Welcome, Keith!
-Cori-
Working for a living
Everyone needs a reason to do what they do!! Our reason is to push an industry to use technology better than they have in the past. When I started Court Square 13 years ago I really only wanted to have a job and create a place for good people that wanted to do a good job for other people. Over the years we had to define that "Uniqueness" that everyone says you have to have. I believe we've found that with our approach to managing infrastructure and applications in the Life Science's industry.
What does that mean? Well, when I started out in this industry it seemed like we were doing some really cool projects but they were just different IT related projects. Over the years our largest client became one of the industry leaders in the Pharmaceutical field and we learned some amazing lessons about drug discovery and the whole drug development lifecycle. As the cost of developing a drug skyrocketed it was imperative for the industry to figure out a better way to do things. One of those ways was to utilize their computing environments far better than they had in the past.
Changes in the life sciences industry
When I first started it wasn't unusual to have many different networks running in a single organization with multiple servers hiding out under scientists desks. It seemed that every scientist that got a grant felt that it was his obligation to provide his own computing infrastructure because the corporate IT folks just didn't "get it". Well that could have been true but the reality is that the scientists became more enamored with their collection of computing resources than the science that they originally started with. I don't know if it was shear market forces that caused the individual departments to finally figure out that they wanted to work more on their science and less on maintaining a computing infrastructure. Fast forward to today and you'll see an entirely different attitude where the scientists know that they are using computing far more than they did in the past and it is imperative that someone else take care of those resources because they simply don't have enough time in the day to do so.
Well this gets us back to our uniqueness. Over time we did many different projects, both large and small and I realized that the success or failure of the project usually was determined by the individual running the project and their background. What we wanted to do was come up with a way to create a consistent method for achieving quality for all our projects and we latched upon the Project Management Institutes PMI certification for all of our project management leaders. It has proven to be a wonderful way to provide far more consistency and quality and also to truly set customer expectations right out of the gate. The uniqueness continues by having to also manage that infrastructure and application environment after we've completed the project to implement it. Well that's where ITIL comes into play. We combined both PMI and ITIL to create what we call Good Systems Practice. It's just really common sense and adhering to standard practice. This can sometimes be a really difficult thing for IT centric guys and gals to do. I really don't know why but they always have to feel like they are solving the weightiest problem in the world when really someone has probably already solved it and the answer is just sitting out there waiting for them to find it. Cori has discussed GSP in our blog earlier so I won't go into any more detail but that became our uniqueness. Now it's getting the industry to recognize how to innovate by using best practices.
DIA Outsourcing Summit 2007
Recently I was a speaker at the DIA Outsourcing Summit in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. It was a great gathering of people in and around the pharmaceutical industry with multiple tracks to satisfy a fairly broad base of people. I was part of a panel that spoke about changes in the industry and how using GSP would result in higher quality and more predictable outcomes when it came to working with IT vendors and staff. Really it's also the interaction of the quality staff and the IT staff that's just as important in a highly regulated Life Science industry. The DIA conferences are always very well attended and it's a great organization for promoting the best practices to improve service delivery within the drug development community.
In my next entry I talk about another recent panel that I was on for the New Jersey Technology Council. If you are located in New Jersey and you don't know about the NJTC then you probably should.
Thanks,
Keith
What does that mean? Well, when I started out in this industry it seemed like we were doing some really cool projects but they were just different IT related projects. Over the years our largest client became one of the industry leaders in the Pharmaceutical field and we learned some amazing lessons about drug discovery and the whole drug development lifecycle. As the cost of developing a drug skyrocketed it was imperative for the industry to figure out a better way to do things. One of those ways was to utilize their computing environments far better than they had in the past.
Changes in the life sciences industry
When I first started it wasn't unusual to have many different networks running in a single organization with multiple servers hiding out under scientists desks. It seemed that every scientist that got a grant felt that it was his obligation to provide his own computing infrastructure because the corporate IT folks just didn't "get it". Well that could have been true but the reality is that the scientists became more enamored with their collection of computing resources than the science that they originally started with. I don't know if it was shear market forces that caused the individual departments to finally figure out that they wanted to work more on their science and less on maintaining a computing infrastructure. Fast forward to today and you'll see an entirely different attitude where the scientists know that they are using computing far more than they did in the past and it is imperative that someone else take care of those resources because they simply don't have enough time in the day to do so.
Well this gets us back to our uniqueness. Over time we did many different projects, both large and small and I realized that the success or failure of the project usually was determined by the individual running the project and their background. What we wanted to do was come up with a way to create a consistent method for achieving quality for all our projects and we latched upon the Project Management Institutes PMI certification for all of our project management leaders. It has proven to be a wonderful way to provide far more consistency and quality and also to truly set customer expectations right out of the gate. The uniqueness continues by having to also manage that infrastructure and application environment after we've completed the project to implement it. Well that's where ITIL comes into play. We combined both PMI and ITIL to create what we call Good Systems Practice. It's just really common sense and adhering to standard practice. This can sometimes be a really difficult thing for IT centric guys and gals to do. I really don't know why but they always have to feel like they are solving the weightiest problem in the world when really someone has probably already solved it and the answer is just sitting out there waiting for them to find it. Cori has discussed GSP in our blog earlier so I won't go into any more detail but that became our uniqueness. Now it's getting the industry to recognize how to innovate by using best practices.
DIA Outsourcing Summit 2007
Recently I was a speaker at the DIA Outsourcing Summit in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. It was a great gathering of people in and around the pharmaceutical industry with multiple tracks to satisfy a fairly broad base of people. I was part of a panel that spoke about changes in the industry and how using GSP would result in higher quality and more predictable outcomes when it came to working with IT vendors and staff. Really it's also the interaction of the quality staff and the IT staff that's just as important in a highly regulated Life Science industry. The DIA conferences are always very well attended and it's a great organization for promoting the best practices to improve service delivery within the drug development community.
In my next entry I talk about another recent panel that I was on for the New Jersey Technology Council. If you are located in New Jersey and you don't know about the NJTC then you probably should.
Thanks,
Keith
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