Collaborating across the extended pharmaceutical enterprise: How sharing information leads to process enablement

To address the competitive pressures faced by companies developing pharmaceuticals, there is a new imperative across the industry to significantly increase internal and external collaboration capabilities. Aventis, for instance, has more than 200 differences alliances worldwide. As the pace of globalization accelerates, pharmaceutical companies must grapple with the challenges that accompany doing business in countries around the world: Infrastructures are stretched beyond their limits, inefficiencies are amplified in systems and processes, and the simplest tasks like accessing data become cumbersome.

This is further complicated by an increasing reliance on external partners in …