European life sciences consulting leaders MAIN5 and fme AG offer first end-to-end, vendor-neutral business and tech change management service

The combined proposition will be the first end-to-end, vendor-neutral business and tech change management service for this market. fme Life Sciences Europe specialises in platform implementation, data integration and migration consulting services, while MAIN5 Management Consulting provides advisory services in the life sciences industry around organisational change, business process management (BPM) and project management.

The alliance will address soaring market demand as companies’ aspirations to become more data driven grow, and as merger and acquisition activity peaks in the life sciences industry, triggering ambitious system migrations. Together, MAIN5 and fme will help the pharma industry tackle transformation projects more holistically from both a business and technology standpoint, irrespective of the technology platforms adopted by the client.

The partnership, which was inspired by personal working relationships that go back for many years and is already delivering combined services to a major blue-chip pharma client, has been formed on an equal footing.

Ian Crone, Business Unit Director Life Sciences Europe at fme AG, said: “This move comes very much in response to the evolving needs of the market. We considered hiring our own people to build the same change management/project expertise, but bringing them all on board and up to speed with the particular needs of life sciences clients– for example around regulatory information management and impending IDMP requirements – would have taken too long. MAIN5 already had all of that specialist industry knowledge, expertise and experience, so a strategic partnership made perfect sense.”

Romuald Braun, Managing Partner at MAIN5, added: “Through this partnership, our two companies have broadened the scope of our offerings. MAIN5 provides expertise in the business aspects of change in life sciences, in the form of end-to-end business services/consulting and vendor-neutral systems validation. Meanwhile fme specialises in the technology – the migration and integration of data as part of consolidation or transformation initiatives. Combined, this makes for a very powerful proposition for life sciences, supporting our clients’ projects end to end with a comprehensive business and IT capability.”

One benefit of this is that life sciences companies will be better able to scope their data challenges and establish proofs of concept at an earlier stage in their process transformation initiatives.

fme AG’s Ian Crone noted: “So many companies are at risk if they haven’t assessed the quality and any problems with their data ahead of time. Now, we’ll be involved at a much earlier stage and be able to advise companies on an optimal approach. After all, there’s no value in investing in and going live with a new system if the data being moved across does not meet the quality requirements.”

Data-based transformation projects are reaching an all-time high in life sciences, as new regulatory requirements such as DADI and IDMP loom large. Merger and acquisition activity in the industry has intensified, too.

MAIN5’s Romuald Braun explained: “This triggers all kinds of process and system consolidation activity. Also, as companies look to manage more of their activities in the cloud, where they can take advantage of more agile and up-to-date system functionality, the diversity of technologies and the need to keep everything validated and in sync means there’s a lot to keep on top of.

“Through this partnership with fme, you’ll see us offer continuous validation and compliance in a standardised way, drawing on our business knowledge and fme AG’s technical capabilities – just one of the exciting outcomes of this already proven alliance.”