Roche Diagnostics’ Business Case for Digital Asset Management

Digital asset management (DAM) is changing the way life sciences companies manage and share marketing content – it has accelerated asset creation and automated everything from approval and publication to distribution across multiple channels. DAM also helps companies enforce consistent metadata and unified taxonomies for better document control.

But despite these benefits, technology adoption is slow, making it difficult for teams to fully realize the power of DAM.

During our recent DAM for Life Sciences Forum, Ayaz Malik, head of diagnostics digital communications at Roche Diagnostics, shared his perspective on what’s hindering adoption – and how companies can design the right business case for getting everyone on board with DAM.

Before you begin: understanding the business landscape

Mr. Malik notes that to implement DAM, you should start with a good grasp of the business landscape at your company. First, identify problem areas. Leadership is a common one, but other areas can also slow progress.

You can then focus on quantifying and qualifying the opportunity costs of operating without a solution. While this will involve thorough research and analysis, it’s critical to making your case. For an excellent illustration of how to calculate the opportunity cost for managing content, see Mr. Malik’s presentation, “Building a Business Case for DAM.”

Having pinpointed the issues and opportunity costs, you can move ahead with outlining your business case to understand how leadership can support this effort.

7 steps to building a great business case

1. Secure an executive sponsor: one of the most important things you can do is bring an executive sponsor onboard. Just the presence of a senior leader on your team can help reduce organizational foot-dragging and allow you to build momentum that will carry you to the finish line.
2. Include a range of stakeholders: involve people from finance, IT, marketing, regulatory, and legal to ensure your plan represents all viewpoints.
3. Be fully prepared: Do your homework and identify the hot buttons. If you know an executive’s concerns ahead of time, you won’t be caught short by presenting to an audience that hasn’t been won over. Anticipate questions and answer them.
4. Use business-friendly language: technology is great, but only when it’s linked to the bottom line. Focus on issues like efficiency, compliance risk, and competitive position.
5. Illuminate the consequences of poor user experience or low audience engagement: both are related to how your company is viewed in the market.
6. Open the discussion: your pitch is important, but so is your ability to engage with the management team and to answer questions honestly. Mr. Malik comments that your presentation should be 25% pitch and 75% dialogue.
7. Ask the key questions: DAM is great, but not if your organization is unwilling or unable to change or doesn’t want to invest the money or time required.

Interested in hearing more great tips from organizations like yours on building a DAM foundation? Register for Veeva’s 3rd annual Digital Asset Management for Life Sciences Forum, September 10 in Philadelphia, PA.