Medical technology manufacturers are wasting up to half of their information management budgets because they take an inefficient and unstructured approach to the way that they create, manage, use and deliver data, a Mekon expert warns.
Noz Urbina, Senior Consultant at Mekon, says that medical technology firms who fail to implement a strategic approach to content management can be wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds or more every year.
Alongside their core product responsibilities, engineers of various types are expected to provide input into the huge amount of technical knowledge and documentation that accompany every complex medical device, from MRI scanners to pacemakers,” said Urbina. “There are overlapping sets of user and reference information in every organisation. Some is for internal use whilst other information is used externally. Engineers rely on both, and knowledge generated by engineers feeds into both is consumed by both internal and external clients. If they are working for a firm that doesn’t take a strategic approach to content management, these engineers are typically wasting between 30 and 50 per cent of their content-related time on wasteful overheads instead of accessing or creating valuable content. In most organizations, instead of pushing content through such an inefficient workflow, engineering content is lost or left within teams instead of shared across the other teams or customers that need it. With today’s heavy investments in LEAN methodologies and knowledge management, executive teams are more able to understand the impact of content-related inefficiency and staff performance than ever before,” said Urbina.
To help complex device manufacturers out of this situation Mekon provides the Mekon Content Strategy Audit™, which looks at how organisations create, manage, review, reuse and deliver their content and data. Mekon recently completed a Content Strategy Audit for a client which identified minimum annual cost savings of £500,000, with savings potential of well over £1 million. For some firms in the medical technology sector – who may employ hundreds or thousands of engineers – the cost and efficiency savings can run into multiple millions of pounds.
Mekon works closely with an organisation’s staff to provide a cross-departmental understanding of how information management strategy can be improved and to identify potential cost savings,” said Urbina. “We conduct a day of on-site staff interviews to gather priorities, goals and a picture of the business from a process and priorities point of view. We then analyse the information gathered and deliver a management-oriented presentation and follow-up with a report documenting it. This report raises staff awareness of content issues and options, as well as enabling decision makers to see how, why and where existing content creation, management and delivery strategies can be improved.”
Find out how a Mekon Content Strategy Audit could deliver your business savings
