Optimising fragmented information to achieve process consistency
Introduction
A quick overview of the task at hand
Our client is a global biotechnology pharma business that encountered multiple challenges in implementing its crucial tech transfer processes across departments and locations.
Tech Transfers (TT) are critical events because the move from ideation and innovation in a lab to real-world application is fraught with quality and compliance risk.. Faced with siloed data, duplication, and inconsistencies, our biotechnology client needed a partner with deep industry expertise to navigate this level of complexity. We were that partner.
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The challenge
Navigating content complexity in a highly regulated industry
Like many global organisations, our biotechnology client struggled with a lack of consistency and communication between departments. Each site had developed its own ways of working, resulting in duplication, inconsistencies, and delays.
This led to several issues:
- Tech transfers took longer than necessary, delaying products going to market
- Every error caused deviations that triggered quality issues that had to be resolved, adding further delays
The cause of these issues? The absence of a knowledge management system to capture valuable procedural and tacit knowledge, which was lost if employees left the business.
Our challenge was to create, maintain, and facilitate access to a single source of truth, eliminating redundancies, improving operational efficiency, and ensuring reliable information was available to all staff.
Our approach
Streamlining tech transfer through effective knowledge management
At Altuent, we tackled the strategic knowledge management challenges that were slowing down our pharma client’s tech transfer process. By breaking down content silos and enabling cross-departmental knowledge sharing, we helped teams align more effectively and meet their business goals.
We applied a proven framework that allows our technical writers to ramp up quickly, while freeing subject matter experts (SMEs) to focus on high-value work. Here’s how we did it:
- Process map: We mapped key processes and identified their owners
- Knowledge transfer process: We developed a clear, overarching process supported by detailed flowcharts
- SME training: We created and delivered a training program on the new process and change management principles
- Design of delivery portal: We recommended and designed a delivery and engagement portal using SharePoint. This featured a centralised playbook consolidating all core process flows for easy, organisation-wide access
This approach allowed AI agents to surface key information quickly, turning static data into actionable insights in seconds and speeding up the entire tech transfer process.
The results
Embedding a knowledge-sharing culture
The tech transfer playbook is now actively used across the US and EMEA, with plans for global rollout. It has become the go-to resource for onboarding, reducing ramp-up time and ensuring consistency from day one.
By centralising information, this process has improved cross-team communication, decreased duplication of work, and freed up SMEs to focus on innovation and higher-value tasks. Standardised templates, workflows, and approval processes have helped streamline and reduce review cycles and driven a culture shift towards sharing knowledge, resulting in clear, quality documentation.