First Consulting Group announces expansion of relationship with AstraZeneca

First Consulting Group, Inc. has announced that it has expanded its long-standing relationship with AstraZeneca. FCG will help AstraZeneca deliver a new off-the-shelf document management solution and upgrade its manufacturing site document management system to FirstDoc™.  FCG will also provide AstraZeneca with consulting, technology, integration, application, and outsourcing services to help the company manage data, documents and images that flow across the enterprise.

For the last several years, AstraZeneca has used FCG’s predecessor product to manage documents within a GMP-compliant environment. With a strategic imperative to renew technologies, lower costs, manage a greater number of documents and improve system performance and functionality, AstraZeneca selected FirstDoc to support its manufacturing operations. Initially, FirstDoc is expected to support thousands of users in the UK, Sweden, France, Italyand Germany. The first application based on FirstDoc went live in May 2004. 

“We evaluated the major providers of document management solutions and selected FCG because the company offers a total packaged solution that includes a best-of-breed product in FirstDoc and powerful related services that will help AstraZeneca deliver a large change program,” said Ian A. Cooper, IS Demand Manager, Operations, AstraZeneca.  We were impressed with FCG’s expertise in document management, its approach to testing and validation, its proven track record implementing the solution across international markets and various user communities, and its 21 CFR Part 11 knowledge.”

“AstraZeneca wanted a cost-effective solution that would benefit several user communities within the enterprise.  On their own, these communities may not have been able to justify the full cost of a document management system,” said Bill Van Nostrand, Senior Vice President and General Manager for FCG’s life sciences practice.  “Also recognizing that some of its document management applications in manufacturing were becoming more costly to maintain and were fast becoming outdated, AstraZeneca made the strategic decision to invest in a solution that would provide a common infrastructure and application components for these activities.”

Since FirstDoc is built on Documentum, which is a strategic component of the AstraZeneca architecture, it allows the company to leverage its investment across the enterprise, thereby reducing overall costs in implementation, system management and ongoing support.

“The system also allows AstraZeneca to break down information silos, build a more integrated approach, streamline system processes and enable cross-functional information sharing of document management best practices,” added Van Nostrand.

www.fcg.com.