Highly customized and personalized Plexus platform for Caidya’s unique requirements
Integrated eSignature app compliant with FDA Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 Part 11
Prolific use of Matter Management to request and triage Legal support (700+ requests since October 2023)
Ramping up over 1500 users across 41 global regions
Caidya is bringing life-changing therapies to the global community through liberated clinical research. This lofty ambition and international service requires their Legal team to navigate numerous complex contracts and multifaceted matters, necessitating a technological uplift throughout the business.
Caidya Chief Legal Officer David Rifkind has been leading the adoption and implementation of Plexus with the goal of ramping up businesswide usage for multiple departments. In order to achieve this gargantuan effort, Rifkind is catering specific features for different departments, which is made possible by the highly customisable Plexus software.
“We wanted to automate all processes related to documents — not just Legal requests and approvals, but all of our document flow and matter management, while having a full audit trail,” says Rifkind.
“Since Caidya is in the highly regulated life sciences space, it was extremely important for us to have a partner that understood our needs and had a platform flexible enough to satisfy our unique requirements. The Plexus platform is the only one that met all of our criteria and best suited our needs.”
Having been an early advocate of technology-enhanced ways of working since the 1990s, Rifkind has a well-defined feature shopping list. Additionally, a tech solution being used at this scale requires extensive support, something Rifkind took into consideration when scoping which vendors would best meet his exacting requirements.
Rifkind’s laundry list of digital demands was an effective way to filter out viable solutions to implement. While Plexus is ready to use in its standard version, it can be substantially customized to perform specific processes, and provide insights into usage.
“We might be one of the most customized instances of Plexus, and we’ve done a couple of interesting things because we’re in a highly regulated industry,” says Rifkind.
Some of Rifkind’s specifications required some extra support from the Plexus Consulting & Services team who specialize in scoping and building custom solutions to cater for unique business requirements.
No other vendors provide the level of liaison, coordination and development support as your team does – and I have worked with many vendors over the years.”
As a US-based life sciences company, Caidya is subject to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 Part 11. This code, which has been standardized across multiple jurisdictions globally, helps maintain the integrity and security of electronic records and signatures when handling highly sensitive information. Rifkind therefore also specified Caidya’s version of Plexus to have eSignature capabilities to satisfy Part 11 requirements.
“When we use Plexus’ eSignature tool, we’re satisfying the data integrity rules for about 28 different countries, so it’s really great to have that compliance,” says Rifkind.
“Plexus is a tremendous time saver for us because we can go through everything – from drafting, negotiation with counterparties, approvals and signatures – seamlessly within the platform.”
The next phase of Caidya’s rollout will see 125 users swell to over 1500 users from 41 different countries and regions actively using Plexus as part of their day-to-day processes.
“I’ve been beta testing with project managers who find Plexus great and want to use it immediately. I’ve also been beta testing with some people in Finance. They like the contract expiry reminder notifications because it proactively alerts us long before we need to begin renewal negotiations,” says Rifkind.
In preparation for the complete rollout, Caidya self-bulk uploaded over 15,000 documents into the platform, using it for centralized storage.
“The bulk upload tool is one of the best differentiators for Plexus: it allows the user to efficiently upload the documents with full metadata as compared to other solutions that charge customers thousands – and in some hundreds of thousands – of dollars to do the upload. I was amazed at how fast Plexus trained our team and how effective their upload tool is capturing the data we need,” commented Rifkind.
The Caidya legal and procurement teams have also been using Plexus’ Matter Management tool for over a year to support contract and legal advice requests. Over the last 12 months, over 800 matters have been opened using Plexus, replacing their previous email-based process. Even better, Rifkind can now track the metrics and report to management.
“We can see not only that we have closed over 90% of the matters during that time, but we can zero in and see how quickly we responded (less than 2 days on average) and how long it took to completely close matters from start to finish (31 days on average). And those are the gross numbers – the system allows for far better refinement. For example, we can see for any matter how long it was waiting internally versus externally. That is a real game changer for a small legal department: when our turn time is less than 10% of the total time to close, it is a very clear measure of how super efficient the team is,” he explains.
“All of the Matter Management is fully functional right now – we are going to turn off the mailbox we were using before.”
Following that, Rifkind has plenty of ideas in implementing the analytics feature within Plexus to drive informed decision making for various business functions.
“Once we’re fully live, all of these contracts from disparate groups will be within one contract lifecycle management system. And more importantly, I can pull up the Matter ID and see everything right there in front of me. For example, I’ll be able to view the dollar amounts for all of the vendor contracts, which will help with our buys.”
While there is still a bit of work to be done, the effort has left a lasting impression on Rifkind.
“I know how much extra work Plexus has been doing for us. It’s not insubstantial and is greatly appreciated. It will make me loyal for life to Plexus – whether I stay here or go elsewhere.”
Plexus helps everyone in your business execute legal tasks with certainty and speed. Build self-service workflows for routine legal tasks, accelerate your contract lifecycle, and bring clarity, transparency and swift resolutions to legal matters.
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