Convatec improves global content review by switching from QMS to Pepper Flow

Customer challenge

Video transcript

About Convatec

Anne Swearingen, Head of Medical Operations & Effectiveness

“Convatec is a global medical device company, they’re based out of the UK. They sell primarily advanced wound care products as well as ostomy, continence care, and have an infusion business.

I’m Anne Swearingen, I've been at Convatec for just over a year. I'm the head of Medical Operations and Effectiveness. My responsibilities include clinical research and publications and multiple things and I’m also the process owner for our content review process.

When we think about content review and we just think about medical device businesses, if you’ve been in the industry long enough, we tend to be very centralized or decentralized. So my role was really to find a solution that would be harmonized and centralized and be used globally.”

Why is content review and approval important?

“You’re always trying to one-up your competitor. And so if they come out with something you really want to have a response fairly quickly because you don’t want to react to a social media post seven days later. You need minutes to be able to react to that. And I think that’s where the digital aspect has really pushed that time sensitive nature–whether it’s LinkedIn or Facebook or a Twitter post–that you need to respond to very quickly. We’ve realized that with social media for sure.

Because of all of the steps that were in our previous system it was 15 to 20 minutes to upload a piece of content. And it wasn’t necessarily fit for purpose for the digital transformation that happened because of COVID. And so there were offline reviews and we just struggled to maintain compliance.”

What was most important in finding a new system?

“I’d probably say three things: ease of use, visibility and transparency, and our ability to not duplicate our references. By having a very easy to use, fit for purpose system that documents all of those approvals, it helps the local teams be able to stay within their regulations.”

Why did you select Pepper Flow?

“User interface was huge. It was really like four clicks. And it was so easy to see. So for those of us who have been in industry for a long time, we all know that when it’s easy to use, it kind of makes it fun.

When you look at users of content review, your submitter group is the largest group because you’ve got people in all different parts of the world and it has to be easy to use and easy enough for folks that don’t have English as their main language.

It is not difficult for a user, whether they’re a submitter or a reviewer, to see where my piece of work is and what do I have to do on it. And the easy control you have over your notifications. You have that help center and that helps us say ‘ok, I don’t have to be or my team doesn’t have to be on call 24/7 because they can actually go directly to that’ and the fact that Vodori had that built in was huge.”

What was your experience working with Vodori?

“Working with the Vodori team–they get it. They understand that yes, we’re trying to launch a system and they made the decisions very easy, very clear. In partnership with them we were able to establish timelines and deliverables, of which we met. They helped us understand questions as things would come up and that helped guide us in our decisions for our configuration.

Vodori understood where we were in our journey and I think that collaboration made this even more successful. So, the people that you have at Vodori are just phenomenal.”