We were extremely pleased when AMAG Pharmaceuticals, a $400m biopharma leader, reached out to us recently to tell us about their success with EchoSign and electronic signatures.
Two insights in particular. First, e-signatures aren't just about improving business processes -- they are, as Nathan McBride from AMAG notes, about improving fundamentally flawed signing processes. In 2011, all business processes should work on the web, period. Paper is a problem.
Second, their SaaS applications including EchoSign allowed them to reduce their IT budget by an outstanding 50% without any reduction in headcount. That's just terrific.
More below.
Case Study: AMAG Pharmaceuticals
EchoSign Corrects an Inefficient and Flawed Signing Process
Company Overview
Located in Lexington, Massachusetts, AMAG Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of a therapeutic iron compound to treat iron deficiency anemia. AMAG Pharmaceuticals markets and sells Feraheme in the United States through its own commercial organization. Feraheme is approved for use in the treatment of both dialysis and non-dialysis dependent chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients.
Workflow Challenge
“Too many paper documents were crossing my desk,” say Nathan McBride, Executive Director, IT, AMAG Pharmaceuticals. “I was signing contracts, vendor agreements, and purchase orders on a daily basis. I hated the process of printing out the document, signing it, scanning it as a PDF file and then emailing it back to the sender. It was too much. It was inefficient. It was flawed.” So Nathan decided to look for an electronic signature application to solve his paper problem.
EchoSign Solution
Nathan researched esignature solutions online and chose EchoSign in October 2010. “My objective with EchoSign was two-fold: I wanted to enforce it as the standard in my department and also push adoption to other areas of the company such as legal and finance (essentially the departments that generated many of the documents that my team had to sign).” AMAG is a strong proponent of SAAS applications and EchoSign easily fit into the AMAG IT infrastructure. “I believe the concept of the data center is archaic in today’s companies. SAAS applications can ‘consumerize’ software and that benefits everyone in the organization”, remarks Nathan. AMAG Pharmaceuticals started with ten EchoSign licensed users and trained the initial users in a single face to face session.
Results
“EchoSign solves a lot of problems for us and we now encourage our vendors to use EchoSign.” As a SAAS application, EchoSign has contributed to helping reduce the AMAG IT budget by 50% without having to incur layoffs in IT. “We’ve been using EchoSign for about a year and the results are great!”
EchoSign solves a lot of problems for us.”
-- Nathan McBride, Executive Director, IT, AMAG Pharmaceuticals
