industry sector

PHARMACEUTICAL

IMPROVING SERVICE DELIVERY THROUGH BEST PRACTICE BASED ITSM

case study:
CLINPHONE

Discover how
ClinPhone Web-based ITSM is the best treatment for drugs trials leader
realized the
benefits of ITIL
Best Practice
With the average cost of developing a new drug soaring as high as US $900 million, biopharmaceutical
through the
companies are keen to get their products on sale faster in order to start recouping this vast expenditure.
implementation of Research and development technology is accelerating the process, especially in conducting and managing
a leading ITSM clinical trials.
and Web
Self–Service
Solution.
Companies supporting these vital research and development efforts demand the best technical tools. For
ClinPhone (www.clinphone.com), the leading provider of electronic trial management solutions for global
clinical testing of drugs, assyst by Axios Systems, the leading IT Service Management (ITSM) solution,
turned out to be the best treatment.

The Company
ClinPhone Group was founded in 1993 with the goal of improving the clinical trial process. The organization
responded to the industry-wide need for real-time access to critical trial information, available to sponsors
around the clock. Beginning with central randomization and blind-break services, this original concept has
grown into an award winning global business that delivers practical solutions that have now served hundreds
of thousands of sites and patients.

Headquartered in Nottingham, England, ClinPhone Group has US offices in New Jersey, Illinois, California,
Massachusetts and North Carolina. It also has a European facility, and has won a series of awards for quality
and growth. ClinPhone has developed applications for some of the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical and
biotechnology organizations. It supports more than 90,000 sites and has experience of some 1,500 clinical
trials. Its solutions are accessed in over 85 countries and 70 languages.

The company also provides automated logistics management and drug supply chain management. Its
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system contains precise information about the
location of every package of medication assigned to the study. Its IT
department is responsible for 24/7, 365 days a year telephone and
Web-based IVR systems hosting services, client networking,
infrastructure management and development, the technical
Service Desk and custom applications.

The Background
Prior to the implementation of assyst, ClinPhone's IT
Service Desk used an internally developed Incident
Management system, handling incidents logged by
phone and e-mail.

When Daljit Cheema, now Chief Technology Officer,

joined the company in 2002, he drove the adoption of
the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), internationally
accepted guidelines for Best Practice in ITSM. He was
keen to introduce a better, measured framework of
standards and processes to improve ClinPhone's
response to its internal customers in relation to
Incidents, Problems and Change Requests.

>
over
the solution was assyst
 “ assyst
We were looking for a tool that would help us embrace all ITIL disciplines. “
has been very successful in helping us do so.
case study :
CLINPHONE

“We were also looking for

Net gain - without pain
demonstration of a Benefits
Initially the IT Department successfully mapped out manual Change Management

professional attitude in
processes for its two data centers, servers and technical architecture, using the ITIL ClinPhone’s Service Desk had a further challenge: 90% of incidents were being logged by e-mail.

supporting what we were Increased visibility of IT

recommendations for planning, consultation and back-up procedures. Each time an e-mail was sent an incident would automatically be raised. However, if the same

trying to achieve as a infrastructure

end-user sent a follow-up e-mail, another incident would be raised making it difficult to keep

business. Axios was able to

“ITIL was the reason we went into Change Management because it was one of the track of related issues. The volume of e-mails being sent was also proving a burden on e–mail

Adoption of Best Practice

areas where we thought we were most exposed to risk”, Senior Project Manager
demonstrate that it had a
servers. Technical management therefore wanted to remove this method of communication and
James Dickens commented. “We had a highly complex IT infrastructure but no replace it with a more efficient ITIL based method of logging incidents.

vast amount of knowledge Improved end-user satisfaction

formal means of logically addressing how we would implement Change without

and expertise.”
adverse consequences. There was no real consideration of the wider consequences To address this issue, assystNET, the Web-based companion product of assyst, which allows

Improved service desk

and no formal reporting.” end-users to log incidents over the internet, was implemented.

James Dickens efficiency

Senior Project Manager
However, this was just the start of ClinPhone's focus on ITSM which has helped it assystNET is available to all 500 staff with a single sign-on to their personalized home page.

