Zoetis, Inc.

Challenges

Shortly after Zoetis launched as a new company in June 2013, Julia Urwin, Senior Manager of Scientific and Technical Information, and her colleagues began the project to deliver a fast, simple, and affordable library solution that would provide the resources Zoetis employees needed and expected. They sought to replicate many of the functional areas that existed in the company’s former SharePoint library portal while providing a rich collection of relevant content.

“We wanted a simple, one-stop shop that would be cost-effective and meet the needs of a very self-service organization,” Urwin said, adding that the library portal would be used by individuals and teams across the company and around the globe.

First, she said, the new portal would need to support the information needs of Zoetis’ global research and development teams. In addition, the company’s regulatory group would need access to current research information to support submissions to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies. Access to the latest clinical information for the veterinary and technical services teams was also a high priority. Finally, the portal would also need to support marketing services, who often consult published research literature to develop messaging and sales materials.

Keeping these needs in mind, Urwin pulled together a small team to evaluate a number of vendor products. The team included Urwin, a representative from the company’s information technology department, Zoetis’s information scientist, a lead chemist, a patent and sequence analyst, and representatives from the company’s legal, procurement, and new products marketing departments.

“It was a small team, but a very effective team,” Urwin said, adding that the team members were expected to make purchasing decisions on behalf of the business. “Several were users, so that makes a big difference.”

Urwin invited nine library solution vendors, including EBSCO, to demonstrate their products and services to the evaluation team.

“We were so impressed that we went with EBSCO,” Urwin said, adding that EBSCO clearly understood the company’s needs and requirements. “EBSCO’s fundamental understanding of the library world made them a cut above.”

The entire process, from initiating the Request for Purchase process to implementing the product, took only four months. EDS—or “eLibrary” as it is known to Zoetis users—launched on January 1, 2014.

Solutions

The wide range of customization options available for EDS allowed Zoetis to replicate many functional areas of their former SharePoint library portal. This capability was important to the team so as not to disrupt, and in some cases eliminate, those areas from the employees’ existing workflow.

“We wanted to ensure as much continuity as possible during the transition,” Urwin said.

Ensuring the tight integration with Infotrieve was a critical component to the success of the EDS implementation. Native capability within EDS for single-click access to Infotrieve at an article level provides users with record retrieval options whenever full text is not available in EBSCO.  In these instances, the Infotrieve link takes users to the full text located elsewhere in Zoetis’ library collection or allows them to use the document delivery shopping cart.

Meanwhile, the “eLibrary” home page is branded with the company’s colors and logos and includes multiple, custom feature areas. All of these were created in EBSCOadmin, the web-based tool used by library administrators to configure and customize the EDS website. These feature areas bring to the user most of the core functionality previously offered on the former SharePoint portal.

The first two columns include library announcements and quick links that connect users to the company’s most frequently searched databases. The third column lists additional information resources, including a link to the Infotrieve Mobile Library, where employees can access full text from non-EBSCO resources or request document delivery. The fourth column displays up-to-date animal health industry news from Dow Jones’ Factiva. At the bottom of the home page screen is an interactive carousel of Featured Veterinary eBooks from the EBSCO eBooks collection.

Benefits & Results

Urwin plans to take advantage of the usage metrics to measure the quantitative success of EDS, with the possibility of conducting a survey asking users for their feedback. To date, reaction to eLibrary has been positive. “EDS is working well, and our employees are happy,” she said. “I love it and think it is a great, simple resource for people.”

In addition, the purchase of EDS and several EBSCO databases led Zoetis to reduce its number of non-EBSCO subscriptions. “The amount of full text available through the EBSCO collections is really fantastic,” Urwin said. “I don’t know why anyone would use anything else, to be honest. Providing access to full-text information as fast and cost-effective as possible is a key driver and this does exactly that.”

Urwin also cited EBSCO’s outstanding customer support as a factor in their overall satisfaction with EDS. With EBSCO, she explained, your success as a customer is as important as the sale.

“The support we got post-project was incredible,” Urwin said. “Most places, when you purchase something, you sign on the dotted line and ‘bye-bye.’ But EBSCO stayed with us. I don’t heap lavish praise on vendors, but I can’t speak more highly of EBSCO. I felt they understood us and were customer success champions.”

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