IBM and Siebel Systems Expand Alliance to Broaden Life Sciences Initiatives
IBM and Siebel Systems, Inc. announced the expansion of their alliance to provide comprehensive business solutions that meet the needs of pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical products organizations of all sizes.
Through the expanded alliance, IBM and Siebel Systems will provide additional deployment options for life sciences solutions, thereby delivering the flexibility and scalability life sciences organizations need to respond quickly to variable market conditions.
“IBM’s longstanding relationship with Siebel Systems highlights the synergy between our technologies and services,” said Carol Kovac, Ph.D., General Manager, IBM Life Sciences. “By broadening our life sciences initiatives, we can offer a more complete range of life sciences solutions that help customers leverage information more effectively and create more collaborative research environments.”
Under the agreement, IBM will host and manage Siebel Pharma, Siebel Medical, and Siebel Clinical, extending its current complement of services that provide strategy, implementation, and delivery support. Using IBM’s hosting and management services, companies can deploy Siebel Life Sciences solutions with reduced hardware, integration, and IT operations support costs and adapt IT capacity on demand when market conditions change. Also, because there is no need for infrastructure installation and a limited need for configuration, speed of deployment is greatly increased.
IBM and Siebel Systems are also combining efforts to provide valuable business intelligence to medical products organizations. Using Siebel Analytics, everyone in an organization-from the CEO to the sales representative to the field engineer-can access real-time, personalized, and actionable performance information in areas such as product sales, service costs, and customer profitability. By organizing, aggregating, and summarizing this critical information, Siebel Analytics helps medical products organizations quickly identify issues affecting organizational performance and take action to address them. IBM is providing the implementation planning, services, and support with which medical products companies are effectively deploying this solution.
When conducting clinical trials, today’s pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical products organizations operate in a fragmented environment that includes multiple points of contact among a wide array of life sciences companies, clinical trial investigators, and patients-with no single, clear view into a particular investigator site or the trial as a whole. With this expanded alliance, IBM and Siebel Systems are helping organizations better manage their clinical trials by integrating Siebel Clinical into IBM’s Investigator Relationship & Trial Management (IRTM) solution for the life sciences industry. Using the joint IRTM solution, pharmaceutical companies will be better able to manage relationships with physicians who conduct clinical trials-frequently referred to as investigators-and monitor trial activities, reducing the complexity and cost of conducting clinical trials as well as improving the quality of information available to all parties involved.
The IRTM solution, now available, integrates the IBM Clinical Development Workbench portal technology, Lotus collaboration tools and distance learning capabilities, and clinical trial management system (CTMS) software applications from Siebel Systems.
“The IBM IRTM solution capitalizes on Siebel Systems’ and IBM’s years of experience in helping life sciences organizations improve customer and partner interactions while reducing costs across the entire healthcare delivery system,” said Stephen Andrade, Vice President and General Manger, Siebel Life Sciences. “Siebel Clinical speeds time to market by improving planning and execution of clinical trials, enhancing investigator relationships, and promoting the sharing of real-time clinical trial status information.”
Comprising the Siebel Life Sciences suite of solutions, Siebel Pharma, Siebel Clinical, and Siebel Medical help pharmaceutical, biotechnology, drug development, and medical products organizations effectively manage customer and partner interactions while providing an information and business intelligence platform that enhances customer satisfaction and maximizes company profitability. For more information about Siebel Life Sciences solutions, please visit www.siebel.com/lifesciences.
IBM and Siebel Systems have a history of working together in the life sciences market with a range of joint customers, including Aventis; Berlex; Chiron Vaccines Germany; Sandoz, a subsidiary of Novartis; and Schering Deutschland.
About Siebel Systems
Siebel Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of business applications software, enabling corporations to sell to, market to, and serve customers across multiple channels and lines of business. With more than 4,000 customer deployments worldwide, Siebel Systems provides organizations with a proven set of industry-specific best practices, CRM applications, market-leading analytics products, and business processes, empowering them to consistently deliver superior customer experiences and establish more profitable customer relationships. Siebel Systems’ sales and service facilities are located in more than 30 countries.
About IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences
IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences brings together IBM resources, including information technology, deep industry insights, and research expertise, to help clients develop and deliver safer, more affordable and more effective diagnostics, drugs and medical care. For more information about IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences, please visit www.ibm.com/industries/healthcare or www.ibm.com/lifesciences.
