Article Summary

Greeenemeier, L. The Products of Research. InformationWeek. Manhasset: May 10, 2004. Iss. 988; pg. 62, 3pgs.

The article I chose for this week is about Dyax Corp, a small company that at the time the article was written was only nine years old and was based in Cambridge, Mass. At the time it sold research on drug compounds and licensed biotech research tools to drug makers but wanted to transition from being a "behind the scenes player" in the drug industry to being an actual pharmaceutical company that develop and manufactures drugs. One of the reasons it was attempting this change was that it had identified a potential treatment for a rare life-threatening genetic disorder called hereditary agioedema. This disorder is characterised by attacks of swelling and inflammation that can strike without warning and at the time had no FDA approved treatment available. To successfully get a drug approved by the FDA, Dynax needed to change the way it operated its business and become more like biotech leaders like Amgen and Genentech.

The article goes on to talk about how Dyax intended to do just that by implementing a new IT strategy. The first part of that strategy was to overhaul its ERP system to ensure it would be able to handle all the new business functions of a drugmaker, along with tracking its testing programs for its new drug, meet FDA requirements, and eventually handle manufacturing the drug want it was approved. To handle all of this the company implemented Ross System Inc.'s iRenaiissance ERP system. This system replaced the old ERP software which was called Great Plains and would hopefully help the company with its transition. Dyax needed new software because the old ERP software did not have project-management capabilities that are needed to support the new business model. It also lacked an inventory tracking system which would be needed to document drug development and manufacturing processes for FDA approval.

The article also discusses how Dyax will continue to improve its business plan with IT investments. Some of these include a document-management system to aid clinical trial and regulatory affairs personal. The firm will also implement a company intranet and portal to provide a central area for storing information so that across the company people can access information without having to search for it on a server.

I think this article relates back to what was discussed in Chapter 9 with how enterprise applications can be used to improve and consoldiate business proccesses. In this example these software systems are being used to allow a firm to transition to a completely new type of business.