R-Biopharm AG is one of the leading biotechnology companies in Germany. The product portfolio of R-Biopharm AG ranges from analytical instruments in clinical diagnostics to nutrition care products and food & feed analysis. With technically sophisticated products, the former hidden champion from Darmstadt has developed into one of the most relevant players in this market with over 1,400 employees worldwide. However, in order to develop to this level, a lot of specific know-how is needed. R-Biopharm has not only been able to build this up successfully in recent years, but has also increasingly digitalised it.
One of the challenges that the employees experienced every day – especially in sales and equipment maintenance – was easy access to the know-how that was stored in different systems in a distributed manner.
This includes, for example, accessing the right documentation such as certificates or guidelines in order to make them available to the customer. Another example is information that is stored in collaboration tools such as Teams and Outlook and is very difficult to find there.
As a consequence, this meant high internal research efforts for the employees in addition to a certain potential for frustration in order to be able to access the right know-how. Thus, the research could sometimes take in the double-digit minute range and sometimes even longer.
The cooperation with amberSearch and R-Biopharm
The technical set-up and onboarding
Individual teams from the Food and Feed Analysis division and the SAS division (System Development, Application and Service) found the search for internal information particularly time-consuming. Once the problem was identified, it was decided to work with amberSearch. In a first phase, amberSearch was switched live for individual teams of the F&F sales department, the R-Biopharm IT department and the SAS department (system development, application and service). Right from the start, various data sources such as teams, Outlook (personal and shared mailboxes) and network drives were connected. The technical connection to the internal IT systems was carried out in coordination with the IT department of R-Biopharm within half a day.
The connection of amberSearch was actually as easy as originally discussed and thus enabled us to quickly release the solution to users. After the quick set up, we were particularly impressed with the speed of development in which user feedback was incorporated into amberSearch’s software. You can tell that the team is passionate about what they do and takes customer requests seriously.
Nader el Azabi, Head of IT at R-Biopharm
Despite the early stage of amberSearch’s software at the time of introduction, the added value could be realised quickly and the potential could also be seen with appropriate further development. In addition, the amberSearch team incorporated the feedback from R-Biopharm into the further development of the software. The fast implementation of the feedback was another advantage of the cooperation with amberSearch.
Added value
amberSearch was very quickly accepted by us. It was exciting for me to see that a certain language soon became established in our internal meetings. When it came to obtaining information, at some point it was just said: Have you ever looked at amberSearch?
James Szimeth, Sales Director for the Asia-Pacific region
A practical example: James Szimeth needed a document from a few years ago for a customer. He knew roughly what was in it, but not where exactly it was stored.
“In the past, I would have had to click through various systems and folders and would probably have asked one or two colleagues for help, so the search process would have taken me 45 minutes just for this one document. Today, I simply use amberSearch and can find the document within a minute,” Szimeth reports. “We had this ‘aha’ effect several times, which is why we decided to use amberSearch on a long-term basis after an initial phase of cooperation. In addition, a roll-out to all employees in the departments involved also took place as part of the extension.”
“I was particularly pleased with the openness of the R-Biopharm team towards new solutions, which is certainly not a matter of course,” says Bastian Maiworm, Co-Founder of amberSearch. This openness was the basis for the good cooperation and enabled an open feedback culture.
Another challenge that the amberSearch team was not aware of from the beginning during the roll-out was the complexity of the roll-out in the sales team across continental borders, as here, of course, on the one hand, additional languages and, on the other hand, different sub-access rights management systems had to be managed.
“For us, scaling amberSearch was the next logical step. We are pleased that we were able to successfully take this step with R-Biopharm, our only international customer at the time,” says Philipp Reißel, also co-founder of amberSearch.
What did we learn from the project?
One of the biggest learnings for the amberSearch team was the importance of onboarding as well as the integration of amberSearch within the existing IT landscape to facilitate the change for the employees. Therefore, amberSearch has invested more in these areas in recent months and has developed, among other things, a complete help page and a TeamsApp. In the future, further investments will be made in these areas.
General description of amberSearch
A lot of time is spent searching for the right document or information these days. Not only does one waste a lot of time searching oneself, often colleagues are also kept from their work, which is additionally perceived as annoying and frustrating for the searcher himself.
As a consequence, employees lose time for value-added work, decisions are made on a poor basis and the employee experience does not have the desired quality.
With amberSearch, an intelligent, comprehensive search engine was developed that searches internal company data with the UX that users are used to from the web. Gone are the days when you had to click on dozens of filters to find the information yourself!
Photo source: R-Biopharm AG