Office automation systems are basically information managing and handling software tools that are integrated with the business processes to aid in improving the productivity of the people and the processes set in the organization. The use of office automation systems involves planning and integration of the system with the activities in the business. These tools can also be called organization collaboration software which can benefit the organizations by displacing costs and by providing value addition to the processes and the finished product/ service.
The office collaboration system used in our organization is the eClinical Collaboration Software. The software suite is manufactured and sold by Broadpeak and is a form of a Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS). The features of this software suite include the facilitation of external and internal data integration and collaboration for research and study proposes. It supports all stages of a clinical study and research and even aids in providing reporting formats for the results.
The main advantage of this system is that it tends to accelerate the process of the research and reduces the time taken for hiring investigators, collection of secondary documents, communication and data sharing as well as monitoring the investigative sites. The users of the system can sign in through a designated portal and the reach information is shown in one place making it easier for the researcher to keep track of the progress for the study.
The system has helped in displacing costs for our company by reducing the funds previously spent on support staff. By replacing the support staff with the system we have been able to save up on the funds previously spent on their remuneration, training and development. Instead the use of the system has also resulted in value addition for the company. This is because the use of the eClinical Collaboration suite has resulted in improvements in the productivity of the managerial and the productive staff. The time taken to conduct has dramatically been reduced resulting in faster results without compromises to the study. Similarly the probability for errors in the process and the research is also minimized as the support services are not performed by humans but by the support technology in place.
However in order to be able to use the system, the employees at the company needed to be trained on the software. This increased the training costs for the company. Moreover employee hired since the induction of the eClinical Collaboration suit, required to be given hands on training in the suite.
Business and operation synergy are also important elements of the suit. The software provides integration of multiple tasks on a single platform. Additionally the value provided by teleconferencing online and sharing information through the suite is more enhanced as the company already had a policy of sharing information through online and digital means. The software has also been able to help integrating the social environment in the organization. The diverse nature of the people inducted in the organization makes way for conflicts but the software and the common business platform and terminology offered by the suite minimizes the errors while increasing sharing and trading of information in the company.
Conclusively right now the choice of the organization concerning the collaboration system has been providing productive results however in the future in order to stay competitive the company might be investing in more innovative systems that are able to efficiently deal with operations on a much larger scale.
Bibliography
“Data Labs Expands Into eClinical Collaboration with Latest Acquisition”, Lexdon Business Library, Web.