a lot without having extra access and admin rights. It allows you to do a lot that perhaps others would be locked down or wouldn’t let you do,” the customer said.
The customer said she appreciates the change requests and audit trail features.
“It’s a really great advantage for us for the audit inspections when we need to provide the dates and know who approved what,” the customer said. “It is very clear — you can print it in PDF which is what’s required during the legal court (process). You need to have a stamped PDF…this is a great feature.”
Customer Support + Implementation
As a global pharmaceutical company, it has a vast internal support network. But when the customer does require assistance, Zasio has proven to be ready time and time again.
“We have had a pretty good experience I would say so far,” the customer said.
The customer also shared their admiration of Caleb Woolsey, one of Zasio’s software support specialists, whom the team frequently works with.
“Anytime I have any issue, he’s able to fix it, he’s very patient with me,” the customer said.
When it came time to implement Versatile Retention, the process was straightforward.
“The implementation of Versatile Retention went very smoothly from my perspective,” Woolsey said. “The biggest challenge was working with them through the validation process, and understanding their data for the import.”
Project scope and customer validation requirements made the Versatile Enterprise implementation more challenging. And the customer shared this perspective but noted the VE tool and Zasio’s world-class support team were up to the task.
Zasio’s support team was key to navigating this process, though.
“Caleb provided great support during the entire project because of his high expertise and flexibility. He was also able to attend the meetings with our functional stakeholders and helped the business understand the requirements for successful migrations (such as data mapping).”
Zasio’s RIM Consulting Team
In addition to software, the customer said it’s benefited from Zasio’s RIM consulting services. From global record retention schedule simplification and human resources privacy retention projects to ad hoc requests for general consulting inquiries, Zasio’s software and consulting offerings have worked hand in hand to move the customer forward.
“I work almost daily with Jennifer (Chadband) because we have a lot of questions from our internal stakeholders,” the customer said. “And because I’m not a legal person, I always need support from her side and the responses are always very quick. She’s always willing to join the calls and discuss with the stakeholders so they understand. Overall the support is brilliant.”
Having a close working relationship has proven to be mutually beneficial.
“For us, it’s very precious because we are receiving not only questions related to legal requirements but also, for example, to identify what is the best type of record series the users should use,” she said.
Results
Since Zasio and this customer have joined forces, the results have been significant. The customer now has approximately 30 percent fewer record series to manage. It also has a newly simplified global records retention schedule. The customer had initial research, application, and recommendations done for the European Union Supranational, 32 federal, and a multitude of relevant sub-jurisdictions.
And, of course, the customer continues to rave about Zasio’s customer support.
“Obviously, working with Caleb so closely, he’s like a member of the family,” the customer said.
To learn more about Versatile Retention or Enterprise please call 1-800-513-1000 opt. 1 or email sales@zasio.com.