Planning to Implement a New Promotional Review System? 4 Steps You Can Take Now to Prepare for a Smooth Transition

Once you’ve decided to upgrade your promotional review process and purchase a system, such as Pepper Flow, your organization will have taken a giant step toward process improvement. During implementation, your vendor can provide guidance on how to best configure the system to meet your business needs. However, there are some internal considerations you’ll need to evaluate first to ensure your organization is set up for success.

Below are four topics you should begin contemplating now so that you can hit the ground running when your implementation project kicks off.

1. Determine the scope of your new promotional review system.

Begin by itemizing the standard procedures from your review process that you want to move to the new system. Will the system only be used for promotional review or would other areas of the organization benefit from utilizing the same tool? For example, customers may want to route medical affairs materials, training content, and/or technical documentation through the system in addition to promotional materials. Many systems, including Pepper Flow, allow access to content to be controlled by user permissions.

Once you’ve identified the processes that will utilize the new system, define the anticipated user base, including the departments and total number of people in each group. We recommend delegating responsibility for user counts to the department heads as they likely have the best understanding of how many people should represent their functional area.

2. Identify your project team for implementation.

Another critical question to answer before you begin is who do you want to weigh in on key decisions during the implementation project? Also, who will ultimately be the process owner and the system owner? For some organizations, system ownership might be a new concept, so it is critical to begin an internal dialogue about how the system will be managed over time. The main roles you need to identify include:

• Project sponsor: accountable for the success of the project within the organization.
• Project lead: serves as the main point of contact with the software team and is responsible for day-to-day project decisions and deliverable approvals. This person is usually the system owner.
• Project team: additional members who contribute to the project and represent end users (e.g., project manager, MLR reviewers, IT, software quality). For global organizations, this should include regional/area process stakeholders.

Helpful questions you can ask to identify the project team include:

• Who currently owns responsibility for the promotional review process, and will that same person own the system going forward?
• How do you plan to utilize each of the project team members? You may consider creating a RACI Matrix upfront to clarify responsibilities and accountability.
• Have you chosen team members with decision-making authority to ensure a speedier path to resolution? With this in mind, we recommend a project team of no more than 5 individuals where possible to promote efficient consensus building.

3. Determine time allocation needs for the project and for long-term support.

Implementing a new promotional review system requires ongoing care and feeding, so planning for the time requirements now can help ensure you have the right team and supports in place for the long run. Key questions to consider include:

• Have team members set aside enough time to adequately contribute to the implementation project? Ensure that you’re calibrating resource needs and time allocation based on your anticipated project scope (as determined in #1).
• Who will be responsible for change management within the organization and how much time should you allocate for their efforts in the initial implementation and ongoing support?
• Similarly, how much time will your system users need to fully transition, get trained, and adapt the new review system? What ongoing support will your teams need and what is the associated time investment?

4. Identify the rollout dependencies that will impact your project timeline.

The promotional system implementation could be impacted by other systems and internal processes. By preparing for those dependencies now, you can plan for, and in some cases prevent, slowdowns during the project. Questions to consider include:

• What standard operating procedures (SOPs) need to be updated to support the system change?
• What IT requirements should you plan for? If you are purchasing validated software, does your organization require their own software validation in addition to the vendor’s validation? Does your organization require an enterprise single sign-on (SSO)? Are any other system integrations in scope?
• Does your organization have specific training requirements? Do you need to manage all training through your learning management system (LMS)? Is documentation of training attendance required?
• How do you want to handle your legacy content? Will you migrate it into your new system or leave as is? If you have an existing system, when do you plan to cut off access?

By considering all of these topics, you’ll be well on your way to gaining the clarity and internal organization you’ll need for a smooth transition. At Vodori, we know that implementing a new promotional review system can be an exciting and sometimes overwhelming time. That’s why our Customer Success Managers help our clients every step of the way. We’re here to support you, provide recommendations and best practices, and assist in minimizing the impacts of change management so that you can spend less time managing the process and more time creating great content.