From 6,500 Folders to a Findable Future: Selecting an Enterprise Content Management Platform for Company U’s Medical Affairs Team.

About the Client

Company U is a rapidly growing biopharmaceutical company.

Industry Context

The enterprise content management category Iknow evaluated in 2014 has consolidated significantly since, particularly for regulated medical and promotional content. Purpose-built life sciences content platforms — most notably Veeva Vault’s PromoMats and MedComms modules — have become the industry standard for managing medical affairs and promotional content. In 2025–2026, vendors have layered agentic AI directly onto these platforms, with AI agents for content review, summarization, and compliance checking rolling out specifically for medical affairs functions through 2026. The broader pharmaceutical content and quality management software market is projected to grow from roughly $3.7 billion in 2026 to $6.4 billion by 2031. Iknow’s rigorous, requirements-driven product evaluation in 2014 — screening more than 300 products down to a single best-fit recommendation — reflected the same discipline the industry has only continued to reinforce: regulated medical content demands a purpose-fit platform, not an accumulation of disconnected point solutions.

Current Situation

Company U’s Medical Affairs Department had grown by adding software applications as individual point solutions, and its senior leadership recognized that the resulting cost and complexity would not scale with the company’s continued growth. The most pressing symptom was a basic inability to find documents: content lived across several shared drives organized into more than 6,500 folders and subfolders, with no search capability to help staff locate the files and documents their work depended on.

• Unsustainable point-solution sprawl. Medical Affairs had accumulated a variety of individual software applications rather than a coherent content platform, and the cost and complexity of maintaining them was not sustainable as the company grew.
• A content findability crisis. More than 6,500 folders and subfolders across multiple shared drives, with no search functionality, left staff unable to reliably locate the documents they needed to do their jobs.
• High regulatory stakes. Medical Affairs’ content underpinned FDA-mandated document accuracy, information provided to health care providers, and pivotal trial result reporting — meaning poor content management carried real compliance and operational risk, not just inconvenience.
• An overwhelming, unstructured market. With hundreds of commercial and open-source ECM products on the market, Company U had no structured way to evaluate the field against its own specific regulated-content requirements.

• Assess Medical Affairs’ current business processes, technology applications, and content environment.
• Document detailed business and technical requirements for a new enterprise content management system.
• Evaluate the ECM software marketplace and recommend the product that best fits Company U’s specific needs.
• Deliver a 12-to-18-month implementation roadmap and the foundation for content governance policies and procedures.

How Iknow Structured the Work

Iknow combined direct staff interviews and close IT collaboration to build a complete picture of Medical Affairs’ business and technical requirements, then applied a staged, progressively narrowing evaluation process to translate a market of hundreds of ECM products into a single, well-justified recommendation and implementation plan.

Key Activities & Decisions

• Current-State Interviews. Iknow conducted a series of focused one-on-one interviews across the Medical Affairs Department to understand and document core business processes, the technology applications and databases in use, and areas for improvement, synthesizing the findings into a Business Requirements Document.
• IT Collaboration & Technical Requirements. Working closely with Company U’s IT Department, Iknow developed a solid understanding of the company’s IT strategy, architecture, and infrastructure, forming the core of a Technical Requirements Document; IT also helped shape the evaluation criteria for the new ECM system.
• Content Assessment. Iknow analyzed the volume and types of content stored on Medical Affairs’ shared drives to quantify the scale and nature of the findability problem.
• Staged Product Evaluation. Iknow began with more than 300 commercial and open-source ECM products, narrowed the field based on Company U’s specific requirements, conducted thorough evaluations of the top 12, and invited vendors for the top 3 to deliver software demonstrations.
• Final Recommendation & Roadmap. Iknow selected the final product and prepared the recommendation and supporting rationale for Medical Affairs and IT management, along with a 12-to-18-month implementation roadmap covering project sequencing, timeline, and milestones.

Stakeholders & Collaboration

Iknow worked directly with Medical Affairs staff and senior leadership as well as Company U’s IT Department, ensuring the final recommendation reflected both the department’s operational needs and the company’s broader technical environment.

Narrowing an Overwhelming Market to One Confident Recommendation

With hundreds of ECM products on the market, an unstructured evaluation risked either analysis paralysis or a recommendation that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. Iknow addressed this with a staged, progressively narrowing methodology — screening more than 300 products down to 12 for detailed evaluation and 3 for live vendor demonstrations — grounded throughout in the documented business and technical requirements gathered directly from Medical Affairs and IT.

Balancing Business Needs and Technical Constraints

A system that satisfied Medical Affairs’ functional needs but didn’t fit Company U’s technical environment would have been just as unworkable as the reverse. Iknow addressed this by developing the Business Requirements Document and Technical Requirements Document in parallel, with IT directly shaping the evaluation criteria used to assess every candidate product.

Operational Outcomes

• Delivered a Current State Assessment describing Medical Affairs’ core business processes and existing IT applications.
• Delivered Interview Findings and Requirements Documents consolidating business and technical requirements from across the department.
• Delivered a Content Assessment quantifying the files and content types on Medical Affairs’ shared drives.
• Delivered an ECM Software Product Evaluation and Recommendation, including detailed evaluations and rankings of the products that most closely met the department’s needs.

Strategic and Organizational Outcomes

Iknow’s final Recommendations covered business process improvements, ECM software implementation, and the development and institutionalization of content governance policies and procedures, paired with a Roadmap laying out the next 12 to 18 months of implementation work. Within two months of project kickoff, Company U had a complete ECM strategy and roadmap for managing Medical Affairs content, accepted all of Iknow’s recommendations, and moved quickly into implementation — replacing a sprawl of point solutions and an unsearchable, 6,500-folder shared drive with a single, purpose-fit platform positioned to scale alongside the company’s continued growth.

Timeline to Impact

Iknow delivered the complete assessment, product evaluation, recommendation, and roadmap within the three-month engagement, with Company U accepting all recommendations and beginning implementation within two months after the project’s conclusion.

Core Skills

• Knowledge management consulting
• Enterprise content management strategy & software selection
• Business & technical requirements analysis
• Content governance advisory

Methods & Frameworks

• Structured, interview-based current-state assessment
• Staged vendor evaluation methodology (market scan, shortlist, demonstrations)
• Implementation roadmap development