During the summit we will be unveiling the new OpenText BPM vision, as well as a lot of new, promising product and solution innovations. We are excited to have Clay Richardson, Senior Analyst for Forester Research, kick-off our user summit with a thought-provoking session on Social BPM and the powerful value it has for organizations. This year we have assembled a remarkable lineup of speakers across a variety of industries who will be sharing their best practice techniques, lessons learned and other helpful tips and tricks to expand your business improvement projects. A full list of our summit speakers is available on our online agenda, here.

In addition to the summit agenda, we have several key sponsors that will be showcasing throughout the event, including Microsoft and ICCM Solutions. There are also some great pre-summit workshops on November 7^th designed to give you all the resources to maximize your investment. Check out some of Metastorm and Global 360’s training classes and register, here.

If you haven’t registered for the 2011 OpenText BPM User Summit, why wait? Not only will you be the first to hear everything OpenText has in store for you (from both the OpenText BPM executive management team and product managers), but you will get priceless information from peers to help you advance your business improvement efforts.

Still have some questions or concerns? Leave a comment below or reach out to me directly at elizabet@opentext.com

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As Vice President of Global Field Marketing, Elizabeth Edwards oversees OpenText BPM’s worldwide marketing program initiatives for demand generation, online marketing, customer marketing and lead management. She has a multi-faceted background in business-to-business, high-technology marketing including customer service, database marketing, online marketing, direct marketing, advertising and strategic events. Elizabeth has planned and run the Annual Global User Summit for 10 years.

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• “By 2012, a major pharmaceutical company that downsized without transforming processes and technology will experience a major failure of control.”
• “By 2012, a life science company will pay a $1 billion-plus fine for noncompliance with government contracting/rebating rules.”

What is most striking to me about the 2011 predictions is the disastrous nature of the consequences that Gartner cites – all of which can be tied back to a lack of focus on process.  Over the past year, I have become concerned about the rapid pace at which companies in the industry have been consolidating. How does a company fully understand the value of a potential merger or acquisition – let alone realize its true value when events are happening this quickly? I agree with Gartner on this one. Without significant investment in technology to document, harmonize and optimize processes, a merger or acquisition is bound to fail.

What’s especially frustrating for me in particular is that software, services and industry expertise exist (from companies like Metastorm) to help in these situations, and far too often we find organizations either are not able or willing to listen and invest. Rather than ignoring the problem, what organizations should do, as Gartner clearly states, is “consider business process management tools to create agility and the rapid deployment of reorganized processes” and “evaluate processes together.” Not surprisingly, the analysts recommend strongly examining compliance and governance functions to “ensure scarce resources are focused on ‘material’ risks.”

In today’s era of heightened regulatory scrutiny and fines it is shocking that compliance seems to be both overlooked and understaffed.  In addition to overall process improvement, solving compliance burdens is an area in which Metastorm has a long track record of client success.

Metastorm recommends that Life Sciences companies take a 3 pronged approach to process understanding and improvement:

1. Involve all key stakeholders up front by using cloud-based collaborative modeling and process discovery tools.  Virtually anyone can access the tool and groups can work online together to come to consensus on goals, organizational roles, business rules and process flows. 
2. Establish a central repository to house business models, strategy roadmaps and “as is” and “to be” models of the business so that all stakeholders have visibility and stay on the same page. An enterprise business architecture tool is best equipped to provide this along with critical process analysis capabilities.  
3. Leverage process automation and business process management software to enforce and track behaviors for consistent process execution that meets business guidelines and supports business objectives.  People will actually welcome an environment that takes the guesswork out of adhering to complex compliance regulations and that gives that instant access to the information they need to make better business decisions. It also serves to automate the documentation of and reporting on key processes and metrics.  

Business processes not only drive company operations, but they also are a key element of compliance. Back to Gartner’s 2011 Predicts report – the other prediction I find almost equally compelling (given the hard dollars associated with it) is that, “By 2012, a life science company will pay a $1 billion-plus fine for noncompliance with government contracting/rebating rules.”  I can’t tell you how often clients ask me for Return on Investment (ROI) models to justify process analysis and business process management software – while almost every day news headlines cite yet another pharmaceutical company paying a massive fine.  There is the ROI right there – often hundreds of millions of dollars.  

The numbers are no longer trivial in terms of fines, and the negative publicity can be even more damaging in a market that is becoming increasingly competitive.

The other side of this is pretty simple as well – fines are a source of income for the government. I don’t think that requires further explanation, but suffice it to say the industry is going to pay one way or another. I addressed the government contracting and rebating rules component of this prediction, in a blog post last year.

I don’t know any other area of Life Sciences where such complex, yet bottom-line-impacting processes, activities and controls are so far behind the curve. I understand this is a highly complicated process and area of regulation. My response (similar to Gartner’s recommendation) is simple – the impact is huge (to the tune of an $11B a year loss for the industry) so– this is where you should be investing heavily in controls, processes, and technology to ensure you are compliant and also agile enough to adapt to on-going changes. I also recommend taking it a step further, which some of our most mature clients have done, and layer process controls and automation through Metastorm BPM on top of the core infrastructure of revenue management. We have multiple clients who have taken this approach and literally saved millions of dollars on an annual basis – providing more than adequate ROI justification and case study proof points to get your organization moving.

