Drugs from Almirall help millions overcome medical problems from allergies to migraines. The company was facing a headache of its own, however, with different comms systems across its worldwide subsidiaries. These disparate technologies made communication hard and slowed decision-making. That hampered the firm’s ability to enter new territories and bring novel products to market.

With a fully-managed Cisco collaboration suite hosted by BT, Almirall anticipates improvements in productivity and staff satisfaction. And, with worldwide research and development teams working together more effectively, the Almirall pipeline of new patents will grow faster.

Global collaboration helps pharma firm get new medicines to market.

Case study - Almirall.

Video follows me everywhere I go. With my iPad, with my iPhone, I can connect wherever I am. It’s immediate, just a snap of your fingers.

Nuria Sane, Aqua Integration Project Manager, Almirall

Almirall teams work together worldwide with BT-hosted Cisco collaboration suite.

Case Study - Almirall.

Diverse communication systems held back company growth.Based in Barcelona, Spain, Almirall provides medicines and medical devices through its own patents plus agreements and alliances. It’s the leading Spanish pharma company in terms of research and development (R&D) spend.

Having grown rapidly organically and through acquisition, each addition brought with it a new communications infrastructure. This made it difficult to support cross-border team working. The company’s telephone systems were separate from other comms channels and there was no global conferencing service either.

So Almirall continued to rely on face-to-face meetings for decision-making. With a rapidly expanding global footprint, this led to significant costs and delays. Jordi Macià, enterprise collaboration manager, says: “We were starting to work in new markets, acquiring new companies, and we didn’t have a global solution.”

Full Cisco collaboration suite on a pay-as-you-go basis.BT proposed a unified collaboration platform for the whole company based on Cisco technology hosted in a BT data centre in Spain.

This BT One Enterprise Cisco platform doesn’t just provide low-cost IP telephony integrated into a company-wide phone and email directory. It also offers a range of state-of-the-art video technologies to reduce the need for business travel.

Video endpoints installed at Almirall include twenty Cisco TelePresence suites, more than 180 video phones, and Cisco WebEx and Jabber for video-enabled meetings via desktops, laptops and mobile devices. Best of all, the entire infrastructure is delivered as a managed service, which meant the pharma company didn’t have to invest capital in an infrastructure of its own. It only pays for the collaboration services it actually uses.

Mathias Moritz, chief information officer, says: “We implemented unified communications all over the place to make our people connected anywhere at any time.”

Virtual video meetings are making mergers more efficient.Collaboration at Almirall has gone from challenging to simple. Mariam Gonzalez, corporate change manager, confirms: “The BT-hosted collaboration technology allows us to schedule meetings easier, because we all have calendars integrated with WebEx. Jabber makes it easier to communicate with our colleagues from other affiliates or centres. You can use your mobile phones, your desktop or videoconferencing rooms.”

The use of collaboration technology is expected to cut travel costs and speed up decision-making. Critically, for a company so dependent on M&A for expansion, the time taken to complete mergers and get new sites on board has been significantly reduced.

“Our M&A teams are able to work better with partners,” says Jordi. “Our sales teams are trained more often and more easily using WebEx.”

Collaboration allows us to schedule meetings easier, because we all have calendars integrated with WebEx. Jabber makes it easier to communicate with our colleagues from affiliates or other centres.

Mariam GonzalezCorporate Change ManagerAlmirall

Our M&A teams are able to work better with partners. Our sales teams are trained more often and more easily using WebEx.

Jordi MaciàEnterprise Collaboration ManagerAlmirall

Case Study - Almirall.

BT has a global footprint, which means collaborative technologies can be deployed and maintained wherever in the world Almirall needs to work. “Now we can provide chat services or instant messaging to everyone in the company,” says Jordi. “They can meet online with whoever they want, inside or outside the company. We can have video from anywhere, any device. This is a reality now.”

Video is supporting even more innovation in Almirall as distributed R&D teams in Spain and Germany and other locations work closer together with TelePresence. Mariam concludes: “Video makes a difference. It makes us closer and more human.”

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May 2016

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Core services.• BT One Enterprise Cisco, hosted in a BT data centre