Biogen Idec, Inc.                                         View as PDF

Improving Communications and Cutting Costs with
a Complete Solution

The Company
Improving Communications and Cutting Costs with a Complete Solution the company Biogen is a global biotechnology company specializing in discovering and developing drugs for human health care through genetic engineering. Established in 1978, the company operates independently and strategically researches, develops, manufactures, and markets its own products. Biogen’s research and development activities are focused on novel products to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases, cancer, fibrosis and congestive heart failure. The company also licenses drugs it has developed to other top pharmaceutical companies such as Schering-Plough, Merck and Abbott Laboratories.

The company has its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has additional offices in Canada, Australia, Japan and throughout Europe. The company currently employs over 4,000 employees worldwide.

The Challenge
The worldwide pharmaceutical market is highly competitive. Rising drug development and operating costs as well as fierce competition among rival companies has accelerated the need to curb operating expenses, including communications costs. In this environment, Biogen challenge is to remain at the forefront of technology while putting in place an infrastructure that allows for efficient use of administrative resources.

For Biogen, document distribution and delivery is mission-critical for its R&D. Many of the company’s research centers are off-site and rely on fax communication rather than email to maintain the integrity of confidential material and research data. It’s essential that the volume of documents that the company generates — study protocols, research coordination, reporting and updates, and general corporate communications — are delivered unaltered and with confirmation of receipt.

A solution was needed to enhance the company’s competitive edge and reduce administrative costs at the same time. Furthermore, their previous document delivery infrastructure didn’t meet advanced demands for efficiency and flexibility.

Biogen also wanted to improve the process of prescription requests and information submittals from doctors. The previous solution, whereby customers faxed requests that were manually entered into a database, was cumbersome to internal departments. A fax to email solution was needed to integrate these databases into the company’s corporate CRM application, enabling the company to provide better customer service for increased long-term sales.

The Venali Solution
Internet Fax messaging is a cost-efficient, secure and reliable method for corporate communications. Biogen chose Internet Fax because it offers superior benefits over a conventional fax server solution without the need for new capital investment and associated maintenance costs. The company looked at several competitors offering an Internet Fax solution, but Venali was able to accommodate Biogen’s needs by providing a smooth, seamless integration into their Lotus Notes system, and by offering feature-rich fax functions that are secure and reliable. Venali offered a cost-effective, easy to implement, and scalable solution for a growing user base.

Venali helped Biogen create a customized user interface in Lotus Notes by adding a fax option for sending documents quickly and easily – the user just clicks the “fax” button from the application. This solution enables the company’s personnel to conveniently deliver their corporate communications to multiple sites simultaneously and to track delivery of these documents through the Venali Account Management Center.
Venali was also able to incorporate the company’s vast quantity of existing toll-free company numbers, and provide additional fax numbers in their local area code, as well as many U.S. cities, France
and Germany.

Profile
Industry: Biotechnology
Needs: Internet Fax Desktop Solutions