Be Smart, Build Smart – Workflow with SharePoint
Introduction
Documentation is a critical component for pharmaceutical company. It facilitates audit and compliance for the pharma company, hence cannot be taken for granted. It requires a careful scrutiny and approval from multiple authorities before finalisation and acted upon.
With production related tasks going on round the clock, documents are maintained for everything. The quantum of documentation produced everyday to execute and record details are exceptionally high in pharma Industry. It needs an efficient documentation workflow to maintain and organizing the quantum produced every day.
The criticality of documentation workflow, to ensure the efficiency, requires continuous improvement. The automation is an obvious choice, considering the volume and approval process, for completing a task The client is a Life Sciences research based, pharmaceutical company operating in the domestic and international markets in the Branded Formulations, Global Generics, Synthetic and Fermentation APIs space. It produces a wide range of quality, affordable medicines.
The client approached LTS with a documentation workflow automation requirement. LTS Mapped, Reengineered the processes and proposed Sharepoint as development platform for document workflow management application.
Sharepoint is a powerful document management platform, offers a comprehensive solution to all workflow related challenges. Especially designed for Enterprise Content Management, it facilitates enterprise search and BI features.
Challenges
The purpose of new SharePoint application was to speed up the pharmaceutical production along with eliminating following challenges.
Absence of SOP was nightmarish. However the customisable documentationapproval workflow was needed to accommodate the absence of authority and exceptions.
Version control: Document version was essential because of revision, update and track the changes, if required for auditing.
Audit: Facilitating inspections and audits required a clarity on approval authorities and the suggestions made, to modify the document. It was essential to requirement to identifying the decision maker.
Orgnisation of Document Library and Repositories: The system required to organise, store, track, and manage documents.
Document Search: The Search functionality in an application can take time to deliver relevant results, if the data stored in application or server is huge and vast. And upgrades are needed to make the search functionality‘s filters smarter.
Timely approval: A charter implementation was required to ensure the timely approval or rejection. With documents being prepared for every sale, purchase, logistics, etc., approval had to be sought from authorities. This was cumbersome because of the span of the organisation.
Storage: With documents being made to approve, storing them for the purpose of keeping records was a tough task.
Technology
- SharePoint
- C #
- MySQL (Database)
Team Size
- 2 Resource
Development Duration
- 4 Months
Methodology
- Agile Methodology
- Windows Azure
Solution
Leveraging SharePoint, resulted in reducing the time and cost for development. The platform offers a customisable document management, version control, enterprise search and workflow management to speed up development.
SharePoint development company enabled the Meta framework to enable smart search. By reengineering the approval process LTS build a customised user defined approval workflow with exception handling feature. It enabled the user to define the approval levels after document upload.
In case of rejection, if the employee modifies the document and uploads it again for approval, the application will save all earlier versions of document for future reference
Advantage of SharePoint
- Collaborative Platform
- Inbuilt Component library to facilitate agile development
- Scalability of Operation
- Flexibility
- Easy Customisation
- Managing External User
- Access is easier
- Centralise
- Administration
- Security & Integrity
Benefits of Agile Methodology
- Faster maturity
- Speed-to-market
- Quality
- Visibility
- Low Risk
- Flexibility
- Cost Control
Conclusion
The application developed by SharePoint development company LTS was helpful in workflow automation. SharePoint provided means to take otherwise manual processes and run them more efficiently.
Automation saved time, effort and cost. As many companies operate using digital tools like email, document management and systems like SharePoint, such automation is not too difficult to achieve. Often it is more of a case of stitching together existing tools.
Along with the risk of human error gone, SharePoint can display streamlined and repeated process in a single dashboard view.
SharePoint made the application easily be configurable to meet everchanging business needs of the client. Such needs included business functionality and creative design. Now, had the need arose, website customization could be done even by non-programmers, by using SharePoint Designer.
Easy content migration and implementation was made possible by SharePoint. With more security options, SharePoint facilitated a shared workspace environment among all employees and managers holding the responsibility to approve the documents.
SharePoint was also helpful in enforcing compliance. With automated workflows, the relevant tasks could be completed on time to a high standard when they needed to be.
To know more about the SharePoint service of LTS, click here. Or contact us enquiry@leotechnosoft.net