Large Scale Lotus Notes Migration to Siebel CTMS

Overview

The company is a prestigious contract research organization (CRO) providing drug development services. Its clients include the world’s top fifty life sciences companies.

Background

The goal of the project was to implement a state-of-the-art system with a Siebel CTMS and a NextDocs eTMF system for managing clinical trials. The source system was Lotus Notes. The migration involved 50 studies, 300 databases, hundreds of thousands of documents and records.

The legacy Lotus Notes-based system was customized for the client’s business users. The data needed to be migrated to conform to the new business process in the Siebel CTMS and NextDocs eTMF systems.

Migration Challenges

This migration was like moving from a stone tablet and chisel to a digital tablet –- with no paper, pencil or typewriter in between. The migration team faced the following challenges:

• Neither the business team nor the IT organization felt this migration could be done effectively.
• Separate Lotus Notes databases were used for various studies with no consistencies in database layout.
• The same data field was used to store different information across multiple studies. This was a major challenge for migration, since the users had to understand the process and the usage of each one-off field.
• The target system configurations were not finalized and were in flux during the migration activities. The team had to stay aligned with system changes as they were being implemented.
• There were seven client teams, making co-ordination a challenge.

The Valiance Solution

To reduce data migration cost and time, Valiance created a repeatable migration process to migrate the 50 studies in 14 migration waves without making significant configuration changes during these waves. The migration waves resulted in minimal downtime and impact to business.

All migration work for each wave was completed over weekends, to enable the business to be fully functional in the new system the following week.

Valiance’s Insight Methodology, the TRUseries product suite, featuring 100% automated testing capabilities, quickly identified the similarities and differences between the studies early in the pre-migration stage. This helped to create an efficient repeatable migration process. Valiance worked closely with the client project teams to ensure success; these included the client’s business champions, the client IT team, the application support team, and the individual user team –- seven in all.

Results

The migration was completed successfully in April 2015, on time and on budget. The cost savings were significant. The standardization and integration of the CTMS and eTMF systems for these studies dramatically enhanced the client’s ease in entering data, processing it and reporting it to their customers. The client, who initially believed this migration couldn’t be done, now believed Valiance could tackle any migration effort.

Client Testimonials

“A huge thanks to the Valiance team. We could not have asked for a better partner.”

“…. [We] attribute the success of this project to you and your amazing Valiance team. Your knowledge, experience and ability to get the job done are unparalleled to any other vendor I have worked with. Even in the toughest of times of the last several months, we have all worked as a cohesive team. It’s really been a great experience.”