Bringing Box Deeper into Life Sciences
In the fall of 2014, Box announced Box for Industries, an initiative to accelerate business transformation in targeted industries. Box had already seen strong adoption with organizations in the Healthcare and Life Sciences vertical, and I was impressed with Box’s investment in the space. At the time, I was managing the ISV program at Salesforce for Life Sciences, so I naturally took notice and was impressed with the new focus. After all, Salesforce had done the very same thing with industries and the lesson was clear: industry-specific cloud and platform solutions that integrate disparate business processes and consolidate IT strategy and infrastructure was the future, even for industries like Healthcare and Life Sciences that traditionally lag behind. This opportunity is ultimately what led me to join Box as Managing Director for Life Sciences. My focus, in this new role, is to find ways to leverage the Box platform to deepen our offerings for Pharmaceutical manufacturers, Medical Device and Biotech companies, as well as Contract Research Organizations (CROs) and diagnostic customers.
Box Traction in Life Sciences
In the Life Sciences industry, organizations of all sizes are choosing Box to help transform their businesses. Today we're announcing a growing customer base, including existing customers AstraZeneca, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Boston Scientific, GlaxoSmithKline, as well as new customers Versartis, Illumina, Myokardia, Nuvaisve, DJO, Exact Sciences, and Pearl Therapeutics. These respected brands chose Box to collaborate on content within their organizations as well as with highly regulated external parties. Internally, these firms use Box to coordinate regulated marketing, training and product launch materials that they share with a distributed sales team in real time, on any device. Additionally they use Box to share information with CROs, external vendors and regulatory agencies, as well as more broadly with key opinion leaders (KOL) and healthcare professionals (HCPs).
In the fall of 2015, Box announced Box Platform. This new offering allows customers, partners and ISVs to build and deploy apps on top of the Box Platform without the end user knowing they're operating on Box. Users don't have to log into Box, creating a frictionless experience between the app and the user. This is a big deal for the Life Sciences industry because ISVs, partners as well as our own customers can develop cloud-centric applications to support more efficient business functions such as access of sensitive clinical information for clinical investigators via highly secure portals. Adding this capability to an already rich set of APIs positions Box as a centralized repository for all Life Sciences content.
Why Cloud?
The Life Sciences industry is undergoing massive change right now due to pressures around expiring patents, increased legal and regulatory scrutiny, and increasing R&D costs for new drugs. All of these pressures are driving IT leaders to find new and flexible technologies that improve business processes and lower costs. More and more, Life Sciences leaders are looking outside their organization to help better manage costs in the form of strategic partnerships with biotechnology companies, engaging in cross licensing of patents and portfolio rationalization to create areas of deep focus, and divesting under performing or non-core businesses units. Cost savings are coming from the re-tooling and consolidating of global operations and the rationalization of enterprise applications.
In 2015 Life Sciences organizations spent $2B+ for ECM related software, hardware and services, which is expected to grow at a 6% CAGR (IDC Research, 2015). That spend growth seems unsustainable. Enter Cloud Enterprise Content Management (ECM) in Life Sciences. We believe Cloud ECM is going to be a key driver to enable Life Sciences customers to attain the velocity they need for improved innovation and cost reduction. Many have already been very innovative in leveraging the capabilities of Box across their enterprises, and our continued investment in the space will enable us to identify new opportunities for improved capabilities and savings to our customers.