I think it’s clear that things are going to get much worse for some Life Sciences companies, with potentially disastrous consequences.  While those that do take the time now to develop process visibility, understanding, optimization and control will be poised to not only survive this industry storm, but emerge as the market leaders. The best approach to survival in 2011 and to prepare for the future is for Life Science companies to invest in a strong, flexible software suite that allows them to fully understand their organizational capabilities, while providing features allowing them to track and manage change.  The question is – are you ready to step up and make this investment now or are you going to wait and risk the fallout?

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The inclusion of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act in the sweeping healthcare reform is not only a vehicle for transparency, but also for financing the overall cost of healthcare in the US. In my humble opinion, given the sufficient “advanced warning” provided – the bill passed on March 23, 2010, and physician payments tracking is required starting  January 1, 2012 – we are going to see the federal government hand out hefty fines for violations (up to $1M) on a regular basis.

Unfortunately for the Life Sciences industry, there is little sympathy given for large (or even small) payments – “transfers of value” as the government calls them – to doctors and other healthcare providers and organizations (known as HCPs and HCOs respectively). While it may be difficult to defend the clinical usefulness of sending a doctor to a conference in an exotic location, there is a true need for a healthy relationship between clinicians and Life Sciences organizations, and that need isn’t going away.

After all, doctors and other prescribers ultimately put new products to use when they come to market, and therefore represent a key customer segment. The industry also relies on clinician participation in current and future clinical trials of new medicines and medical devices. The challenge is how to maintain healthy interactions with HCPs and HCOs without creating a conflict of interest or the appearance of impropriety.

There are already a host of state regulations in place aimed at this problem; and more are on the way – making it increasingly difficult to navigate this delicate space and stay on the correct side of the law. Add to this the complexities of operating in and around major metropolitan areas that straddle state borders (New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia), and the effort to identify and track every HCP’s state of licensure versus their state of residence and the problem of just knowing which provider is which quickly mushrooms.

Clearly a technology solution is needed.

For compliance, there are two main components required – data and process. While most large and even medium-sized Life Sciences companies have a customer master data solution in place, the quality of the data is a problem – “Garbage in, garbage out” – as the saying goes. In order to ensure quality data, the process by which said data is captured and entered into the master data solution is critical. Business Process Management (BPM) can solve this problem in two fundamental ways.

First, from the compliance standpoint, having standard processes that are controlled and enforced ensures that every payment has been approved following corporate compliance policies as well as all state and federal regulations. Furthermore, the flexibility that BPM provides allows companies to develop the processes required today knowing that these and the business rules that drive them can be easily adapted as the regulations and reporting requirements evolve.

Second, from a master data perspective these process controls also ensure that records of payment are added to the primary data source only after they have been officially approved. Each payment amount is confirmed and reconciled after the event takes place and an actual payment is made. This ensures that all of the data kept within the master source is accurate and was properly approved based on the rules at that point in time.

Taking a BPM approach addresses both sides of the compliance problem. It also provides the quality data and recorded approvals that, as part of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, the US government now requires beginning January 1, 2012. The challenge and opportunity now becomes ensuring that the solution is in place in time to start tracking, and provide the organization an opportunity to review 2011 spending trends prior to compliance issues “going on your permanent record” with the Department of Health and Human Services in 2012.

This approach will allow the organization to ensure all compliance guidelines are being followed, HCPs/HCOs are not being overexposed for spend and provide time to modify compliance policies and the Aggregate Spend application itself before federal tracking begins. Additionally, to follow the new regulations, all Life Sciences manufactures whose products are reimbursed by any government program (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP) must have an Aggregate Spend Management solution rolled out and ready for use by the end of this year.

In order to roll it out by that time, you really should be starting to design and build it yesterday.

But fear not – Metastorm has already successfully deployed its Aggregate Spend Management solution for a number of our top Life Sciences clients, and our dedicated Life Sciences practice has the experience and tools to help your organization assess your process, data, applications, compliance and organization to quickly scope a solution. If you start now, end of year is completely feasible and your executives can rest easy knowing that their organization will be tracking all physician spend, will have the quality data available for review, and will still have time to make changes prior to the first federal reporting period.

For more information, please review Metastorm’s Aggregate Spend Management Solution brief or join us at any of our upcoming events. We’re here to help.

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Ethan Smith is the Director of Life Sciences Solutions at Metastorm where he oversees business and account development and solution creation for Metastorm’s global life sciences customers, partners and prospects.

Ethan has extensive experience in business process consulting in the life sciences industry. His areas of expertise include enterprise BPM strategies as well as the utilization of Metastorm BPM® and Metastorm ProVision® to establish Process Centers of Excellence. He has driven process initiatives across research and development, sales operations, incentive compensation, physician spend management and compliance functions. Prior to Metastorm, Ethan spent over 10 years in process consulting for the life sciences and insurance industries.

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Check out this webinar, Countdown to Life Sciences Aggregate Spend Compliance, to learn how Metastorm’s Aggregate Spend Solution can help Life Sciences organizations manage, track and report on all physician payments by:

• Setting active alerts for corporate compliance policy and regulatory requirement breeches
• Defining and approving payment of all physician budgets and operating plans
• Enforcing proper approvals dynamically based on business rules governing giving

Webinar Date: Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Session1: 6:00 am PT / 9:00 am ET / 1:00 pm GMT
Session 2: 10:00 am PT / 1:00 pm ET / 5:00 pm GMT

Register for 9:00 AM EST session.
Register for 1:00 PM EST session.

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