Helping our life sciences clients be champions of change
Michael Shafer, CGI Director of Consulting Delivery, Life Sciences, shares his thoughts on the value of the CGI Voice of Our Clients program in the life sciences industry.
The value of the CGI Voice of Our Clients (VOC) program is that it provides insights that help our life sciences clients to be champions for change. Because the results are grounded in empirical observation, our clients gain a sense of confidence that transformation can be done effectively and compliantly in this heavily regulated industry. They appreciate having evidence that a strategy is being adopted across the industry and that change can be achieved successfully.
Digital adoption poised to grow
Historically, the life sciences sector has been risk-averse, significantly margin insulated, and slow to change due to regulatory and/or validation considerations. As a result, the sector has lagged others when it comes to digital transformation. In addition, investing in innovation traditionally was focused on science, not operations.?
Both business and IT leaders recognize the real value of innovative technologies being applied to operational use cases.?
However, VOC insights make clear that the landscape is changing. Both business and IT leaders recognize the real value of innovative technologies being applied to operational use cases. As successful instances of harnessing digital and emerging technologies increase, adoption is poised to grow exponentially. By providing an analysis of digitization initiatives and the value they’ve delivered, and distilling the characteristics of digital leaders (those producing expected results from digital strategies), the VOC program provides insights to reinforce this positive trend.?
Innovation and alignment are key
The most active areas of change and innovation right now include digitization, data quality improvement to support analytics, and alignment between business and IT (including the implementation of innovative delivery models between these groups). VOC data points to an encouraging industry trend toward closer business-IT alignment.
VOC data points to an encouraging industry trend toward closer business-IT alignment.
Another key area of interest and investment is robotic process automation (RPA). VOC results in 2021 showed a significant year-over-year increase in fully deployed RPA solutions that are producing value in life sciences. Past VOC research found life sciences firms to be slower adopters of this technology. This likely was because an RPA bot that feeds directly into product or patient decision-making requires validation. Greater adoption is being fueled by successful use cases. For example, in collaboration with clients, we’ve demonstrated how an RPA factory can deliver business value across both GxP (good practice quality guidelines) and non-GxP functions, from clinical to commercial operations.
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Industry benchmarking
Finally, the VOC program allows us to provide benchmarking analysis for our clients. When they have leaders across global sites or divisions participating in the VOC interviews, we can provide an independent view of digitization and technology operations maturity across the client organization. We also can compare a client’s performance against industry-wide benchmarks. Additionally, we can show it's possible to demonstrate the attributes of digital leaders and still be compliant in this industry, which often leads to some interesting conversations.?
I look forward to sharing our VOC insights to help equip our life sciences clients to be champions for change.?
CGI Voice of Our Clients provides actionable insights for industry best practices.
Learn more about how the program can help you gain insights you can act on
Annually, CGI leaders meet with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises. These industry insights - including the attributes of digital leaders - lead to actions to best satisfy the needs of your customers and citizens.
Voice of Our Clients gathers our clients’ perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises. Learn more on?our website.
More insights from leaders around the world
Several CGI leaders and experts around the world share the value the VOC program brings to their clients in this article series: