Five pharma companies adopt policy center for global information management

Siloed records management practices transformed to improve global operations and save cost

The challenge

Five well-established pharmaceutical companies needed to create global information governance frameworks to improve operations and reduce costs. Legislation covering regulatory compliance vary based on country, state, and local governments. With over 80 countries enacting privacy laws and more than 14,000 regulations governing life science practices in effect, information governance on a global scale is no small task.

Issues, both political and procedural, surfaced when requests were made to prove compliance with unfamiliar regulations. Directors responsible for records management and information governance knew the work required ongoing team support and collaboration, despite frequent changes to corporate structure.

The solution

Iron Mountain worked with information governance and records management staff to develop a workable approach based on the Policy Center, a cloud-based retention and privacy policy management platform that provides a user-friendly way for users to keep up with obligations and show compliance. Iron Mountain consultants helped prioritise pilot programs based upon multiple risk criteria.

By targeting higher risk facilities, the information governance teams were able to define governance frameworks and create management policies that could be applied globally and updated to reflect changing regulations.

As Policy Center deployments expanded to other regional facilities, local staff worked with their records management team to adapt templates and ensure special needs were addressed.

The results

Not only did the five global businesses realise the benefits of having full visibility into their records management, but they also significantly enhanced their ability to demonstrate and defend compliance through:

• Dashboard tracking of document management statistics and savings
• Built-in tools that make data retrieval efficient and defensible disposal easy
• Regular citation updates across all locations
• Regional and local administration support to implement policy updates

In the end, Iron Mountain's Policy Center platform has become central to each company's global governance program and transformed their international records management practices.

Key Benefits

• Retention schedules well documented and automatically tracked
• Records management processes are standardised at all facilities
• Requirement updates are regularly monitored and distributed
• Merger, acquisition, and divestiture (MAD) activities are well-supported

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