Increased 1st time fix rate

emerge as a world leader in its field.
“The move into Change Management gave us a real springboard to dive into the
rest of ITIL but we also recognized that we needed a supporting solution which
represented the ITIL model and would support to the processes we wanted to
implement,” Dickens commented. “It was then that we discovered we could use
assyst from Axios Systems to help us harness ITIL.”
Using assystNET, end-users can monitor and update incidents which they themselves have
logged. A File Attachment facility allows relevant items such as screen grabs to be appended to
incidents, thus promoting rapid incident resolution.
“Looking back on it now, getting rid of e-mail strikes me as a brave step because so much
contact was via e-mail and here we were throwing it out!” Dickens said.

assyst offers a unique lifecycle approach to ITSM through the integration of Help
Desk and Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management,
Asset and Configuration Management and Service Level Management processes in
assystNET
Configurable Web user
a single consolidated solution.
interface with tabbed
Designed from inception around the ITIL guidelines, assyst guides users through navigation.
the processes ensuring a Best Practice implementation every time.

The Prescription
ClinPhone carefully reviewed the market of ITSM solution providers, including
talking to Industry Analysts Gartner about its 'Magic Quadrant' of top vendors.

“We chose assyst based on our long term objectives, which were to implement assystNET
ITIL and a solution that would support this - specifically Incident, Change, and Visibility of event status.
Asset and Configuration Management,” said Dickens.

Other important considerations included the architecture of the core application -

ClinPhone wanted a single underlying database structure, which was delivered by
the assyst Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
ClinPhone was also delighted with the depth of the Axios consultants' ITIL
knowledge and experience.
“We were also looking for demonstration of a professional attitude in supporting
what we were trying to achieve as a business. Axios was able to demonstrate that it
Since the introduction of assystNET, the number of first time fixes has increased significantly to
60%. The need for incidents to be raised by e-mail has been completely removed.
Staff have rapidly endorsed the tool. “Our internal customers have taken to assystNET in a big
way and are happy to use it,” said Service Desk Team Leader Phil Johnson.
assystNET also allows end-users to search knowledge procedures held in the assyst Knowledge

>
had a vast amount of knowledge and expertise.” Base for a potential solution. This allows some issues to be resolved without Service Desk
intervention, thus releasing time and resources of the Service Desk analysts.
“Timescales were tight but the implementation went very smoothly. I am delighted

more
we chose assyst and confident we made the right decision,” Dickens said.
Benefits & the Future
case study:
CLINPHONE
The Benefits
Helped by improved visibility of how incidents are being handled, there is also a better
perception throughout the company of what the Service Desk does.

“The biggest benefit of assystNET is accessibility and visibility,” Dickens summarized.

“There is an increased level of confidence and reassurance among users. Previously they
didn't know if their incident would be fixed or even that it was being looked at. Now they
have total visibility: when it was assigned, who it has been assigned to. They have direct
access to add their information and know it hasn't been lost at the end of a phone or
e–mail.”

ClinPhone's Web developers were also able to customize assystNET to create a branded
Intranet Web page for raising incidents, complete with the company's yellow and blue
'corporate look and feel'.

assystNET has made the Service Desk much more efficient. Staff no longer have to
combine multiple follow-up e-mails into one logical incident file. Prior to assystNET, this
was a manually intensive job.

There are wider benefits for ClinPhone as a whole. “assyst centralizes and consolidates all
information on our assets and infrastructure into the CMDB,” Dickens stated.

Incidents can be related directly to the appropriate asset. By using the Centennial asset
tracking tool integrated with assyst, technical management have an accurate picture of
software and hardware licensing and forecasting, can spot growth trends and know when
Australia
renewals are due.

Belgium
“We were looking for a tool that would help us embrace all ITIL disciplines. assyst has
been very successful in helping us do so,” Dickens concluded. “Having all ITIL modules

Canada
available in one single solution was a big plus.”

Cyprus

France

Germany
“The assyst solution has acted as the key enabler for sustained
annual six figure financial savings by the ability to track assets,

The Netherlands
their specification and suitability for re-use.”

“What really clinched the business for Axios was the professionalism UK

USA
of its consultants.”

assyst@axiossystems.com
www.axiossystems.com