Acrobat for Life Sciences is a resource that covers the use of Acrobat for those involved in the pharmaceutical, bio-pharma, and medical device markets.
Life Sciences firms often have burdensome requirments for the approval of even the simplest of marketing materials due to the highly regulated nature of the bio-pharma industry.
It is not uncommon for each new marketing asset to require an extensive review from representatives from the line of business, technical experts, legal, marketing and other stakeholders.
A server solution is most effective when there are a large number of users who need to be part of the approval process. Of course, to deliver this kind of solution, you need budget and the full support of IT, as well as the time and resources to implement it.
If you are limited in funds and need a solution right away, using a desktop tool like Acrobat can be a great alternative for document review which let’s you get up and running fast with virtually no IT involvement.
Acrobat Shared Review
Acrobat’s Shared Review feature allows multiple people, in real time, to add notes and mark-ups to documents, and to approve or reject suggested changes.
In order for multiple users to interact, a server is needed to act as repository for the comments. Acrobat synchronizes comments between all the users in the review. You can use any network folder that the reviewers can read and write to, or a SharePoint workspace which provides reviewers access.
To extend review to users outside the firewall, your IT organization could set up SharePoint as an extranet providing log-ins for partners.
Each user can choose when they want to publish and receive comments. In this simplified animation below, an Acrobat Pro user is publishing a comment and several Adobe Reader users are receiving the comments.
Note: I only show the syncing as one-way in the animation, but in fact all users can sync their comments with others on the team.
Acrobat has long had review tools and many life science companies use them.
However, when I talk to most firms in bio-pharma, I find that they are not always using the tools to best advantage. And, of course, I still see lots of paper-based review workflows.
Acrobat’s Shared Review capability allows multiple people, in real time, to review a document corroboratively. That can help accelerate review and help you meet deadlines.
Below is a screen shot of a product label that is part of a Shared Review.
How does Shared Review Work?
So, you may be wondering . . . how does it work and what benefits does it offer me?
I’ve put together an 11-minute, narrated slide deck to help explain how it works.
I’ve titled it "Enterprise Collaboration with Adobe Acrobat 9". In the presentation, I cover the findings from a recent Forrester Consulting study on collaboration, and then show you how to collaborate better using Acrobat.
