AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Situation and Challenges

AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a 25-year-old biopharmaceutical firm that has developed intravenous drugs to treat anemia. The company employed 60 scientists, sales staff, and other employees until it began a rapid and significant expansion in early 2008, growing quickly to 280 people.

This rapid expansion created information-delivery challenges for the marketing, sales training and clinical organizations when they had to send and transfer large files via email. The file attachments were becoming too heavy to be accepted by the recipients’ e-mail systems, plus the company needed a secure way to send training and sensitive drug data out to the employees in the field.

Marketing challenges

• This group worked intensively with ad agencies to prepare leaflets and brochures on current and new pharmaceuticals.
• Heavy graphic files were being copied to DVDs and delivered by FedEx from the agency to AMAG. After marketing staff made changes, files would have to be burned onto a DVD again and sent back by FedEx.
• The approval process required two to three days, even for a single edit.

Sales training challenges

• Training personnel needed to reach all 72 field staff members with time-sensitive and confidential PowerPoint files weighing in at dozens of megabytes each.
• This information needed to be secure, containing precise wording conforming to federal rules when presenting information on the company’s products.

Clinical group challenges

• Needed a safe, secure, HIPAA-compliant way to send its study results and patient information.

Solution

Senior Director of IT, Nate McBride, came to AMAG in January 2008 after heading IT for another pharmaceutical company that had experienced frustrations using FTP for file delivery. The FTP system at McBride’s former company required increasing amounts of IT staff time to add and delete users, and on-staff doctors were confused by the FTP process. “The file delivery became so complex that doctors would call their children to ask how to operate FTP, or they would break documents into smaller pieces to transmit them,” McBride recalled. “Sometimes they would even go into personal Hotmail or Gmail accounts to send attachments.”

He resolved the problems by examining several online file delivery solutions and choosing YouSendIt for Business’s secure digital file delivery service. “I stopped all FTP and established a link with YouSendIt for Business. When I informed the company that all transactions to and from partners would be handled by YouSendIt for Business, I received wide praise. People really dug it.”

AMAG YouSendIt for Business Implementation

When he moved to AMAG, McBride implemented YouSendIt for Business for Enterprise right away, rolling it out to 30 users. Currently the company’s most frequent file senders have the Microsoft Outlook plug-in embedded directly in their e-mail, so they don’t even need to open a browser or application to send files, while others simply go to the YouSendIt for Business Web site to transmit documents.

Prior Experience—Doctors Using Hotmail, Gmail for File Transfer

• The YouSendIt for Business solution immediately eliminated the need for employees to split up large files into multiple smaller ones, as well as costly delivery charges for courier services.
• Marketing and sales staff members can exchange large .pdf and Illustrator files, make changes in the text or graphics, and return the files in just a matter of minutes, instead of the two to three days previously required.
• Even AMAG’s finance personnel have adopted the service to securely send Excel files to auditing companies.
• The training group is deploying very large PowerPoint and Flash presentations to its field force, safely, securely and expediently with YouSendIt for Business. Field employees also can send their PowerPoint reports back to managers directly through the AMAG Web site, via YouSendIt for Business’s SiteDrop application.

A Winning IT Solution

• Since YouSendIt for Business eliminates the need for e-mail attachments, a huge burden has been lifted from AMAG’s servers, and employees are no longer handicapped with e-mail bounce backs, shortening overall workflow and project completion time.
• McBride can distribute software easily now. “We recently upgraded the company to Office 2007,” he explained, “and we had a large number of people in the field. Instead of waiting until they brought their computers into the office or having them send us their laptops, we sent them the YouSendIt for Business link to download a Zipped executable file. They let it run in their hotel rooms and our tech support people logged in remotely to install Office on their computers.”

Why YouSendIt for Business

Ease of use (no employee training required), speed and security are the primary benefits that McBride values in YouSendIt for Business.

"YouSendIt for Business seemed to be very intuitive, and people immediately understood what was happening," McBride said. "Before subscribing, I ran a couple of pilot programs with employees who were not tech-savvy, and they had no problem at all. It was a pretty easy choice at that moment. When I came to AMAG, I didn't look at any other solution— YouSendIt for Business was one of the first accounts I established when I arrived."

YouSendIt for Business also offers the security and information audit ability McBride sought for his company. McBride can track any and all files sent, including sender and recipient information, and set expiration times for files, providing added security and a complete audit trail.

"We tell people they have four hours or one day to download a file and give them a password. This reduces the risk of someone not receiving our presentation and saying the wrong thing at a clinic. YouSendIt for Business allows us to be clear, concise and consistent."