{"id":2340,"date":"2023-02-08T20:36:18","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T20:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readcube.wpenginepowered.com\/?post_type=case-studies&p=2340"},"modified":"2026-02-24T17:39:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:39:35","slug":"boehringer-ingelheim","status":"publish","type":"case-studies","link":"https:\/\/readcubestg.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/case-studies\/boehringer-ingelheim\/","title":{"rendered":"Boehringer Ingelheim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t

Modern businesses grow and succeed in today’s corporate climate for myriad different reasons. Some are known for their products, others for their services, and still others for strong brand loyalty. However, those organizations that
\ntruly stand out from the pack as industry leaders all share one common factor: They embrace innovation.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\t

\"\"Innovation is not limited to the development or change of particular product offerings or services but also can take the form of evolving internal processes\u00a0within a company’s daily operations. Outdated internal tools, technologies, and workflows can hinder an\u00a0organization’s productivity\u00a0at the most basic level – fueling staff frustration, extending project timelines and leading to additional operational costs overall.<\/p>\n

As a leading global pharmaceutical company, innovation is second nature to Boehringer Ingelheim (BI). Innovation isn’t just about drug design but is in everything BI does, from process optimization to improving the tools used every day.<\/p>\n

This culture is reflected in all of its teams, including the Scientific Information Center (SIC). The core task of the SIC is to provide global access to external information and knowledge from thousands of renowned journals and publishers via enterprise subscriptions and document delivery services. In this case study, Dr. Karlheinz Spenny and his team at the SIC share in their own\u00a0words what triggered their internal innovation campaign moving from their legacy literature management solution to ReadCube and their experiences along the way.<\/p>\n\tRe-evaluating the Status Quo<\/strong>\nAcross Boehringer Ingelheim, we had a variety of different software products and solutions in place. Some sites within the company even built their own custom solutions based on open-source software. We had always wanted to harmonize our internal product landscape, but none of the solutions we were using fulfilled all the requirements of our users.\nMost of our well-established products had been used for more than 10 years by different groups. They were installed on desktops and across R&D sites with no real connectivity across the community of users. They also needed to be maintained and adapted by our IT department, requiring significant resources to stay embedded in our ever-changing IT environment and systems landscape. This added complexity and invisible costs to maintain the status quo. It also was apparent that we were outgrowing the functionality that those systems offered.\nThe SIC is always looking to innovate in the ways that it fulfils its mission and that means ensuring that we have the most innovative tools for the BI team. One of the key responsibilities central to our function as BI\u00b4s “Corporate Library” is our strong focus on providing scientific information to BI’s Discovery Research Organization. Therefore, we are continuously scouting for innovative solutions and new products. We wanted a state-of-the-art solution that would minimize the need for internal IT support and maintenance efforts and we wanted a solution to be fit-for-the-future.\nCloud-based systems seemed to provide promising features such as central, secure, and integrated storage, seamless and easy access across our global organization, and most importantly, would allow colleagues to collaborate and share documents in various user-controlled libraries. We also needed a solution flexible enough to accommodate our future growth and evolving user needs.\n\t

Our users had high expectations for this new platform – seeking something new and exciting. There was much on the line for the SIC team, but we had complete confidence that ReadCube would deliver.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\t

Managing Change Through the Transition to ReadCube<\/h3>\n

While change is both inevitable and necessary for businesses to adapt and thrive, it can lead to anxiety and productivity disruptions if not appropriately managed. We thought carefully about how best to tackle this challenge, starting from how we included the community in reaching the decision. As BI is firmly enmeshed in a culture of innovation, our approach was based on that ideology. In 2018, we launched an “innovation project” within R&D to update how BI scientists manage their personal scientific literature collections and storage systems. We compiled a comprehensive survey and held multiple interview sessions to collect user requirements. This exercise led us to a long list of ~50 different requirements (“should or must have”) – and a long wish list from our scientists for our future literature management solution. These ranged from more extensive collaboration features and cross-platform support to advanced search capabilities and support for various data types.<\/p>\nOur users had high expectations for this new platform – seeking something new and exciting. There was much on the line for the SIC team, but we had complete confidence that ReadCube would deliver. In addition to ReadCube checking off the lengthy wish list (plus a variety of other features and functions they had not even thought of), we knew our users would enjoy a seamless migration of their legacy collections of articles from existing systems and personal computers to the new platform. And because we had deliberately sought their input throughout the process, we were able to mitigate much of the anxiety normally associated with process change.\n\t

The Rollout & Reactions<\/strong><\/p>\nAs we wanted to provide our users with the best harmonized experience, we chose to complete our transition to MS Office
\n365 ahead of the ReadCube roll-out. This choice gave several advantages: everyone would be on the same platform, decreasing support challenges; everyone would have access to ReadCube’ newest features, and incompatibilities with legacy versions of Word would be minimised. With that in place, the ReadCube Implementation team led the way with an uncomplicated set-up process that took days, not weeks, to configure.\n\t

The adoption of ReadCube was remarkable…Even “conservative users”, who typically show more resistance to change than our younger “digital natives”, were converts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\"boehringer-1\"\n\t<\/figure>\n\t

Customizable library layout with private and shared collections<\/em><\/p>\n\t

Our whole onboarding process took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it could have been perceived as a less than ideal time to make a big change within the organization, for us, it all but drove us to accelerate roll-out plans. With over 40,000 BI employees transitioning to remote working, the need was never greater to have a flexible tool in place to enable convenient access to literature no matter where our team was working.<\/p>\nThe adoption of ReadCube was remarkable. We began with an awareness campaign led by our SIC team, and leveraged the
\nintuitiveness of the platform, expert-led training sessions, and a wealth of video & support materials provided by the
\nReadCube team to guide our users through this trans-formation process. Even “conservative users”, who typically show more resistance to change than our younger “digital natives”, were converts.\n\t

As we expected, the reaction to ReadCube has been overwhelmingly positive. Some of the features that really stood out to our users include:<\/p>\n\t