Interview of TAdviser with the Chief information officer of pharmaceutical company "Chiesi Pharmaceuticals" Pavel Karasyov

Pavel Karasyov: Kyez – the pharmaceutical company founded more than 80 years ago about the headquarters - the apartment in the city of Parma (Italy) and branches in 25 countries of the world which produces original pharmaceutical medicines. The company opened own branch in Russia in November, 2005, till this time its interests in the territory of our country were represented by the partner companies.

The company locates four research centers in Italy, France, the USA and Great Britain, invests more than 13% of the turnover (more than 169 million euros) in research activity. Production is located in Italy, France and Brazil. In 2012 we began cooperation with the leader of the Russian pharmaceutical market – Pharmstandard company. At the beginning of 2013 in the market the first packagings of aerosol inhalers of our company with marking "Appeared it is made in Russia". Thanks to the program of partnership products of the company are provided in 114 countries of the world.

Specialization of the company – development and production of original pulmonary medicines. In this Kyezi area takes the leading positions in Europe, in particular thanks to developed by the company of Modulit technology (Modulite®) and sees the mission in providing patients and medical institutions modern effective, hi-tech medicines at the affordable prices.

Pavel Karasyov: As well as any other pharmaceutical company, "Kyezi" has staff of medical representatives. Earlier each representative of our company had a notebook on which standard Microsoft Office and some more the applications necessary for work of the employee was set. Since February of the current year we transferred all medical representatives to work with tablets. Initially we tried to use a packet of the standard applications which are available in iOS, but there was a number of problems. For example, problems with encodings of the e-mails coming from our corporate accounting systems, placement, unusual for the user, of the attached files in standard e-mail – in the bottom of the letter. Problems arose also with the packet of Microsoft Office placed in AppStore: the files with the Russian names created in the OneDrive application came in unreadable coding. Need of creation of an account to create and edit the document, - one more inconvenience of work with a standard packet of Microsoft Office. And the biggest inconvenience – complexity of remote reconfiguration of the tablet in case of dismissal of the old employee and employment new – to deliver an e-mail client, to register all logins and passwords and so on. On places nobody could cope with this task therefore tablets had to be sent to Moscow, to recustomize, and then to send back. These are big dead times. Our representatives work in 30 Russian cities, and in some cases the employee was without working tool nearly a week.

Pavel Karasyov: In fact there is no similar solution – normal, complex - in the Russian market therefore it is possible to tell that, except given, we especially also did not consider any systems.

Pavel Karasyov: At the beginning of March of this year after tablets were issued to employees and problems with use of standard applications fell down, I began to look for other options and found WorksPad. We accepted functionality, but not quite arranged that the product required installation on the server in corporate network of the company. The matter is that all servers of the company are brought for corporate perimeter, to outsourcing and to buy, and then it would be inconvenient to support special "piece of iron" for the organization of work of mobile representatives of the company and is not optimal. Nevertheless, as the cloud version at that time was absent, we installed the server, started a pilot project, and everything was good. But soon developers reported that the cloud version of a system is ready, and we selected it at once.

Pavel Karasyov: Because branches of the company are united in a single network worldwide, it was necessary to finish settings of the Exchange 2010 mail server a few. The second complexity – the inconvenient procedure of creation of the new user assuming the address to specialists of Oblakoteka. And the third – to final medical representatives was necessary to get used to new design and technology of work with mail, with files of different formats. For example, our employees got used that still email client is not open letters is not present, and right after opening of Outlook'a mail in the automatic mode, is unceasing "poured" in a mailbox. In a new product it is implemented a little differently – started an e-mail client, clicked a button and only after that received letters. One more small difference is that the product WorksPad selects the program for opening of files. In a former working environment to open the file, for example, of the Excel format, it was necessary to start Excel at first.

Pavel Karasyov: Within our corporate system of distance learning, the special video tutorial was made. Besides, the user instruction is written.

Pavel Karasyov: About 80.

Pavel Karasyov: Migration as such was not required – WorksPad works with the same mail base, as Outlook.

Pavel Karasyov: Terms of subscription are transparent, we pay 350 rubles a month for one user. For this amount each user, in addition to access to mail, has an opportunity to place files in a personal directory of 5 GB in size. Besides, users can create folders, the general for a user group, – for example, a directory of staff of department of field forces of the Far East. As a result, at this user group need of transfer of files by mail disappeared, it is possible just to place files for joint work in a shared folder. It appeared very conveniently.

Pavel Karasyov: The excess functionality is available. At least, we do not use it. For example, possibility of demonstration of a desktop of the iPad'a to other owners of the tablets united in one network. All other opportunities – mail, the calendar, the place on network drives, an opportunity to zaparolirovat opening of WorksPad'a – we use.

Pavel Karasyov: The pilot project was started in April of the current year, at the Moscow office, in May St. Petersburg was connected, and at the end of August transition to WorksPad was complete in scales of all Russian branch network.

Pavel Karasyov: Process of creation of files of the Word and Excel format on iPad'e became more convenient. It is clear, that nobody will create on the tablet some large-scale documents, but small files containing 10-15 lines with digits, is what is required in daily work.

Pavel Karasyov: The direct correlation, for example, – with sales growth, upon is absent. In addition to the increased convenience of work with the tablet, it is possible to note decrease in time expenditure on technical support, reconfiguration of iPad.

Pavel Karasyov: We already offered a product to foreign colleagues, but a problem that they for the present did not refuse computers therefore they have no need to receive mail and to work with files by means of iPad. Though, it should be noted that the strategy of IT development assumes replacement of computers and notebooks by tablets as their technical support and use is much simpler. But so far very few people completely implemented transition to tablets. In most iPad foreign subsidiaries are, as a rule, used for demonstration of content, and exchange of mail and preparation of files is still performed on the notebook. Partly it is justified as tablets are not convenient in respect of creation with their help of big pivot tables, preparation of analytical researches. But it is also not a task of medical representatives for whose support we use iPad and WorksPad. In this context it is still important to rebuild mentality of the head that he understood what technical tools they locate.