Life sciences companies have historically lagged in their cloud and emerging technology adoption due to burdensome regulatory requirements and risk-averse cultural beliefs.
However, the global pandemic has forced regulated companies to adopt new operating models to maintain business continuity and enhance their workforce experience to accommodate remote employees globally. Much of this shift to the cloud is in the form of business applications that enable secure workflows, electronic signatures, audit trails, and access to digital content management, but the real business value comes in linking, sharing, and analyzing data in new ways, both within the organization and with outside partners, customers, and suppliers.
What you will learn
- What cloud-first really means: it is an organization-wide commitment, not a single technology migration.
- Why change management comes first: adoption moves only as fast as your slowest stakeholders.
- How to keep quality and compliance intact: secure workflows, electronic signatures, and audit trails must remain defensible as systems move to shared platforms.
- How to sequence the journey: use a strategic roadmap and increasingly complex projects to build internal capability.
- Where to start: ground your strategy in proven cloud adoption resources and best practices.
For those of you who have taken these first few steps, congratulations on your progress toward digital transformation. Cloud platforms are instrumental in using your technology stack to integrate workflows, access data, and ensure security and compliance across the enterprise. To truly be a cloud-first company, your entire organization needs to understand the value that cloud brings.
Cloud-first strategies are the foundation for staying relevant. As you evaluate your strategy for continuous quality and compliance, you must ask whether the technologies you employ are designed and built for the cloud with scalability, security, and privacy so that they deliver high-impact business outcomes you desire.
To truly be a cloud-first company, your entire organization needs to understand the value that cloud brings.
Adoption Moves Only as Fast as Your Slowest Stakeholders
As you continue on your journey to becoming a cloud-first company, you will quickly see that adoption will move only as fast as your slowest stakeholders. Organizational change management will be an important first step in this process. Even if your organization commits to an all-in cloud-first strategy, not everything can happen at once. You must have a well-defined strategic roadmap to guide your journey and align your organization. Also, have a plan to build your compliance teams' experience through increasingly complex projects. By working with USDM on more complex projects, you can grow your internal team's capabilities through a sure, methodical approach.
Keeping Quality and Compliance Defensible in the Cloud
The real value of cloud comes from linking, sharing, and analyzing data with partners, customers, and suppliers, which means your controls have to travel with that data. As more of your stack moves to shared platforms, disciplined third-party risk management and life sciences cybersecurity become central to a defensible cloud posture. Sustaining trustworthy records across systems also depends on strong data integrity practices so that what you migrate, integrate, and report stays accurate and complete.
A cloud-first journey by maturity
- Align the organization: lead with organizational change management so stakeholders understand the value of cloud before systems start moving.
- Define the roadmap: build a well-defined strategic roadmap that sequences workloads and avoids trying to do everything at once.
- Build team capability: grow your compliance team's experience through increasingly complex projects rather than a single big-bang migration.
- Validate what matters: apply a risk-based Computer Software Assurance (CSA) mindset to focus effort on what affects patient safety, product quality, and data integrity.
- Sustain continuous compliance: keep validated systems compliant as platforms evolve so cloud-first becomes an operating discipline, not a one-time event.
USDM can help your life sciences company create a strategy that will ensure quality and compliance throughout your digital transformation and sustain you as a cloud-first company. USDM has helped hundreds of life sciences customers embrace the value-generating benefits of cloud-based quality and compliance systems and achieve superior implementations based on industry best practices. Contact us today to begin discussing solutions for rapid cloud adoption.
Additional Cloud Adoption Resources
Cloud 101 blog series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
White Paper: Regulated GxP Workloads in the Public Cloud
FAQ: Becoming a Cloud-First Company
What does it mean to be a cloud-first company?
Being cloud-first goes beyond moving a few applications. It means your entire organization understands the value that cloud brings and that your technologies are designed and built for the cloud with scalability, security, and privacy so they deliver the high-impact business outcomes you want.
What is the first step in a cloud-first strategy?
Organizational change management is an important first step, because adoption moves only as fast as your slowest stakeholders. Even an all-in cloud-first strategy cannot happen all at once, so aligning people and expectations comes before large-scale system moves.
How do we keep quality and compliance intact as we move to the cloud?
Much of the early shift to cloud involves secure workflows, electronic signatures, audit trails, and digital content management, all of which carry compliance obligations. A risk-based validation approach, strong third-party risk management, cybersecurity, and data integrity practices help keep those controls defensible as systems move to shared platforms.
How fast should we move to the cloud?
Not everything can happen at once. A well-defined strategic roadmap sequences your journey, aligns the organization, and builds your compliance team's experience through increasingly complex projects so you progress methodically rather than all at once.
How can USDM help us become cloud-first?
USDM helps life sciences companies create a strategy that ensures quality and compliance throughout digital transformation. USDM has helped hundreds of life sciences customers embrace cloud-based quality and compliance systems and achieve superior implementations based on industry best practices.