First Consulting Group Introduces FirstPoint For Life Sciences

FirstPoint, Built Entirely on the Microsoft Platform, is an Enterprise Solution for Regulated Content Management and Collaboration for the Life Sciences Industry

Long Beach, CA - FCG today announced the launch of FirstPoint, a new suite of products developed specifically to address the content management and collaboration needs of the life sciences market. With the introduction of FirstPoint, FCG and Microsoft are working together to deliver a product built entirely on the Microsoft platform, leveraging Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and targeted specifically at the content management and business collaboration needs of the life sciences industry.

FirstPoint allows life sciences organizations to utilize their existing Microsoft platform investments while capitalizing on FCG's product innovations and industry-leading best-practices. The software solution offers a revolutionary new architecture and user experience designed to boost productivity and ensure compliance across the enterprise in R&D, clinical, quality & manufacturing, sales & marketing and corporate operations such as legal, finance, and HR.

"Life sciences professionals are mature users of content management and are now focused on approaches to bring collaboration and a simplified user experience together with traditional regulated content management solutions," said Jeff Klein, VP of Product Strategy for FCG Life Sciences. "FirstPoint combines FCG's deep experience in life sciences content management with the flexibility, power, and simplicity of the Microsoft platform to bring these two worlds together."

FCG will also continue to extend its FirstDoc product for life sciences companies to manage their regulated content. FirstDoc has been available for nearly ten years and is used by many of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies.

The FirstPoint enterprise solution offers some significant advantages over the traditional content management solutions for life sciences including: a lower cost of ownership to deploy, maintain and upgrade the solution; a simple and intuitive user interface, integration with the Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS); and a simplified technology architecture based upon the breadth of the Microsoft platform.

The product line can be deployed across a global enterprise, as well as in small-to-mid-sized biotechnology and medical device companies seeking a cost-effective and efficient way to manage R&D, clinical and regulatory content and submission management.

"The introduction of FirstPoint powered by the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 platform demonstrates our commitment and ability to provide enhanced business solutions to the life sciences market in concert with our partners," said Paul Mattes, U.S. life sciences industry solutions director, Microsoft Corp. "FCG is acknowledged as a leader in providing content management solutions and the combination of its expertise with the power, flexibility and scale of the Microsoft platform can make this a game-changing solution for the industry."

Important capabilities of the FirstPoint Enterprise product include:

• Microsoft Office-centered user experience for ease of use, greater collaborative participation and increased productivity
• Collaborative Microsoft Word-based review (e.g. track changes) in a compliant, controlled environment
• FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliant system including audit trail and electronic signatures
• Established industry best-practice content type and taxonomy model, and automated, rules-driven lifecycle and document processing
• Easily configurable workflows for document collaboration and content organization and assembly for regulatory submission processes
• Federated metadata-driven approach to harmonize content management usage across multiple repositories

With today's introduction of FirstPoint, FCG has also announced the initial FirstPoint product releases, including FirstPoint Enterprise, FirstPoint Research & Development and FirstPoint Medical Information. FirstPoint Enterprise is the enterprise FirstPoint platform on which all products are built. FirstPoint Research & Development is the solution for life sciences R&D content management. FirstPoint Medical Information is the solution for life sciences medical information management.

SOURCE: First Consulting Group, Inc.