Gilead gets healthcare innovations to market faster with iManage

Gilead Legal supports the biopharmaceutical giant’s mission of developing innovative new treatments for life-limiting illness. It describes data as the “crown jewels” of the organization and wanted to take greater control of document management to free up the IT team to focus on other activities. After conducting rigorous security checks, Gilead migrated to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud—making data more accessible and accelerating time-to-market.

Founded in 1987, Gilead is an American biopharmaceutical company headquartered in California. Its mission is to create a healthier world by developing life-changing therapeutics and investing in programs to prevent illness and strengthen healthcare infrastructure in vulnerable communities. It employs approximately 14,400 people across the world.

The business challenge

Taking ownership of document management

Gilead Legal is responsible for creating patent applications, managing contracts for clinical trials and maintaining relationships with healthcare providers. As a hub of sensitive company information, document management plays a pivotal role in accelerating Gilead’s mission. Its team of legal experts need to be able to find knowledge quickly and collaborate effectively.

“Our legal team works in the document management system (DMS) from initial draft through to final copy,” said Brien Bergner, Manager, Legal Operations at Gilead. “Document management plays a huge role in the work they do. While we were confident we had the right solution, we needed to transform how it was configured to help support our staff and empower our team to control who has access to sensitive data.”

The team decided to migrate document management to the cloud, also taking the opportunity to simplify its security model. This was to ensure everyone had access to the matters they were working on without needing support from the IT team, which would benefit the wider organization by freeing up the IT department to focus on more valuable activities.

The solution

Managing millions of documents in the cloud

Before migrating to the cloud, Gilead Legal needed to demonstrate to the IT team that data would be secure. Luckily, iManage offers industry-leading security and governance capabilities and has earned the trust of some of the largest and most security-conscious organizations in the world.

“Data is the crown jewels of Gilead’s business. When the IT team asked us to do an extensive security review of iManage, it cleared those hurdles effortlessly,” said Bergner. “We worked closely with iManage to get sign-off to execute the project.”

Gilead rolled out iManage Work 10 in the Cloud during the 2020 pandemic. This timing enabled the company to avert the disruption that so many organizations experienced. Pivoting to work from home went seamlessly, and the team conducted virtual training to get employees up to speed.

With a global user base, the cloud solution also gave Gilead the flexibility to onboard employees anywhere in the world quickly and easily, as well as automating time-consuming processes by easily creating project file folders or automatically saving emails in the correct location.

“iManage is a great legal document management and collaboration platform,” said Bergner. “We handle millions of documents and hundreds of thousands of workspaces with competing demands — and it’s much easier to do that with a reliable, intuitive DMS.”

Business outcomes

Increasing productivity with richer features

By revamping iManage and moving document management to the iManage Cloud, Gilead Legal gained greater control of its data and adopted best practices to make life easier for its team. Lawyers can find relevant documents faster, data is stored securely, and with maintenance outsourced to iManage, the company always has the latest version of the platform, with the benefit of three-monthly releases.

“iManage gives us so much robust functionality. Our patent teams really like how easy it is to compare different versions of files, and our litigation team uses version control to ensure they are always working with the latest version of a document,” said Bergner. “It’s a real benefit being able to focus a particular feature set to help a particular team be more productive.”

Rich features, combined with the intuitive look and feel of the platform, helped to drive user adoption and engagement, and the IT team has far fewer support calls to handle.

“iManage provides world-class data security. We feel comfortable that when we’re collaborating on matters, our documents are secure, and only the right people can access sensitive information,” said Bergner. “Ultimately, it helps us support the wider business and accelerates getting new healthcare innovations to market.”