Introduction
Speeding up drug development through smarter onboarding
One of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies needed to shorten R&D timelines for their pipeline of blockbuster drugs. A key roadblock? New hires were taking up to 12 months to reach full productivity.
Training and process documentation were scattered across three regions, written in inconsistent formats, and often incomplete, outdated, or overly technical.
To speed up knowledge access, they envisioned a centralised online playbook. But with over 1,000 processes to capture, they required an experienced team to make it happen. That’s where we came in.
Challenge
Elevating internal knowledge to shorten drug development timelines
As the R&D team grew, productivity slowed. An unstructured training approach left new hires struggling to understand how to do their jobs effectively. Instead of contributing to innovation, they wasted time hunting for the right information.
The issues we encountered:
- Lack of process ownership
- Source material scattered across locations and formats, from PowerPoint decks to SOPs, training videos, and work instructions (WI)
- Content often incomplete, outdated, or written by experienced SMEs in a highly technical way that was difficult for new hires to consume
- Critical process knowledge locked in people’s heads
- Inconsistent writing style and ability across the scientific team
- Procedures written above the level of new hires
- Senior scientists underutilised, spending time documenting instead of innovating
Our approach
Shortening time to productivity with a single source of Playbook processes
With over a thousand processes to document for a global, highly regulated company, getting it right was critical. We started with a successful pilot to prove our playbook development approach met the client’s needs.
Our proven framework:
- Discovery phase: We immersed ourselves in complex scientific subjects to fully understand processes and regulatory documentation.
- Content strategy: We designed an effective workflow to ensure an efficient and high-quality content development process.
- Content development: We implemented a client-approved style guide to maintain consistency and created a single source of reliable process documentation.
- Delivery: We built a user-friendly, searchable SharePoint repository to store, manage, and publish the content.
- Post implementation support: We trained and supported the client’s technical team on new workflows, established a system to keep the content up to date, and initiated regular process reviews with owners. Lastly, we tracked and reported on user engagement and drove awareness of the playbook to accelerate time to productivity.
Our approach to deeply understand the user’s needs coupled with our workflow best practices resulted in us becoming a trusted partner.
Results
Reducing time to market for life-saving drugs with high-quality enterprise knowledge
The impact of the playbook was immediate: faster employee onboarding and enhanced knowledge-sharing across teams. Stakeholders reported significant improvements in the clarity and accessibility of information, with processes now kept consistently up to date. Quality writing standards are maintained throughout, and we’ve been retained to provide ongoing support for the playbook.